Author: Sharon Cummins (Sharon Cummins)

I had so much fun presenting the History of Dock Square slideshow at the Town House School that Thursday evening last month that I’m working on two more evening presentations; Cape Arundel History in July and Artists of the Kennebunks in August. The first artist I’m researching is Peggy Bacon. My major source is a...

Town blacksmiths played important roles in early Kennebunkport village life. Some shoed horses and oxen, some specialized in making ship irons, others made household tools and fixtures. The carriage maker in town also needed specific smithing skills. There were plenty of blacksmiths working in Kennebunkport Village. Three of them are indicated on the 1872 map...

The Kennebunkport Historical Society collection is full of intriguing treasures; each with a story of its own. One such treasure that I am drawn to is a finely sculpted two-foot fragment of a green marble statue mounted and labeled with reverence. Boston Author, Margaret Deland, summered at a cottage near the Nonantum Resort she had...

Shipbuilder Clement Littlefield was a very young man when he established The Emmons & Littlefield Shipyard in Kennebunk Lower Village in the 1840s. Biddeford Journal correspondent, Jules Righter made his acquaintance in 1887 on a grassy knoll adjoining Littlefield’s home on Chase Hill Road. “I came here [from Wells] when I was sixteen years old...

In preparation for my Dock Square slideshow coming up at the Townhouse School next Thursday evening, I am sharing part of one of the Dock Square history sources I used for the research. “Dissolving Views” was an article printed in the August 1,1913 issue of the Kennebunkport summer newspaper, Sea Shell. The Editor interviewed older...

Here it is May 1, 2025. May Day has meant different things to different people in our nation’s history. What does it mean to you this year? Is it the opening of water recreation season? I’m usually out kayaking by now, but boating weather is taking its own sweet time getting here this year. Is...

The United State was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy by mid-December of 1941. Feelings of patriotism and vulnerability surged in the Kennebunks. A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Location 155 Plane Spotting Tower erected at Cape Porpoise under the direction of The Portland Harbor Defense Board. Another tower was built...

Displaced Persons (DPs) from Ukraine, Estonia, and Poland were offered refuge at Kennebunkport’s Freedom Farm after World War II thanks to the generosity of one Arundel Road farmer. Ethar Milliken had read about the plight of Eastern European refugees and decided to donate one of the two farms he owned to the United Baptist Convention...

As most of you know, School Street was so named long before Consolidated School was built. There was a little yellow brick schoolhouse on School Street from 1820-1868. It sat at 6 School Street, where the red dormered gambrel cape now stands. The District # 4 schoolhouse shows up on the 1856 map but was...

The barque Laurens was launched from the Kennebunk River shipyard of Robert Smith Jr. on January 31, 1838, almost exactly one year before the famous revolt of 53 Africans onboard La Amistad. At first, Kennebunks men sailed the Laurens across the Atlantic carrying mostly cotton and tobacco, but she started whaling in the early 1840s....