Category: History

I would like to thank these ladies, whoever they are. While staying at New Bass Rock Hotel at Kennebunk Beach in July 1926, they took day trips to Kennebunkport and Cape Porpoise. Capturing it all on film, they pasted the resulting pictures in a little album, labeling each picture beautifully and then left that little...

I use old newspapers to learn what people were thinking about at a certain time and place. The first issue of each season of the Kennebunks summer newspapers is especially enlightening because it was devoted to describing everything that had changed since the last issue of the previous season. July 2,1938 High Tide covered some...

The families who built Cape Arundel cottages were often connected to each other through the women in the family. Such was the case with the Nesmith sisters, for whom St. Ann’s Rectory was originally constructed and their sister, Mrs. Greenhalge, whose cottage stood atop Grandview Avenue. Isabel, Mary, and Julia were three of the daughters...

Driving down Summer Street in Kennebunk, these days, one can hardly help but notice the naked Wedding Cake House. At first glance I was horrified by the sight, but as the landmark is restored by Tim Spang and company, and the fretwork and spires are being replicated I appreciate the opportunity to see the house...

The four-masted schooner Savannah, built for Captain William H. Gould in 1901, was the last vessel Shipbuilder David Clark worked on before his death that year. His nephew, George H. Clark, son of David’s talented black sheep brother Abner, was foreman at Clark’s Kennebunkport shipyard. The Kennebunkport shipbuilding industry went on hiatus with the death...

When you hear “Bartlett’s” do you think of the bridge that had a lumber mill on one side of route one where it crosses the Kennebunk River and a store building across the street? Some of you probably think of Bartlett Avenue at Goose Rocks Beach. A few of you might even think about the...

The Kennebunkport Historical Society was only a year old and didn’t have a headquarters yet in 1953. Educator, Melville Freeman was the Society’s first Historian. He had not yet written the History of Cape Porpoise, but his 1953 illustrated history-talk schedule makes me feel like a slouch. Freeman was also one of the organizers of...

Cape Porpoise had been informally settled for decades by 1653, under the King of England’s proprietorship of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. After Gorges died, the neighboring colony of Massachusetts Bay began imposing their jurisdiction ever northward. The towns of Kittery and York submitted to Massachusetts in 1651 but the commissioners, wary of continuing upon such a...

Fifty years ago, when the town was applying for the National Register Historic District Designation that we are currently celebrating with 50th Anniversary flags and discs, retired CIA man turned Kennebunkport Historical Society photographer, Stephen Johnson, took a roll of 35-millimeter interior shots of The Olde Grist Mill Restaurant in Kennebunkport. I finally scanned some...

Youth sailing and racing has a long history in the Kennebunks. Even before the Kennebunk River Club was built in 1890, kids were learning to sail and race their sailboats out of the Lobster Boat and Canoe Club near Government Wharf. George H. Walker offered a prize for a series of races in 1904 that...