Category: History

The Wards are one of those Kennebunkport families that keep popping up in my local history research. Nathaniel Ward moved here from Salem, Massachusetts in 1789. He married ferryman Shephen Harding’s daughter. When Lydia Harding Ward died, part of her father’s property near the mouth of the Kennebunk River was sold by the Ward Family...

A yellow stagecoach on sleigh runners turned up in Barnstead, NH recently after having been stored away in a trailer there for decades. The gentleman upon whose property it had been abandoned contacted me at the Kennebunkport Historical Society to inquire about it since Kennebunkport was lettered above the doors on both sides of the...

There is a monument at the Cape Porpoise Pier honoring soldiers and sailors who served in the American Revolution and a plaque in Cape Porpoise Square honoring veterans of WWII, Korean, and Vietnam conflicts. WWI Veterans were honored upon their return to Kennebunkport in 1919. An all-encompassing Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Eagle perches proud in...

Kudos to L. Blake Baldwin of Video Creations in Kennebunk for converting this 16mm film from our collection. It was produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture after the Maine Fire of October 1947 to warn folks to prevent forest fires, “It happened in Maine so don’t let it happen to you.” Keep an eye...

“I was awakened from a sound sleep and saw this figure of a Quaker lady surrounded by a gray haze. She glided by the foot of the bed and went out the door,” recalled musical star Jane Morgan’s good friend Muriel Pierce to a reporter in the mid-1960s. The newspaper man and his photographer had...

Did you ever wonder why Spring Street in Kennebunkport is so named? It was the way to the freshwater spring that stood along Mast Cove between The Village Baptist Church and the White Columned Nott House. Its location is clearly indicated on both the 1856 map and the 1872 map of Kennebunkport. That spring was...

World War II veterans Wesley Boynton and Morse Haithwaite performed in the Kennebunks for the first time in 1946 when their friend Robert Currier invited them to appear at his Kennebunkport Playhouse. Their performance was so well received that they returned several times that season to perform at the Olympian Club on Temple St. Starting...

The Municipal Building on Elm St is cramped and outdated. The town employees are giving tours of the building this week to show taxpayers the condition of our 1960 Town Offices. I thought this might be a good time to talk about the various Town Halls in Kennebunkport’s history. Cape Porpoise was originally the center...

I love this view of Dock Square shared with us by Cecil Benson, Jr. It must have been taken between 1933 and 1942. Benson’s can be seen here at the far right where Alisson’s stands now. Cecil wrote, “This is the restaurant that Dad [Cecil Benson, Sr.] and the family ran during the summer from...

The first picture I’m sharing today shows The Kennebunk Green as it was in 1927. Henry Parsons donated the land at the corner of Main and Fletcher Streets to Kennebunk for a Civil War Memorial. The Civil War Memorial Statue was unveiled there on October 24, 1908. The small Revolutionary War era ships cannon on...