Category: History

Famous early aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight on May 21, 1927. The handsome pilot of The Spirit of St. Louis, became world-famous, overnight. Along with fame came public adoration and the omnipresent paparazzi. Lindbergh asked Ann Morrow to marry him in 1929. The world braced for a celebrity wedding. By...

Sharks were sighted last week off Goose Rocks Beach and off Gooch’s Beach. It made me wonder if we had any history of fatal shark attacks in the Kennebunks. I didn’t find any instances of sharks killing people here but lots of accounts of people killing sharks. An 8-foot “maneater” was captured off shore at...

Jane Morgan’s beautiful old farmhouse on North Street has been sold. I attended the yard sale there last weekend to pick up something to remind me of Jane. I have written about her role at the Kennebunkport Playhouse several times. I thought this might be a good time to share some Blueberry Hill Farm history....

Eighty-eight shipmasters and mates from Cape Porpoise, Gloucester, and Boston petitioned the United States Government for a mechanical fog bell to be installed at the Goat Island Light Station. They also wanted a spindle at the sometimes-submerged rocky extremity of Goat Island and a tripod marking the other side of the entrance on Folly Island....

Kings Highway in the Kennebunks has changed a lot since it was first established in 1653. Massachusetts Commissioners could only get their horse carts as far north as Wells to get submission from the people of the Provence of Maine. After inhabitants of Wells, Cape Porpoise, and Saco submitted, the commissioners ordered that they “make...

This Walrus Tusk in our collection was donated to the Kennebunkport Historical Society by the Louis T. Graves Library in 1979 with no known provenance. The markings on it indicate that Commander Robert Peary, who was widely credited in 1909 as being the first to discover the North Pole on a voyage of the S.S....

Unlike George Castanza, I love it when my seemingly unrelated worlds collide. Mr. Roy Langenberg, who is currently living in Arizona, but whose family can be traced back to Dr. George F. Merrill in Kennebunkport, recently donated some marvelous paintings to the Kennebunkport Historical Society. One Louis D. Norton woodland scene and a small Abbott...

Real estate speculators from Massachusetts and Kennebunkport purchased more than 700 acres of coastal land from Cape Porpoise to Lord’s Point in 1872. They opened the Ocean Bluff Hotel in 1873 with the intention of subdividing the land around it into closely packed cottage lots. The hotel soon enjoyed healthy patronage, but Kennebunkport’s infrastructure was...

Benjamin Brewster became Episcopal Biship of Maine in 1916. That was the same year that Fanny Darrach deeded Trinity Chapel at Kennebunk Beach to the Diocese. I had not found a record of the chapel being consecrated but while working on tonight’s lecture on the history of Saint Ann’s and Kennebunk Point, I came across...

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...