Throwback Thursday

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. Roosevelt, presented it to Frederick A. Duneka, General Manager of Harper’s Weekly Magazine on September 20, 1909. We always wondered how it found its way to Kennebunkport. After their separate Arctic expeditions, both Commander Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook returned to the public eye...

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 Graves tropical scene were acquired in Kennebunkport by his ancestors. Mr. Langenberg purchased the two larger Abbott Graves oil paintings that he donated to us at Vose Gallery in Boston many years ago. He clearly loves the art of Abbott Graves. I wonder if he...

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 not conducive to the ambitious cottage development that the Boston & Kennebunkport Seashore Company had anticipated. Trains went only as far as the Kennebunk Depot then and the roads were not of a quality suitable for city folk. Boating was advertised as a recreational enticement,...

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 these photographs in Saint Ann’s archive. A report in the Kennebec Journal on August 17, 1916 reads, “Trinity Episcopal church at Kennebunk Beach was dedicated Tuesday morning by Biship Benjamin Brewster of the Maine Diocese, assisted by Rev. A.H. Ottman of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church,...

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 album in a Florida attic that would many years later be owned by people who understood the value of something like this to the people of the Kennebunks. Such a thoughtful, manual process. Have a great summer. Leave tangible evidence.

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 notable changes. The Bath Houses at Gooch’s Beach were torn down and rebuilt. “Newest asset to Kennebunk Beach and Kennebunkport are the super Seaside Bath Houses at Gooch’s Beach which open next Monday, surpassing anything of their kind in Maine. Built by Rufus Twambly of...

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 of wealthy industrialist and textile manufacturer John Nesmith of Lowell, MA who served as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts during the Civil War. Isabel married Frederic T Greenhalge in 1872, when Cape Arundel was mostly rocky farmland. Frederic was born in England but had moved to...

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 as the stately brick Federal it was built to be in 1825/6. It wasn’t until 1852, after George W. Bourne’s barn burned down, that he started decorating it like the medieval European cathedrals he loved so much. Once you commit to such a bold style...

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 of David Clark but George H. Clark was not without employment. He was already a well-respected house carpenter and contractor. Among his important large contracts were the construction of the Sagamore Hotel at Kennebunk Beach, (1896) Old Fort Inn, (1902) Breakwater Court, (1914) and Booth...

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 family who sent 4 offspring west to capitalize on the Gold Rush. You are all thinking of the same enterprising Bartlett family! John Bartlet was the father of all the Kennebunk Bartletts who went west in the 1850s. Honest John, as he was known, was...

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 the July 31, 1953, Cape Porpoise Day events which included a tour of his house and garden on Fishers Lane. A County Fair at Atlantic Hall kicked off the festivities at 10am followed by eight open house tours under the auspices of the Kennebunkport Historical...

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 primitive road, temporarily returned from whence they came. They braved King’s Highway into Maine again two years later but were only able to get as far as Wells. Twelve Cape Porpoise men were persuaded to make the trip to Wells, take the Freeman’s Oath and...