Throwback Thursday

A handwritten pile of notes in one of the Cape Porpoise archival boxes is topped with a cover letter “To the Readers: The following notes on the history of Cape Porpoise and its houses were dictated to me by my mother Laurette Hutchins Perkins (Mrs. Clement Stone Perkins) during the last two or three years of her life. She died June 2, 1937, aged 89 years…” “In order that this book does not become lost by someone forgetting to whom it was passed, I am asking Mrs. George Emmons to keep a record of its where abouts.” Somehow that pile...

“Yes, we do have a ghost living here,” said Marie Henrikson, former proprietor of Tides Inn. Guests sometimes say they have seen a stately-looking woman dressed in Victorian garb rocking in a certain chair in the parlor or seated in front of the piano. “We’re convinced the ghost is Mrs. Emma L. Foss,” said Henrikson, who owned Tides Inn when the hotel was featured in the Haunted New England issue of the Boston Sunday Herald on October 31, 1993. The Tides, designed by John Calvin Stevens, was built in 1899 for Emma Foss who called it the New Belvidere Inn....

I have always admired the elegance and symmetry of the structures at the intersection of Main and Fletcher Streets in Kennebunk. It cannot be accidental that the bank and the library, two very compatible colonial brick buildings flank the stately soldier’s monument and the entrance to Fletcher Street while respecting the antiquity of the Unitarian Church next door. I wanted to know whose vision came to fruition there? Andrew Walker gave his store to the Free Library Association of Kennebunk in 1888 and left the $10,000 in his will for its support but by 1905 the Walker Hall library location...

Homelessness is not much of a problem in Kennebunkport these days but that wasn’t always the case. When the 1896 freshet took out the bridge between Dock Square and Kennebunk Lower Village and a new bridge was under construction, businessmen complained about the less desirable class of people hanging around the train station. Those poor souls were referred to in the Biddeford Journal as the “unwashed and thirsty,” “hobos and highwaymen,” “the tired tourists,” and “noble deserters of toil,” lumping together beggars, drunks, thieves and the unemployed. Never mind that one unemployed engineer, who was fortuitously loitering nearby when the...

When the last of the abandoned Penobscot camps near Government Wharf were torn down in 1936 the local newspaperman reminisced about how fondly some of its peaceful inhabitants were still remembered nine years after they had all left. The very athletic Sockalexis cousins came to mind. The famous Louis Francis Sockalexis, the first Native American to play professional baseball in 1897, and the one for whom the Cleveland Indians was named, had summered with his family at Cape Arundel as a boy where he was already known for his remarkable baseball talent. His second cousin, Andrew Sockalexis was still just...

Sagamore Thomas Chabinock, of Nampscoscoke bequeathed unto John Wadleigh of Wells, all the land from the Ogunquit River to Kennebunk River, up to the Mousam River Falls, in 1649, with the consent of Tom’s mother, Ramanascho. In 1654, John Wadleigh’s son Robert conveyed the portion on the northeast bank of the Mousam River, then called Cape Porpus River, to Francis Littlefield Sr.. That deed specifies, “beginning at a little hill which butts upon the river where there is an Indian Grave.” Fast forward 229 years, to the spring of 1883. Nobody was thinking about the Wadleigh deeds when workers were...

Paul Pinkham, Jr. and his uncle, Silas Gardner came to Cape Porpoise from Nantucket in 1801. They had the two-story square house built on Pier Road that still stands today. Paul’s son, Silas Gardner Pinkham, married Daniel Grant’s daughter Emily. In 1843, Silas was captain of a cod fishing schooner named The James and Henry. He was fishing in the Bay of Fundy in company with several other Cape Porpoise fishing vessels, including The Auronah, when a violent storm arose. Eli Hutchins, Sr. 43-year old captain of the Auronah and three of his crew, Eli Hutchins, Jr. 24, John Hutchins...

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 the time the press got wind of the actual secret marriage in New Jersey the couple had already slipped away on a 38-foot honeymoon vessel. The owner of Elco Boatworks gave reporters a very detailed description of the aviator’s new yacht, the “Mouette”. She put...

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 Kennebunk Beach in 1893 by Wash Jacobs and Charlie Stevens, who hung it up on display at The Cove. Melville and Frank Darling chased a school of 3 Hammerhead sharks, prodding them with their oars while they were fishing off Cape Porpoise in 1913. The...

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. Thomas Perkins, Jr. built the oldest house still standing in Kennebunkport village in 1724 on Oak Street. His son, Abner Perkins, had the c.1747 house on Locke Street. Abner’s son Stephen Perkins built the house that we know as Blueberry Hill c. 1790. He also...

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. The plan was approved in 1910. An 1100 pound bell was manufactured by McNeely and Company of Troy, NY and installed on June 6, 1910 and a 35-foot wrought iron spindle was placed at the southwestern extremity of Goat Island. A few weeks later, the...

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 sufficient highways within their towns from house to house, and clear and fit for foot and cart, before the next county court, under the penalty of ten pounds for every town’s defect in this particular.” The first section of this early road that ran north...