Throwback Thursday

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...

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,...