Throwback Thursday

Hundreds of spectators came to see the launching of the three masted schooner Nimrod from the Christenson Shipyard in Kennebunk Lower Village on August 22, 1891. The Nimrod was the last vessel Norwegian shipbuilder George Christenson framed out. He did not get to see her off the ways at what would later become Herbie Baum’s Boatyard. George died of heart failure on March 3, 1891, at the age of 64. Andrew Walker recorded the loss in his diary. “Last Monday night George Christenson, a shipbuilder at the Port, arose about midnight, partly dressed himself and laid down on a sofa....

The Ellen Littlefield Doubleday Collection contains the diaries of Frank G. Littlefield of Mills Road from 1895-1918. Frank writes about his day-to-day life in Cape Porpoise. Like so many of his neighbors, he worked a lot of jobs to make ends meet. He painted and papered local houses and hotels, he cut ice in the wintertime, and he was a gifted taxidermist. He and his wife Emma Louise grew vegetables and raised livestock. Despite all that effort, they still had to go out and fetch wild fish or fowl for the family to eat most days. On November 26, 1897,...

Capt. Nathaniel Lord and Phebe Walker of the Kennebunkport Lord Mansion fame were married in 1797. The young couple settled in a house on a sizable lot of land at the corner of Pearl and Pleasant streets gifted to them by Phebe’s father, Captain Daniel Walker. You might know the house as Captain Gould’s house. Nathaniel and Phebe Lord had nine children, the first born in 1798 and the last born in 1814. Between Phebe’s 3rd and 4th child Nathaniel also had a son William with their 15-year-old housekeeper Sarah (Sally) Perkins. That “illegitimate” child is the subject of our...

Shortly after I posted my Throwback Thursday column last week, I read in a local Facebook Post that Hurricane Restaurant in Dock Square was on fire. My mind was immediately flooded with images of the two previous fires on that side of Dock Square that had caused so much damage. All but one of the commercial buildings on the north side of Dock Square were destroyed by fire in 1877. The anchor of the block had been the first Parker House Hotel and Restaurant built around 1870 by Swedish-born William C. Parker. It was described by the press as “a...

The Kennebunk River was not originally suitable for shipbuilding or even navigation of merchant vessels, for that matter. A large ledge called Perch Rock obstructed the east side of channel. At low tide, only 10 inches of water passed over a sandbar across the mouth of the river. Shifting sands were liable to change the location and configuration of the channel during every storm. Local businessmen and the Federal Government made numerous improvements to navigation on the Kennebunk River that we take for granted today. In 1793, local merchants led by Tobias Lord, Oliver Keating, and Thatcher Goddard, invested $3,000...