Throwback Thursday

The bridge that connects Kennebunk Lower Village to Dock Square Kennebunkport has been rebuilt several times. During a freshet on March 1, 1896, the old wooden drawbridge collapsed with a loud crash when big chunks of ice rushing downriver with the violent ebb tide cut through its supporting pilings.The need for safe and attractive vehicle passage from the Lower Village train depot to the Kennebunkport hotels by the time the summer folk arrived was of course the priority but year-round residents of both villages, who shared a post office, a milkman, and a family culture were also greatly inconvenienced. A...

I always assumed that women were gradually, if begrudgingly allowed to play golf with the men as the sport became popular in the Kennebunks but one lesson historical research has to teach me over and over is, never assume. Sarah Bancroft, seen in the first picture showing her Swedish Coachman how to drive, was a major impetus in bringing golf to the Kennebunks. She had learned the game while traveling in England and had purchased two sets of golf clubs of her own. The first organized golf club in the Kennebunks was called the Kennebunkport Golf Club. Artist Prosper Senat...

Kennebunkport and Kennebunk historians do not agree on the date Durrell’s Bridge was built. In his 1837, History of Kennebunkport, Charles Bradbury wrote that Durrell’s Bridge was built before 1751. Indeed, a 1751 entry in the first Arundel Town Book refers to Bartlett’s bridge as the upper bridge over the Kennebunk River implying that a lower bridge existed. Kennebunk Historians have all written that the bridge was built in 1764 or 1765. Bourne says that the first mention of the bridge in Kennebunk Records was in 1765 when Durrell’s Bridge Road was built to access “the bridge lately built.” Perhaps...

The old adage, “History is all around us” rings true here in Kennebunkport. If we are at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library on Maine Street, it is literally embedded in the walls. I have written about the Kennebunk Bank for which the brick building was erected in 1813. Observant Library patrons can still see the old bank vault where gold and silver was kept under three locks and three keys to be turned simultaneously by three bank officials. Customs records were later stored in the vault while the Kennebunk Customs District occupied at least part of the building...

Places hold memories for the ages. If I show you this c.1965 picture of the Olde Grist Mill, a delicious Indian Pudding might spring to mind or maybe your first job waiting tables. You probably won’t reminisce about riding in a horse drawn wagon full of corn harvested from your family fields, on your way to the grist mill to have it ground into meal by miller Perkins, but your great-grandmother might have. Captain Thomas Perkins, Jr. and two of his sons built the Perkins Tidal Grist Mill to work on the outgoing tide in 1749. The eldest son, Eliphalet...