Throwback Thursday

We in Kennebunkport were proud to call the 41st President of United States, George H.W. Bush, our summer neighbor most of his life. His son, our 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush, now spends his summer vacations in the house at Walker’s Point. You might have even seen our 42nd President, William Jefferson Clinton, playing golf at Cape Arundel Golf Club, once or twice. Do you remember any other presidential visits? One that you probably won’t remember was when our 5th U.S. President James Monroe came to Kennebunk on July 15, 1817. The British had stormed Washington during the War...

Emmanuel Joseph, born in the 1790s in St Ubes, Portugal, came to Kennebunkport in 1817 as a cook aboard a ship commanded by Captain Samuel Pope. The locals felt more comfortable calling the foreigner Joseph Manuel, so that became his name. Shortly after his arrival, Joseph encountered the charming teenage local girl, Sarah (Sally) Wildes. He was smitten but Sally was still quite young. After sailing on two more merchant voyages out of Kennebunkport, one with Capt. Pope and another with Capt. Crediford, Joseph asked Sally to be his wife. The couple filed intentions to marry in July 1820. Joseph...

January 27, 1914, at midnight, the City of Boston steamer George A. Hibbard struck Schooner Olive F. Hutchins broadside and punched a sizable hole just aft of the foremast on her port side. The Cape Porpoise vessel had been returning to Boston Harbor from a four-day fishing trip off Jefferies Ledge with 25,000 lbs. of fish in her hold. They were just off Castle Island when Capt. Merton Hutchins saw that the Hibbard was coming right for them. He screamed an alarm down the cabin companionway to rouse the sleeping crew. By the time his men stumbled on deck barefoot,...

The photographs I’m sharing today were all taken by Stephen Moore Johnson who lived in the Josiah Linscott House on Pearl Street next door to Tory Chimneys. I have shared his 1970s pictures before. He donated tons of prints and negatives to the Kennebunkport Historical Society in 1993. Johnson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years and earned the Career Intelligence Medal for exceptional achievement in 1973. He had already retired to Kennebunkport before our own George H. W. Bush became Director of the CIA. Take a snowy walk around Kennebunkport with Steve in January 1974. Temperatures fell...

I recently received a query about the bank branch on Elm St. When was it built and for whom? Coincidentally, I also received some material this week about the old Dudley mansion on Elm St. next door to where the bank branch stands. It always amazes me when questions and answers present themselves in the nick of time. When the elegant federal house on Elm St was built around 1806 it had a large front lawn running clear to the Kennebunk River. A rum distillery was built on that lawn in the 1820s and was run by the sons of...

The Kennebunks have been blessed with reputable historians since European fishermen found this place sparsely populated by native families early in the 17th Century, but their versions of our stories don’t always agree 100%. The area between the Kennebunk River and the Mousam River, which was originally called The Cape Porpoise River, was at first a kind of no man’s land. It was included on so many original grants that disagreed as to the location of the boundary between Wells and Cape Porpoise that half of its smattering of occupants had acquired their lots from one town and the other...

I was thrilled when Kate Kelley, The Photo Angel® sent The Kennebunkport Historical Society an old picture of Dock Square Kennebunkport. Kate’s passion is in reuniting old photographic portraits she finds at antique stores with the subject’s descendants by tracing their genealogy. This time, because the picture she found was of a Kennebunkport location, we were the lucky recipients. The first thing I noticed, when I had an opportunity to study the details, was that the sign above the corner storefront in the building that now houses Compliments says, “The Garrick Players this week’s attraction the right hilarious comedie Twelfth...

I’ve heard a lot about Forefathers Inn since I moved to Kennebunkport in Y2K but some of the facts about its ultimate fate are still fuzzy for me. Maybe you can help. Tea houses were all the rage in the Kennebunks, especially during Prohibition. Forefathers Spring House, later known for serving up a different kind of refreshment, opened as a tearoom in an 18th Century house near Townhouse Corners in 1917. Forefathers spring water, “Pure as Nature Flowers” apparently made the tea especially delicious served with “unusual dainties for tea and lunch.” By 1957, the Forefathers’ Inn menu included steak,...

The Kennebunkport Methodist Parish needed a place to hold services in the river village of Kennebunkport. Oliver Bourne made his lot on Maine Street next to the Custom House available for this purpose. The modest one-story Methodist Chapel was dedicated in April of 1835. In 1862, the one-story structure was raised up. The first floor became the second floor. Local businessman Samuel Gould gave a bell for the new belfry. Twenty years later, the belfry was replaced by a new sharp steeple, funded by Boston & Kennebunkport Seashore Company founding member, Enoch Cousens. Parishioners moved to the Church on the...

Mark Swett of the Westbrook Historical Society contacted me at the archives several weeks ago. He found some very interesting Kennebunkport Hutchins letters mixed in with a donation Westbrook Historical Society received that had been stored away for many years in someone’s attic. “Some of the letters between members of the Moses Hutchins family [who lived at 5 School Street Kennebunkport] date back to the Civil War,” said Mark. “Would you like me to send them to you at the Kennebunkport Historical Society?” “Yes Please,” said I, trying to contain my excitement. A carefully packed box arrived a few days...

The Wards are one of those Kennebunkport families that keep popping up in my local history research. Nathaniel Ward moved here from Salem, Massachusetts in 1789. He married ferryman Shephen Harding’s daughter. When Lydia Harding Ward died, part of her father’s property near the mouth of the Kennebunk River was sold by the Ward Family to the United States Government. We all know that property today as Government Wharf. Nathaniel Ward’s eldest son, Nathaniel, Jr., a boatbuilder, built a house at the corner of Maine and School Streets in 1812. His son Charles, whom I have featured in several articles,...

A yellow stagecoach on sleigh runners turned up in Barnstead, NH recently after having been stored away in a trailer there for decades. The gentleman upon whose property it had been abandoned contacted me at the Kennebunkport Historical Society to inquire about it since Kennebunkport was lettered above the doors on both sides of the coach. I recognized something in his photographs of the 10x4x6 foot vehicle. The shape of the coach reminded me of old photos I have seen of Ham Littlefield’s stagecoaches. He had a stable on Ocean Ave at the foot of Wharf Lane until it burned...