Throwback Thursday

Bickford’s Island, where the Cape Porpoise Pier now serves us all, was occupied in 1758 by Andrew Brown and his wife. One eighteenth century map we have at the Kennebunkport Historical Society refers to it as Brown’s Islands. Before 1800, John Bickford’s family lived there. Almost the whole island was sold to Seth H. Pinkham before the Civil War. The early house on the island was expanded into the first hotel there, the Shiloh House, which was run by Olivia White. It later became the Wabun Hotel but it burned to the ground in 1891. The Cape Porpoise Land Company,...

Old pictures of the lots in Union Square, near where The Boathouse Restaurant now stands at 21 Ocean Avenue with the 1950s River Cottage next door, are hardly recognizable. Larrabee & Furbish built a store there that sold stoves and tin in 1833. Otis Buzzell bought the building in 1879 along with all the stock of stoves from the previous owners, Gould & Miller. Buzzell sold the store and the stock of stoves and tinware to George Carll in 1887. Carll continued the same business but added the sale of furnaces and general hardware. Wells & Furbish were running the...

Rivermead, at 19 Locke St Kennebunkport, was built by James Blunt between 1801 and 1814 on land that Capt. Thomas Perkins deeded to his son Abner in the first half of the 18th Century. Abner’s grandson, Clement T. Perkins, who was born at Blueberry Hill, acquired Rivermead in 1838 and lived there until his death in 1884. His single daughter Amelia Perkins, seen in the 1883 picture sitting on the front stoop, was the next owner of the house on the Kennebunk River. Her mother, Lucinda Fairfield Perkins, is sitting in a chair in the front yard. Amelia’s sister Ernestine...

Visitors to Goose Rocks Beach have periodically been protected by Lifeguards and the Coast Guard throughout its history as a summer resort. Mr. Coleman Joel, a 22-year-old Harvard Law student, perished trying to rescue a little girl named Betty Fairburn from the raging surf opposite the Downing cottage (Seen at top center) on August 15, 1928. The following season and for several subsequent seasons a lifeguard and a policeman were hired to patrol the beach every day from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The Coast Guard took over Goat Island lighthouse during WWII. Rotating crews lived at the Downing Cottage....

26 Summer St Kennebunk was built in 1884/5 by Hartley Lord for his retirement from a long career at Boston making deep-sea fishing nets with twine from his brother Robert’s Twine Mill in West Kennebunk. After he died in 1912 the mansion passed to his grandson, Hartley Little Lord, who had four children that were raised part time in the house on Summer St. Hartley Little Lord’s two daughters, Lucinda (8) and Anne (5) were hostesses at a 1918 Easter Egg Hunt at 26 Summer St. Their little brother, Hartley Little Lord II (2 ¾) was in attendance. The affair...

Captain Frank Nunan, former master of the fishing schooner Sadie Nunan seen here, was the first in Cape Porpoise to open a restaurant. He started with a gas station and supply depot at the Pier, then leased a building built for him by Mr. William H. Marland, who owned the land and a pier, and opened a restaurant which he named The Porpoise in 1930. It soon became widely known for its delicious seafood, and for its homemade cakes, doughnuts, and pies. Frank also planted and maintained a lovely flower rock garden on the knoll beside the restaurant. Frank Nunan...

Benajah Leonard Bugbee, seen here at Cape Porpoise Pier, was employed by the American Optical Company in 1905. He tried out their newly developed lens by taking pictures at Kennebunk Beach. The Webhannet Golf Club and The Atlantis Hotel were just a few years old. The train must have been quite a distraction for the golfers. The 31-years-young Mr. Bugbee drowned when his canoe encountered a strong whirlpool that upset it in the Quinabaug River in his hometown of Southbridge Massachusetts on November 9, 1907. Many thanks to Maria Harmon of Cape Porpoise for sharing her grandfather’s photographs with us....

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you of all nationalities. I was surprised to learn about Thomas Casey, the eventually revered “Patriarch” of Kennebunkport. The Irish Catholic lobsterman was not originally welcomed here with open arms, but he won the love and respect of his neighbors in Kennebunkport by speaking his mind with wit and passion. In an article written by Father Charles W. Collins, Priest of St Martha’s Catholic Church in Kennebunk, shortly before Thomas Casey’s death in 1910, “Everybody knows the Patriarch. He is as much a landmark as the steeple of the Congregational Meeting House. He came from...

The Schooner Sagamore, seen here, was launched from the Charles Ward Shipyard in Kennebunk Lower Village on May 11, 1891. Four days later a reporter for the Eastern Star wrote about it. “The Sagamore launched from Ward’s yard took the water well but the carriage shop of Hall and Littlefield got a wetting, water pouring in the windows.” She sailed cargos of coal along the Atlantic coast until the night of May 10, 1907. Maritime Historian, Charles Morgan wrote, “The handsome big four-master Sagamore was bowling along in Vineyard Sound before a strong northwest wind. According to her master she...

Henry Heckman of Lower Village built The Nonantum in 1884 with 26 guest rooms and a staff of 10. His business was so successful that he had doubled its size by 1894. Architect Henry Paston Clark designed a Georgian Revival façade for the main building during the expansion and a wide front Piazza was added in 1902. Henry Allen Heckman died May 21, 1920. The Nonantum was sold to the proprietor of the Thatcher Hotel in Biddeford, within a year of Heckman’s death. Felix Bridger hosted his first season as proprietor of The Nonantum in 1921. Extensive renovations of the...

What became The Shawmut Inn at Turbats Creek was originally developed in the 1890s as a summer home for William H. Rankin, a Waltham, MA Textile Mill Man. William’s daughters later added new buildings and started operating it as an inn in 1913. The daughters, Mary Rankin Mathews and Sarah Rankin Summersby were Proprietors when Mr. & Mrs. Harry Small bought the Inn in 1946. Their son, Frank Small took over and ran the inn. A bar was added at the Shawmut in 1962. Further improvements were made to the inn in 1963, 1964 and 1965. After Frank Small died...

Ephraim Wildes built the farmhouse we now call the The Clock Farm in 1773 near Goose Rocks Beach on land his father Jacob conveyed to him in 1768. Ephraim Wildes soon saw active service in the Revolutionary War. He and his wife Temperance Downing raised a large family there. A descendant, John Wildes, sold the farm to Mariner Peter Johnson in 1841. Johnson sold it to Ivory Smith in 1868 but 13 years later, Peter Johnson’s wife Sarah bought it back. All that time, it was a lovely farm without a clock tower on the barn. Thomas A. Emmons, a...