Throwback Thursday

Everyone knows Cape Arundel Inn. Maybe you even remember it as Seacrest. But did you know it was originally built as a summer cottage for the nephew of our 19th U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, after whom Rutherford Hayes Platt was named? Rutherford’s father-in-law, Captain Robert Swanton Smith, who had served in the regular US Calvary during the Civil War and was later counsel and secretary for the Columbus & Xenia Railroad, purchased two Cape Arundel lots from the Kennebunkport Seashore Company in 1890. He had John Calvin Stevens design him a beautiful cottage that he called Kenridge. Captain Smith’s...

Kennebunkport Commercial Fishermen make good use of what we call Government Wharf these days. Granny Harding’s Wharf is the name it was known by before the United States Government acquired it from Stephen Harding descendant, John Ward and improved it in 1831. Government Wharf has since been further improved. A year before the Kennebunk River Club boathouse was built, a proposal to repair Government Wharf included a proposal to build a stone jetty a bit upriver to mitigate a sandbar that was developing there. The Kennebunk River Club Boathouse was constructed in 1890. The new Government jetty in the river...

Most of the vessels built in the early days of the District of Kennebunk were ships, barques, and brigs, carrying square sails across their width. That rigging was appropriate for deep-sea trading voyages. As larger ships were required, shipbuilders at Kennebunk Landing struggled to get their huge vessels down our circuitous little river. The Lock was built on the Kennebunk River in 1848-49 to mitigate the problem but it was not as helpful as they had hoped. It leaked and often flooded Goffs Brook tannery. Kennebunk diarist Andrew Walker reported that the only people making money in shipbuilding in 1856...

People in this part of Maine have suffered from smallpox since Europeans arrived. They brought a decimating epidemic to the Indigenous people of Maine, who had no immunities to it. It killed eighty percent of Maine’s Indigenous population at first contact. Smallpox was brought to Kennebunkport from the West Indies in 1787 in the sick crew aboard one of the vessels commanded by Captain James Perkins. He lived on Oak Street in the oldest house still standing in Kennebunkport. It was built in 1724 by James’ father, Captain Thomas Perkins. The Perkins family once owned all of what is now...

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a coward in a thunderstorm. Imagine my horror when amid a barrage of lightning strikes last Friday night, I heard what sounded like sirens from half a dozen fire engines rushing toward my beloved Kennebunkport village. There was a fire at the Tamaracks property on Maine Street, formerly known as Peter’s Rock. My heart sank with a sense of déjà vu. That property has had more than its share of fire damage since the main cottage, designed by the Lowell and Boston architect Frederick W. Stickney, was built for the Julian...

I had so much fun presenting the History of Dock Square slideshow at the Town House School that Thursday evening last month that I’m working on two more evening presentations; Cape Arundel History in July and Artists of the Kennebunks in August. The first artist I’m researching is Peggy Bacon. My major source is a 3-hour oral history interview conducted at her Cape Porpoise home in 1973 for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Her work has always left me with the impression of a sharp but good-natured wit. She infused thousands of art works and 60+ illustrated books...

Town blacksmiths played important roles in early Kennebunkport village life. Some shoed horses and oxen, some specialized in making ship irons, others made household tools and fixtures. The carriage maker in town also needed specific smithing skills. There were plenty of blacksmiths working in Kennebunkport Village. Three of them are indicated on the 1872 map of Kennebunkport right at the junction of North St, Maine Street and Temple Street; Mr. Hall, Mr. Tripp, and one unnamed blacksmith shop that would come to house the Robert P. Benson horse shoeing business starting in 1884. Robert’s son Ernest joined him in the...

The Kennebunkport Historical Society collection is full of intriguing treasures; each with a story of its own. One such treasure that I am drawn to is a finely sculpted two-foot fragment of a green marble statue mounted and labeled with reverence. Boston Author, Margaret Deland, summered at a cottage near the Nonantum Resort she had purchased from architect Henry Paston Clark in 1890. After her husband Lorin passed in 1917, Margaret began extending her annual visits to Kennebunkport long into the chilly autumn. In 1923 she purchased the winterized Marcellus Cluff House across Ocean Ave from her cottage Greywood. During...

Shipbuilder Clement Littlefield was a very young man when he established The Emmons & Littlefield Shipyard in Kennebunk Lower Village in the 1840s. Biddeford Journal correspondent, Jules Righter made his acquaintance in 1887 on a grassy knoll adjoining Littlefield’s home on Chase Hill Road. “I came here [from Wells] when I was sixteen years old and went to work, learning my trade, at the Landing up there,” the retired shipbuilder said, pointing upriver. “We worked from sunrise up to sunset in those days.”… “When I was twenty-one years old, I had acquired sufficient proficiency in my trade so that I...

In preparation for my Dock Square slideshow coming up at the Townhouse School next Thursday evening, I am sharing part of one of the Dock Square history sources I used for the research. “Dissolving Views” was an article printed in the August 1,1913 issue of the Kennebunkport summer newspaper, Sea Shell. The Editor interviewed older Kennebunkport residents who still remembered how Dock Square looked in the 1840s. Hay scales in a tall frame building, stood where the monument is now. A steep flight of stairs led to where one could “look at the steelyard beam, so counterpoised that a heavily...

Here it is May 1, 2025. May Day has meant different things to different people in our nation’s history. What does it mean to you this year? Is it the opening of water recreation season? I’m usually out kayaking by now, but boating weather is taking its own sweet time getting here this year. Is May Day an ancient pagan fertility ritual expressed symbolically with maypoles, wreaths, and baskets? There was much rebirth to celebrate here after the end of WWI and The Spanish Flu pandemic. May Day was primarily an opportunity for children to perform and play dress up...

The United State was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy by mid-December of 1941. Feelings of patriotism and vulnerability surged in the Kennebunks. A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Location 155 Plane Spotting Tower erected at Cape Porpoise under the direction of The Portland Harbor Defense Board. Another tower was built in Kennebunk to defend a battery near Portsmouth Harbor. While Location 154 was still being constructed, Civilian Defense Volunteers watched for planes from atop the Pythian Block on Main St in Kennebunk. Local Newspaper reporters were cryptic when describing the location of the new plane...