Throwback Thursday

I’m finishing up the slideshow lecture, Artists of the Kennebunks, which I first started in 2004 in partnership with Kennebunkport artist, Frank W. Handlen. As we usually did when we worked together, I focused on researching historical facts about the artists’ lives while Frank focused on their aesthetic painting styles. I will quote Frank liberally because, even though he too has now passed, for me, his voice has not. Goose Rocks Beach artist, Eliot O’Hara, was born in 1890 in Waltham, MA. He became manager of the family business, O’Hara Waltham Dial Co., in 1912. Some of his associates at...

The first hotel built at Goose Rocks Beach in 1871 was the Goose Rocks House at the east end of the beach overlooking Beaver Pond Creek. When it burned on August 28, 1910, the Goose Rocks Beach Community had no way to fight the fire. The Beachwood Improvement Society built the first “Beachwood Firehouse” in 1911 on land donated to the community by the Dow & Fearing families on Edgewood. It was the only firehouse in the area when Goose Rocks was hit by the disastrous 1947 fire. The Edgewood firehouse has since been converted into a private home. According...

I spend a lot of time around the site of the Olde Grist Mill during kayaking season, especially now that the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust has provided a Yakport kayak launch, making it so much easier for my friends and family to join me on the historic Kennebunk River. I cannot be there without imagining the operational 1749 Perkins Tide Mill. I was never lucky enough to dine at The Olde Grist Mill Restaurant. Were you? I would love to hear about your experiences there and what the ambiance was like. Did it feel like a mill? Arthur and Louise Perkins...

With those views, it might seem like Lord’s Point must have always been the exclusive summer enclave that it is today, but it wasn’t. In the 1770s, there was a salt works there where they extracted salt from sea water. Wells and Kennebunk Historian, E.E. Bourne, 1797-1873 wrote that salt was exceedingly scarce here in 1775. One of the salt works erected by Kennebunk entrepreneurs was on “Two Acres,” the old-fashioned name for Lord’s Point. “The works were continued in operation four or five years,” wrote Bourne. “In 1779 and 1780 the price of salt had fallen so much that...

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...