Throwback Thursday

While you are milling about Dock Square this weekend waiting for the Christmas Prelude Tree lights to come on, notice the building now blended into the Brown Block/Colonial Phamacy. It wasn’t always so. The humble old ‘White School,’ almost 70 years older than the Brown Block, has plenty of stories to tell. Samuel Davis built it as a shop in 1809 at the corner of Maine Street and Union Street. He sold the lot and store to General Simon Nowell, who owned the tavern across Union Street from it, the following year. Postmaster and shopkeeper Captain Oliver Bourne kept a...

Shipbuilder Nathaniel Lord Thompson rebuilt the grist mill at the Mousam River Bridge in 1869 when maritime prospects were dim. Around the same time, he built a 2 ½ -story dwelling diagonally across the bridge, perhaps for workforce housing. Gilpatric wrote that the building was a gatehouse over the dam flume, and it did have access to the flume through a trap door in the floor. Diarist Andrew Walker wrote contemporaneously of it, “As a matter of course the accommodations are not fit for a family used to the luxuries in life.” One side of the downstairs became the cigar...

You may think about Cherry Garcia Ice Cream when you look at this house. During my childhood, Port Candy was the center of the universe. This house predates us all by almost 200 years. Thomas Wiswall arrived in Cape Porpoise from Newton, Massachusetts with his family c.1750. They purchased a blockhouse built by Rowlandson Bond on the Kennebunk River. There were only 6 other buildings in Kennebunkport Village by then. Wiswall’s blockhouse stood at what is now the corner of Union Street and Ocean Avenue. According to Kennebunkport History author Charles Bradbury, Wiswall’s wharf was the first one built on...

The oldest Commercial building still standing in Dock Square was the Perkins West Indies Goods Store that currently houses a candle shop and a Tarot Card Reader. It was built around 1775 when Dock Square was the Perkins family’s front yard. That building was originally used to receive molasses and rum from Perkins ships docked behind the building. It was later home to Wheeler & Bell. The building that stands next door is now called Compliments. If you have been around for a while, you may even still call it Dora’s Beauty Salon. You know who you are. That long...

To most historians, the natural world supersedes the “supernatural” in plausibility and interest. That doesn’t mean that historians can’t enjoy Halloween. There is no shortage of ghosts rumored to occupy Kennebunkport’s 18th and 19th Century houses. At least two of those “haunted” houses were also occupied by Samuel Lewis, Jr., the cabinetmaker with one side hustle in ship fitting and another building glass-topped pine coffins for his wealthy deceased neighbors. The house he built on Maine Street still stands next door to the Nott House. His cabinetmaker’s workshop was already in place in March 1805 when the current Maine Street...

Two members of the Nowell family are of particular interest in the history of Kennebunkport. I have written several articles about Brigadier General Simon Nowell who lived at the corner of Union and Maine Streets across from Graves Library. Simon’s son Captain George W. Nowell is the subject of my story today. He lived in the house that stands next door to the Kennebunkport Post Office. The exterior of their houses haven’t changed much over the years so you will likely recognize them in the old photographs. Unlike his father, George was risk averse. Given his dangerous occupation, he wisely...

Most of you are familiar with HB Provisions or Meserve’s Market as it used to be called, but only those with memories of Kennebunk Lower Village going back more than 50 years will recall the controversy over making the little adjacent parking lot. In September 1968, for some unexplained reason, the Kennebunk Board of Selectmen sold the old Washington Hose Co Fire House that stood there to the lowest bidder ($5,100) rather than to the highest bidder ($6,000 +). The highest bidder sued the town. During the court case they discovered that the Town of Kennebunk didn’t own the building...

The Cape Arundel crowd raised money to have the Kennebunk River Club built to support their growing enthusiasm for boating. Joseph Ranco could hardly keep up with canoe orders after the Boathouse Opening Ceremonies on August 2, 1890. Dr. Molten H. Forrest of Philadelphia, the Vice Commadore of the River Club, finished building his impressive Cro-nest Cottage at the corner of Summit Ave and Atlantic shortly thereafter. By then, Molten was already contemplating a glorious new vessel to bring to the Kennebunk River the following season. Dr. Forrest used some of his vast Railroad and Bank inheritance to have the...

Captain Daniel Webster Dudley was a globe-circumnavigating sea captain that lived on Elm Street in Kennebunkport from 1849 until 1929. In his time, the house was like a museum of treasures he acquired on his sea voyages to China, Japan, Java, New Guinea, New Ireland, the Soloman Islands, etc.. Captain Dudley commanded many vessels but his best-known was the barque Hannah W. Dudley. She was of his own design, built in 1877 by Shipbuilder David Clark of Kennebunk Lower Village. Dudley retired from the sea in 1901. In the years that followed he granted several national news interviews that included...

You may have heard of the shipwrecked barque Horace, the remains of which still occasionally make an appearance at very low tide near Lord’s Point. This week, while searching the archives for documents relating to the Eliphalet Perkins family of Kennebunkport who built the Nott House, I came across a contemporaneous handwritten letter that brought this shipwreck to life in my mind’s eye. Joseph Hatch Jr. and Orlando Perkins were both partial owners of the Scarborough-built barque Horace that was wrecked after the crew mutinied on her maiden voyage. Orlando, son of Eliphalet Perkins II, lived in the beautiful home...

You may remember my earlier story about the Kennebunk Beach Branch of the B&M Railroad. It ran from the Kennebunk Depot Road Station off Summer Street, down what we now think of as the bridle path along the eastern bank of the Mousam River to the Parsons Beach Station, across the Sea Road to the Kennebunk Beach Station, over to the Grove Station on Boothby Road, and then on to its termination at the Kennebunkport Station in Lower Village. The first train christened the line on June 18, 1883. Much to the chagrin of local businessmen, the last train ran...

Labor Day Weekend 2024 is upon us. What does that mean to you? For many years Labor Day marked the end of the summer season at tourist destinations like our towns. But that isn’t what it was established to commemorate. Labor Day, organized by the Central Labor Union was first celebrated in this country in New York City on September 5, 1882. The Great Railroad Strike during the summer of 1877, in response to a 10% cut in worker’s wages by one West Virginia station of the B&O Railroad, spread across the nation bringing United States Railroad traffic to a...