Throwback Thursday

Something was amiss with the cosmos during the third week of July 1926. The temperature hovered near 100 all up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as Ohio. All but convicted murderers were released from the stifling prisons in North Carolina where temperatures reached 107. Hundreds slept out in the open on the Boston Common. Just before sunrise on July 18th a blinding bluish light filled the cloudless Maine sky from Dexter to Saco. The flash was immediately followed by an explosive sound that awakened the whole City of Portland. Vivid lightning, hail, and torrential downpours followed....

Aaron B. Houdlette, He was born in Dresden Me and took lots of early photographs of Richmond Me, across the Kennebec River. He came to Kennebunkport in the early 1880s, after being a professional photographer in Boston for 20 years. Houdlette was still working summers in Kennebunkport until two years before he died in 1909 at the age of 78. We have lots of his photographs at the Historical Society. This first Houdlette picture was taken from Lord’s Point looking toward Boothby’s Beach in Kennebunk. That’s the Ridgewood Hotel standing proud in the background. It burned to the ground in...

Last week’s THROWBACK THURSDAY about the name changes at Kennebunk Beaches invited lots of comments and questions. Thanks for that! I love hearing about your experiences and your knowledge of our history. I also heard from people who were curious about how Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport got its name and if it was ever known by any other name. But of course, it was! Goose Rocks Beach takes its name from two clusters of rocks between high and low water at the beach which were called the Goose Rocks for at least the last 170 years. Before the beach...

Dare I broach the contentious subject of the names of Kennebunk Beaches? When your use of the name, “Mother’s Beach” evokes an alarming reaction from some of the local “old timers,” you may assume they are having a hard time parting with the name their mother called it by, “Kennebunk Beach.” But this argument did not begin during our lifetimes. Long before the Parsons family built their homes on Crescent Surf, their beach was called, Hart’s Beach. We all call it Parsons Beach now. When Richard Boothby and his swashbuckling bride Mabel Littlefield moved to the Kennebunk Beaches in 1730,...

The cornerstone of the new Masonic Lodge was laid at the site of the new building next to Robert and Earnest Benson’s Blacksmith Shop on Temple St on Saturday, October 26, 1929. Everyone gathered at the Olympian Club House, the temporary home of Arundel Lodge 76. A line was formed. The grand officers and members marched to the site of the future building. Judge Harold E. Cook of Gardiner, Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of Maine laid the 12x12x3 inch corner stone over a copper box which contained past records of Arundel Lodge from the date of its charter...

Inventor Arthur Atwater Kent introduced his first major invention, the Unispark Ignition System in 1906. Before that, automobiles had to be started by cranking an ignition mounted on the front of the hood. The driver would then jump into the car and hope it continued to run long enough to get the motor into gear. Kent’s invention enabled the ignition to be engaged comfortably from the driver’s seat and was an immediate success as automobile companies clamored to improve the mass appeal of driving. In 1910 the Kent family bought The Nesmith Cottage beside St. Ann’s Episcopal Church at Cape...

This morning I’m sharing photographs from the Kennebunkport Historical Society’s Salt Magazine Collection. The Salt Institute was located in Herbie Baum’s Boatyard in Kennebunk Lower Village in the 1970s when under the direction of Pamela Wood, the Kennebunk High School students interviewed Henry Weaver, the Southern Maine Federal Prohibition Agent. Wearver helped to bring down the Kennebunk Rumrunner Racket during National Prohibition, which led to the demise of the connected rackets along the coast of Maine. Henry told the students all about his days of chasing bootleggers and fighting curruption from a Law enforcement point of view. The students also...

The Kennebunkport Historical Society is celebrating the decade of the 1920s this month. All my THROWBACK THURSDAY posts in July will include Kennebunkport pictures and events from the 1920s. 1920 The decade started out with a bang. On foggy January 1, 1920, two three-masted schooners, Charles H. Trickery and Mary E. Olys, got tangled up together on the rocks near Goat Island Light. Holes were punctured in both hulls. The Chas H Trickey was later refloated but the Mary E Olys was a total loss. Two weeks later the eighteenth amendment to the federal constitution went into effect, making it...

The Boston & Kennebunkport Seashore Company was the group of New England men who incorporated in 1872 to develop five miles of coastline from Cape Porpoise to Lord’s Point into a summer tourist colony. To entice prospective cottage builders, the Seashore Company commissioned The Moulton Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts to take a series of stereoscopics of the principals posed before all the scenic beauty #kennebunkport Cape Arundel had to offer. The first stereo card here, (#1) is a candid shot of the Company men pretending to stroll about on Colony Beach. Their jubilant wives had joined them in the second...

Kennebunk-born Burleigh S. Thompson moved to Boston as a young man. He eventually became a wealthy dealer in tea, coffee, and cigars and married Harriet Gove of Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1854. Burleigh and Harriet were already living in the c.1800 Perkins House in Kennebunkport Village by 1880. They moved here from Cohasset Massachusetts to be close to their only child Hattie, who in 1879 had married the successful Kennebunkport Sea Captain, Daniel W. Dudley. Descendants of Ephraim Perkins finally sold Harriet Thompson the classic riverfront homestead overlooking Dock Square in 1888. The Thompsons tore it down and built a “modern...

The iconic red towered building at the downriver side of the bridge in Kennebunkport was built by antique dealer, Fred B. Tuck in 1901 as the Colonial Inn. The building didn’t have a tower then and it was painted green. It was a combination tearoom and antique shop with a fancy soda fountain. By 1908 the soda fountain and the antiques had been cleared out to make way for the first movie house in the Kennebunks. The Bijou Theatre was owned by the Acme Amusement Co. The familiar tower was added to the movie house within the first few years....

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,...