2f - c. 1800 & c. 1920 – Old Cape & Blacksmith Shop - 85 Portland Street

The little cape-style house at 85 Portland may be over 200 years old. Its early history has yet to be discovered. In the mid-1800s it was occupied by Daniel W. Quimby, a merchant who for a time ran the Main Street business that had been known as the Parks Store, as well as a store at South Berwick Junction, the railroad depot called Agamenticus Station that once stood near today's intersection of Emery's Bridge and Knight's Pond Roads/

Almost two decades later, a map of 1872 shows the Portland Street cape occupied by a Mrs. L. Linton.

Mrs. Linton's identity is uncertain, but a Fannie J. Linton is known to have had a millinery shop that burned in the great downtown fire of 1870 .

After the fire, she seems to have recovered her business at least briefly, and is shown in an advertisement published about 1872 as opening a shop over the bookstore of John G. Thompson in a building that used to be near the present location of Central School.

About 1920, the shed behind the house at 85 Portland Street was built as a blacksmith shop, as identified on a 1927 Sanborn insurance map.

By then the Huntress harness shop that had stood across the street for decades had been replaced a filling station—the site of today's Portland Street Mobil. So a blacksmith's services were not in great demand much longer.

Portland Street Walking Tour
Main Street Walking Tour
Old Berwick Historical Society Homepage

 

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