Although 1797 is the traditionally accepted date for this house, located at 1 Old Fields Road, South Berwick, Maine, there is documentary evidence that it was built in 1742, that there was a fire in 1790 and that it was rebuilt in 1797. There is evidence that the early keeping room, the northwest parlor, and the chambers above are much older than the remainder of the house.
The junction of four roads leading to important landings on the waterway system made this Old Fields location an important spot from the earliest days of European settlement. The Goodwin house was built on the foundation of the Spencer Garrison, a stone fort said to have been able to shelter a hundred settlers. It is sometimes said that at the time of the King Philip’s Indian wars about 1675, the garrison was the largest fortified dwelling in New England.
Gen. Ichabod Goodwin, the rebuilder of Old Fields in 1797 and the man most often associated with the home, was the grandson of Mehitable Goodwin, a woman whose story Jewett relates in “Old Town of Berwick.” Captured by Indians in 1675, she was rescued only after being taken to Canada.
In 1775, when Ichabod Goodwin was only in his teens, he accompanied his father in military action at Fort Ticonderoga with Lord Abercrombie.
By Goodwin's adulthood, Maine's first settlement had become a more peaceful community in a new United States. Gen. Goodwin became a farmer and leading citizen, major-general of militia for York and Cumberland Counties, and a founder of Berwick Academy in 1791. New Hampshire's governor during the Civil War was another Ichabod Goodwin, grandson of Gen. Goodwin's brother.
Old Town of Berwick
The Goodwin Boys
Old Berwick Historical Society Homepage