Main Street Tour
For generations, the heart of South Berwick Village has been Central Square at Main and Portland Streets, a place often just called “the Corner,” where three ancient roads converged from north, south, and east. A survey and map of 1805, when the “highway” was straightened and widened, show a commercial center, with some shops and farms dating much earlier. At first, simple wagons must have carried products ranging from pine trees to West Indies goods to and from the river. Stagecoaches followed, carrying passengers and mail. Railroads arrived in the mid-1800s and trolleys at the end of the century, with automobiles next, of course.
Though much has changed, residents of those times, including author Sarah Orne Jewett, who wrote about them, would still recognize many Main Street buildings today. This website gives us the opportunity to present some of their stories. Dates given here for the construction of local buildings were either provided by property owners or estimated by a 1998 historical survey made for the town of South Berwick. We are always learning more about local history. If you have facts to contribute about South Berwick Village, please contact the Old Berwick Historical Society at info@obhs.net.
Many Main Street landmarks of today appear on this South Berwick map of 1877 by Ruger & Stoner.
Click here to enlarge the map for easier reading
1a - 1774 Sarah Orne Jewett House – 5 Portland Street
Owned by Historic New England, the home of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909),
author of The Country of the Pointed Firs, Deephaven, and other
novels and stories about Maine, is open June 1 through October 15, Friday
through Sunday, with tours at 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. 3 p.m. and 4
p.m. Admission is $5 (South Berwick residents free).
If the house is closed, visit the grounds, or the library next door, where Jewett lived with her family from 1854-1887.
Sarah Orne Jewett House history
1b 1854 The Jewett-Eastman House – 37 Portland Street
Author Sarah Orne Jewett wrote over 140 stories, novels and poems during
her 33 years here before she moved to the Jewett House next door in 1887.
Her father, Dr. Theodore H. Jewett, built this home for his family in 1854.
Jewett and her two sisters grew up here, and her father, a country doctor
who inspired some of her literary works, practiced medicine from the house.
Today the house contains South Berwick Public Library and is open Monday
and Wednesday 1:00-8:00 pm, Tuesday and Thursday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm,
Friday 1:00 – 5:00 pm, and Saturday 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.
Jewett-Eastman House history
c.1880 – 49 Portland Street
A fine surviving example of early 19th century commercial architecture in
southern Maine, the Odd Fellows Block was built in 1845 to house the fraternal
organization’s meeting hall on the top floor. Sarah Orne Jewett’s
father was the local chapter’s founding member. During South Berwick
Village’s commercial heyday of the mid-1800s, the building contained
a range of business ventures – ranging from stores of Benjamin Nason
and the Jewett family to the law office of Congressman John Noble Goodwin,
from a fish market to a purveyor of marble tombstones. The building now
contains JASS Fitness Machines.
Odd
Fellows Block history
1d c. 1870 –
Engine House – 30 Portland Street
In July 1870, a devastating fire swept the opposite side of Main Street
and destroyed a row of wooden stores where the brick business block now
stands. The town then built a new firehouse for better protection. In those
days, a cistern was maintained as a water source right in Central Square.
Engine House history1e c 1800 - The Currier-Brown Store - 12 Portland Street
The date of this building has not been determined, but there is evidence it could be among the oldest buildings in the village and have belonged to merchant Micajah Currier who died in 1818. Currier left the store to his widowed sister Hannah Brown, and Sarah and Mary Jewett’s generation seem to have referred to it years later as the Brown Store. Thomas Jewett seems to have been in business with Currier briefly before building the Jewett store next door.
1f 1815 - The Old Jewett Store - 10 Portland Street
In 1815, Sarah Orne Jewett’s great uncle, Thomas Jewett, bought this property, and built the Jewett trade store that carried West Indies goods and general merchandise for almost five decades. Thomas Jewett’s business partner and brother was Theodore F. Jewett, Sarah Orne Jewett’s grandfather who lived in the Jewett House until his death in 1860. It is not known how much remains of the original Jewett store. The building was likely altered late in the 1800s, perhaps by Thomas’s son-in-law, John B. Nealley, and grandson Frederick, who operated a harness shop. Today the building contains The Little Hat Company.
1g early 1800s - The John Frost's Store - 4 Portland Street
A map of South Berwick c. 1835 shows that John Frost then occupied a building on this site. Born in 1794, he was the eldest son of Sarah Frost, a widow who had owned the next door Frost Tavern since 1816. He seems to have had a home in a separate house set back from Main Street before Paul Street existed. A map of South Berwick about 1860, when Frost would have been 66, indicates that the post office was then also located in his store. Perhaps when teenage Sarah Orne Jewett first began posting her stories to magazines to be published in the mid-1860s, this was the post office from which she mailed her manuscripts. Today the building contains South Berwick Yoga.
Read
a Jewett story, “The Stage Tavern”
2a
- 1798 – Frost Tavern/Paul Hotel – 224 Main Street
A tavern from 1817, the building was first built more than a decade earlier
as a private home by Winthrop B. Norton. Sarah Bartlett Frost (1776-1848)
opened the Frost Tavern after her husband George was lost at sea in 1815,
and her inn welcomed President James Monroe in 1817 and General Lafayette
in June 1825. After Mrs. Frost’s death, Josiah Paul expanded the facility.
Innkeeper until his death in 1892, Paul also served for a time as deputy
sheriff and coroner, and used the property to confine prisoners on occasion.
In the early 1900s, the building became St. Rose’s School, St. Joseph’s
Convent and later the Academy of St. Joseph. It is now the Bible Speaks
Church.
Frost Tavern/Paul Hotel history
Read
a Jewett story about Gen. Lafayette’s visit and a little girl.
2b - c. 1800 – Adams Store – 200 Main Street
Possibly the remains of a larger store of Winthrop B. Norton that got shortened
to make way for a road expansion in 1805, the shop in about 1815 came into
the care of Sarah Norton (c. 1767-1862) and eventually also of her younger
sister Elisabeth (c. 1775-1848). Known as Aunt Sally and Aunt Betsey, the
two sold “small wares dear and necessary to every woman's heart,”
according to author Sarah Orne Jewett’s sister Mary. As the Adams
Store from the late 1840s through the 1870s, it welcomed children like the
Jewett sisters, who shopped for “penny toys and picture books”
under the patient eye of Mrs. Adams. Today it is the
Abby Chic flower shop.
Adams’ Store historyRead
a Jewett story about a village shop
2c - late 1700s – Tompson-Sanborn House – 190 Main Street
Perhaps one of several structures moved to make way for highway improvements
about 1805 during the stagecoach days, the house was probably built decades
earlier. In 1815 a new young preceptor of Berwick Academy, William Allen
Tompson, moved here with his bride. He later sold the house to his sister,
Sarah Hayman. Their father, Rev. John Tompson, had been pastor of the nearby
First Parish Congregational Church just before it was built in 1826. Beginning
in the 1840s, physician Dr. Caleb Sanborn raised his family in the home
while practicing medicine during a long career in South Berwick. Sanborn
descendants owned the house into the 20th century.
2d - 1926– St. Michael’s School/South Berwick Town Hall – 180 Main Street
The first dwelling known to have been in this part of town seems to have been at the site of South Berwick Town Hall 300 years ago, and was the farm of Thomas Butler, born in England about 1674. It was handed down through the Butler family. In the 1800s Dr. Charles T. Trafton (1822-1888) had a home on the site. In 1926 St. Michael's School replaced it, and hundreds of South Berwick children were taught here by the Sisters of St. Joseph until 1968. The town of South Berwick bought the school for its town hall in 1974.
3a - 1826 – First Parish Federated Church – Main & Academy Streets
In 1929 the First Parish Congregational Church, originally organized in
1702 in the Old Fields part of South Berwick, merged with the Methodist
Episcopal Church, organized in 1836 at Main and Park Streets, to form the
First Parish Federated Church. The Methodist meetinghouse across Main Street
was torn down. The current meetinghouse was built in 1826 and was originally
one story tall, with three front doors, and situated much closer to Main
Street. It was remodeled in 1880, 1963 and 1993. It was the place of worship
of the family of author Sarah Orne Jewett.
First Parish Federated Church history
Read
a Jewett children’s story about a mouse in a village church.
3f - c. 1870 – Hersom House - 19 Academy Street
The map of 1872 indicates this house was owned by Isaac Hersom (1825-1911). A merchant who operated the Hersom Grain Store in the village in the late 1800s, he was one of South Berwick's town assessors in the 1870s. The map of 1856 and a deed of 1855 seem to show a building here owned jointly by the family of Samuel Parks and Dr. Charles Trafton.
3d - 1877 – Henry G. Harvey House - 8 Academy Street
Civil War veteran Henry G. Harvey was a member of Company B of the 27 th Regiment Maine Volunteers. Born in 1832, he may have been a builder, and he built this Colonial Revival home in the decade after the war. It contains handsome fireplace mantels, the Harvey name in cut glass on the front doors, and a beautiful front staircase with a carved souvenir of the Philadelphia exposition of 1876 on the Newell post. The family retained ties to the house until after World War II.
c. 1870 – 12 Academy Street
3b - 1903 – Attorney George Yeaton House - 15 Academy Street
George C. Yeaton, Esq., built this home at the height of his career. His famous cases included the 1873 trial in Alfred of the Smuttynose murders at the Isles of Shoals, and his successful 1901 defense of South Berwick selectman Edwin H. Knight in a sensational trial for the murder of his housekeeper, Fannie E. Sprague. Later in the 20th century the house became a restaurant, and today it is the Academy Street Inn.
3e - 1876 – Capt. Isaac P. Fall House - 21 Academy Street
Civil War veteran Capt. Isaac P. Fall (1830-1909) was recognized on his grave at Portland Cemetery as a member of Company B, 27 th Regiment; Company F, 31 st Regiment, and Company F, 32 nd Regiment of the Maine Volunteers. Later a contractor who hauled brick and sand he is associated in local archives with the construction of the Business Block after the downtown fire of 1870. The house remained in the Fall family until 1924, when it was purchased by the Newichawannock Company woolen mill. In 1931 it became the home of Cleophas Dube, a prominent merchant in the Point area of South Berwick Village . In 1959 it was owned by Berwick Academy , and may have been known as Stedman House.
1840s - 25 Academy Street
c. 1880 - 27 Academy
Street
3c - 1859 –
Judge Abner Oakes House - 29 Academy Street
Born in Sangerville and educated at Waterville College (now Colby), Abner
Oakes (1820-1899) came to South Berwick about 1851, when he took part in
the trial of an accused arsonist during the temperance controversy. Oakes
then served as South Berwick justice of the peace for almost 50 years. He
married and built this home on Academy Street, where his children included
artist Marica Oakes Woodbury. Oakes first practiced law upstairs in the
Parks Store in the 1850s, in the former law office of William Allen Hayes
and Charles N. Cogswell. He then worked from a small Main Street building
that later was moved to Norton Street. The Oakes House is part of the Berwick
Academy National Register Historic District.
c. 1870 – 144 Main Street
4a - 1823 - First Baptist Church – Main Street
South Berwick was an important location in the history of Baptists in Maine,
dating from the formation of a 1767 Baptist Church near Great Hill. Baptists
began meeting in the village by the 1790s. This First Baptist Church on
Main Street was built in 1823. From about 1850 until 1950, the railroad
ran past the church where Route 236 from Kittery meets Main Street today.
4b - c. 1830 – Hanson Homestead (and South Berwick Station) – 143 Main Street
Deed research indicates that in 1827 a “home newly built by Nicholas
Hanson” was on property he purchased from Hannah Carr and Edmund Haggens.
Born in Dover, NH in 1789, Hanson had married Lydia Sargent born in 1794
in Newburyport, Mass. Nicholas died in 1865 and Lydia in 1843. Sons Nicholas,
Jr. (1831-1904) and Ebenezer S. Hanson (1825-1905) were in the pharmacy
business together as early as the 1850s. In 1852 the Great Falls & South
Berwick Branch Railroad bought some of the land and built South Berwick
Station very close to the house. Today the property is the home of Becker
Antiques.
4e - c. 1800 – Capt. Samuel W. Rice House – 151 Main Street
A map of 1856 indicates this was the home of packet captain Samuel W. Rice, who lived from 1784-1858. He was probably Sarah Orne Jewett's great uncle and would have helped inspire her many stories about sea captains. The house may have been built by the Rollins family between around the turn of the 19th century and been an early home of William Allen Hayes.
Capt. Samuel W. Rice House History
4f - c.1880s - Dr. Christopher P. Gerrish House - 155 Main Street
Dr. Christopher P. Gerrish (1829-1909) was the “town physician and surgeon.” His medical practice was listed in many South Berwick town reports and the Maine Directory from the 1870s until after the turn of the last century.
Dr. Christopher P. Gerrish House History
4c - c. 1850 –
John B. Nealley House – 169 Main Street
Perhaps built by Charles Northend Cogswell, this was for some 40 years in
the mid to late 19th century the home of Hon. John B. Nealley (1810-1886)
and Mary Elizabeth Jewett Nealley (1817-1890). She was the daughter of Thomas
D. Jewett, Sarah Orne Jewett’s great uncle and a partner in the Jewett
shipping business. A native of New Hampshire, John B. Nealley opened a law
practice here in 1845 and became South Berwick’s tax collector in
the 1860s and 1870s. He served in the Maine state senate in 1870 and 1871.
4d - 1925 - South Berwick Central School - 197 Main Street
South Berwick’s many one-room schoolhouses scattered among 14 school
districts were consolidated in 1925 into the South Berwick Central School.
A 125-year old mansion called the Cushing House was removed to make way
for the new facility. Today Central School serves 508 South Berwick students
from pre-kindergarten through grade 3.
Read a Jewett story with a scene from an old one-room
schoolhouse.
5a - Early 1800s – John G. Tompson House -- 229 Main Street
In 1825, when he was probably in his twenties, John G. Tompson founded one
of South Berwick’s longest-running businesses, a book and stationery
store. He lived in this house, and his bookstore, now gone, was several
doors away to the south. The 1857 Maine Business Directory listed
Tompson as a bookbinder. The business seems to have operated continuously
there until, in 1872, about the time of Tompson’s death, his son William
took over and ran it into the 20th century.
John Tompson House history5b - Early 1800s– Parks Store - 233 Main Street
The Parks family came to South Berwick from Massachusetts about 1800. From
at least the 1830s through the 1850s, the Parks Store was run by brothers
Samuel and Thomas Boylston Parks and their brother in law Job Harris. Upstairs
were the law offices of William Allen Hayes and Charles Northend Cogswell
in the 1840s, followed by that of Abner Oakes. The building barely missed
being destroyed by the fire of 1870. It then contained a grocery and dry
goods business, Stackpole & Co. By the late 1800s it was the post office,
and also contained a bakery. It contained Flynn’s News from the 1930s
to 2004. Today it contains Memories restaurant and ERA Masiello realty.
5c - 1870 – Business Block - 241-287 Main Street
With their awnings and granite hitching posts, the shops of the new business
block opened to great fanfare in 1871, on the site where a dozen businesses
and homes were destroyed in a fire the summer before. In newspaper ads,
the connected row of new stores advertised products “such as to make
the mouth water and the eyes glitter” -- tin stoves and leather boots,
cornmeal and fine jewelry, ladies’ hats and croup syrup—even
a community theater. For more than 130 years the block at The Corner has
been a landmark of South Berwick village, and is now a cornerstone of the
South Berwick Historic District.
5d - Scott House on Scott’s Court
The original owner and date of construction of this strangely situated house are not presently known. According to a map of the mid-1860s, this dwelling had been occupied by James Scott (c. 1802-1860), and the little alleyway bears this name. Ten years later, when a Mr. Gerrish lived here, the fire of July 1870 destroyed a dozen structures located in the present area of the Business Block, and this house was saved only by the use of blankets wet from hogsheads next door.
5e - 1827/c. 1880 – Masonic Hall/Huntress Block - 293 Main Street
The St. John Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Masons organized in 1827 and
probably built this Masonic hall, then just two stories. A few years later
the hall also held worship services for the new Free Will Baptist Church,
while parishioners built their meeting house across the street. During the
1850s, Berwick Academy met here for two years following a fire. This building
barely escaped the great South Berwick fire of 1870. William Huntress, who
had a cabinetmaking shop here many years, was among many businesspeople
and tradespeople using this address—including, in the early 1870s,
the post office. In the late 1880s, the building was remodeled and a third story
added. Today it houses the offices of the surveying and engineering firm
Civil Consultants.
Masonic Hall/Huntress Block history
5f - c. 1850 – John Noble Goodwin House - 297 Main Street
Both this house and one across the street torn down in the 1990s seem to
have belonged to the family of Congressman John Noble Goodwin (1824-1887).
Born in North Berwick and educated at Berwick Academy and Dartmouth, Goodwin
practiced law from the building known as the Odd Fellows’ Block. He
served as state attorney and prosecuted important arson and murder cases
in South Berwick in the early 1850s. In 1854, Goodwin was elected to the
Maine State Senate, and in 1860 to Congress as a Republican. During the
Civil War, Lincoln appointed him the first governor of the territory of
Arizona.
Read a Jewett story with a character like Arizona Gov.
Goodwin.
5g - c. 1850 – John Perkins Lord House - 301 Main Street
The son of Gen. John Lord, a partner of Jonathan Hamilton, John Perkins
Lord Esq (1786-1877) graduated from Harvard in 1805, studied law, and was
a member of the Massachusetts Legislature before Maine became a state. He
married the daughter of a Portmouth privateer, Capt. Eliphalet Ladd and
Abigail Hill Ladd of old Berwick. As a young man, Lord worked as a merchant
in Portsmouth, NH, and a customs officer in Boston, and he was involved
in bringing to South Berwick the Portsmouth Manufacturing Company. His house
today is the McIntire-McCooey Funeral Home.
John Perkins Lord House history
5h
-1886 - St. Michael Church – 29 Young Street
During the late 1800s, Catholics in South Berwick – many of them mill
workers of Irish and French Canadian origin -- worshipped at St. Mary Church
in the village of Salmon Falls, Rollinsford, NH. It was built in 1857 and
for many years was administered under the Diocese of Portland, Maine. When
the Diocese of Manchester, NH, was created in 1884, St. Mary came under
the care of a new bishop. This church, St. Michael, was built for South
Berwick two years later in 1887.
Read a Jewett story about an Irish priest’s
confrontation with a swindler.
6a - 1870 – Cummings Mill – 2 Railroad Avenue
The David Cummings & Co. shoe factory of South Berwick was built about 1872 at the corner of Norton Street and Railroad Avenue, with a second division added in 1880. The company also constructed factory housing along Norton Street for its mill workers. During the late 1800s, this steam-powered factory employed 350 people making 5000 pairs of shoes per day. Later known as South Berwick Shoe, Inc., and then the Duchess Shoe Company, the mill employed generations of South Berwick residents until it closed its doors in the early 1990s. The town of South Berwick then purchased the property. The Cummings Mill today contains apartments and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
18?? – Mango Inn - 11 Norton Street
6b - early 1800s – Judge Abner Oakes Office - 19 Norton Street
Until the early 1880s when it was removed for a bank, this little house stood on Main Street on the site of the P. Gagnon office today, according to a memoir by Mary Jewett, who said she was also told that little house belonged to the merchant and mill owner Thomas Leigh who died in 1831 and had an office next door. The building may appear on a map of c. 1835, between the Leigh office and the Parks Store on Main Street, almost in front of the John Tompson House. By 1870 it was the law office of South Berwick Justice of the Peace Abner Oakes (1820-1899).
Judge Oakes Office history
18?? – 25 Norton Street
Read a Jewett story about a shoemaker who must compete in the age of factories.
c. 1870 -- 315 Main Street
6e - c. 1830-50 - Downs House - 319 Main
Street
This house could be the home of J. F. Downs that appears on a South Berwick map of c. 1865, and of F. G. Downs on the map of 1872. Frederick G. Downs (1806-1891) was a mason. A son, Charles W. Downs, was killed at the battle of Williamsburg in 1862 and is buried Portland St. Cemetery. A memoir of the years in which Berwick Academy students attended classes downtown after the school burned in 1850 mentions students on hot days gathering in the shade of trees by the house of Frederick Downs, whose daughter was a student.
c. 1850 – Norton - Whitehead House - 324 Main Street
Norton Street likely gets its name from Charles Edward Norton (1795 - 1873), an early justice of the peace from the 1830s through the 1850s, a South Berwick town clerk and deacon of the First Parish Church in 1844. He married two daughters of Northend Cogswell, both of whom died young, and then in 1833 married Clarissa Baker. Daughter Mary Ann Norton, whose mother was Norton's first wife, had the disfiguring skin disease erysipelas or St. Anthony's Fire, and died at age 23. After Norton's death the house belonged to Charles Whitehouse c. 1817 - 1878, the tailor whose shop was nearby in the business block.
c. 1870 -- 325 Main
Street
6f - c. 1820 - Wentworth-Hart-Butler House - 329 Main Street |
6g - c. 1890 - Butler Store/Old Rideout's Hardware - 337 Main Street |
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On the map of c. 1865 the home at 329 Main seems to be occupied by M. & S. Wentworth, perhaps related to Capt. Samuel Wentworth (1792-1851), buried in the Free Will Baptist cemetery. Wentworth descendants say Mary Ann Wentworth Hart (1820-1891) and her husband Simon Hart lived here. Their son, Alfred W. Hart (1843-1863) was killed in the Civil War, and the family grave in the Free Will cemetery marked, “Our first born – He gave his life for his country.” Mary Ann is said to have become a Free Will Baptist preacher. On the map of 1872 the house was occupied by George W. Butler (1814-1881), clerk of the Free Will Baptist church for 23 years. He owned the Butler Store, today 337 Main, and Butler Street likely took its name from him. Still known in 1913 as the Butler Building, according to town reports, the store by then had become the “new” Rideout's Hardware, owned by Ruel B. Rideout, who was town moderator for many years. (The Rideout's business later moved to the Central Square Business Block, perhaps in the 1920s, where it continued for over 80 more years.) This building appears on a map of 1901 as a variety store but in 1927 as a residence.
c. 1850 -- 332 Main Street
6c - 1837 – Freewill Baptist Church, Parsonage & Cemetery, and South Berwick Town Clock - 340 Main Street
The South Berwick Freewill Baptist Church, containing the 1890 South Berwick
town clock, is part of the interesting story of Maine Baptists and the temperance
movement of the early 1800s. The clock is one of only five Stevens &
Co. tower clocks surviving in Maine in their original locations. Near the
meetinghouse, many South Berwick citizens of the 1800s and early 1900s have
been laid to rest in the Freewill Baptist Cemetery. Stones include those
of Capt. Elijah Ricker, who died at sea in 1826; Capt. Samuel Wentworth
who died in 1851; War of 1812 veteran John Spencer; Spanish American War
veteran John L. Sink; World War I veteran Chester Guy Earl; and Alfred W.
Hart, who was killed in the Civil War.
Freewill Baptist Church history
6d – mid-1800s – Nealley - Maddox House – 14 Berwick Road
Andrew J. Nealley (1815-1887) built this house and managed a store on Main Street at the Landing. Joseph Maddox (1847-1916) bought both properties. The store was one of several J. A. Maddox and Sons grocery stores to be operated by Maddox and his son, Albert Maddox (1873-1954), and eventually by grandsons, Alden and Stanley Maddox. The family chain operated in the early 20th century through World War II.
Albert and Erna Maddox's stepson, Willis Salley, was decorated in World War I, after serving in the 303rd Field Artillery, American Expeditionary Force, in St. Mihiel and Verdun, France. Nealley - Maddox House history
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