Portland Street Tour
Rising out of ancient farmland once known simply as “the Plain,” where local militias used to drill upon the fields, Portland Street grew along the old Boston to Portland turnpike. A survey and map of 1805 shows that Portland Street today follows the same path it did 200 years ago, when it carried wagons and stagecoaches.
More remarkable still, almost every house standing on Portland Street a century ago, when author Sarah Orne Jewett lived here, remains 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.
Portland Street is almost unchanged since 1877, when this South Berwick map was made 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 historyc.1885 – George W. Goodwin House – 49 Portland Street
Civil War veteran George W. Goodwin Jr. seems to have built this house on the site of a 19th century blacksmith shop owned by Sewall McDaniel (1806-1894). Goodwin was born on August 6, 1834, one of 12 children of George W. and Cyrena Goodwin. In 1856 he married Fidelia F. Scott. Their children were born before or just after the war: Sedley S. in 1857, Wilson Edgar in1859 and Ida Mae Ella in 1865. Goodwin’s father died in 1877 and his mother in 1884. We do not know what work George Junior was doing when he built this fine house at the age of 51 the year after his mother died. He passed away 10 years later. Fidelia lived to be over 75 and died in 1911. In recent decades, the George W. Goodwin House has been home to Ham Insurance.
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 Click
to enlarge the picture
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 and town postmaster 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 c. 1820 - The John Frost 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.
1h c. 1875 – Huntress House - 40 Portland Street
Simeon P. Huntress (1844-1923) owned Eagle Stables, a complex of buildings that stood at the site of the present Portland Street Mobil.
2g Early 1800s– Rideout House – 65 Portland Street
Home of Ruel B. Rideout (1874-1944) and his son John Paul Rideout. Rideout’s Hardware Store was a downtown South Berwick landmark from about 1900 until 2007.
c. 1865 Isaac Joy House – 71 Portland Street
Isaac Joy may have
been a house joiner.
2a c. 1820 - Burleigh House
– 79 Portland Street
Built by the first Congressman to serve this district in Washington, William
Burleigh (1785-1827), the house was also the birthplace of his son, John
Holmes Burleigh (1822-1879), who was elected to his father’s seat
in Congress in 1872 and 1874. A sea captain who sailed the world in the
1840s, the younger Burleigh later owned the Newichawannock Woolen Mills.
The house now contains Berwick Estates.
Burleigh House history
2f
c. 1795 & c. 1915 Currier House & Blacksmith Shop – 85 Portland
Street
Micajah Currier (1774-1818) was a postmaster, leading merchant and landowner who bequeathed the land that became Portland Street Cemetery. About 1795 he is thought to have built this small cape, where he lived alone or with a small household. The shingled outbuilding behind this house is identified as a blacksmith shop on a map of 1927, and seems to have been built within that decade.
Currier House & Blacksmith Shop history
2h 1875 Otis Moulton House – 84 Portland Street
Otis Moulton and his brother Ogden Moulton were builders of the Fogg Memorial tower at Berwick Academy in 1910.
c. 1875 – Charles E. Hobbs House - 88 Portland Street
Charles E. Hobbs had
a grocery store in the 1870s on the present site of Emporium Framing in
the Business Block. The Hobbs shop may have later become the Maddox grocery
store. Hobbs married Anna B. Wilson of Kittery in August 1871, and this
was their home.
2b 1798 and 1886 The
Nason-Walker Estate – 99 Portland Street
In 1886, John Francis Walker (1844-1890), treasurer of South Berwick Savings
Bank, built this fine Victorian house on the site of the home of the former
bank president, Benjamin Nason. For 50 years, Nason operated a store in
the Odd Fellows Block and the building that preceded it at the Corner. Nason’s
father, Bartholomew Nason, built the original house in 1798, along with
the barn that still remains on the Nason-Walker property.
2c c. 1810– Raynes House and Miss Raynes’ School – 96 Portland Street
In the mid-1800s, most of this side of Portland Street was open farmland,
owned by the Raynes family living in this house. Francis Raynes made and
sold shoes in a business on the site of the gas station near the corner.
Daughter Olive Raynes (b. 1833) taught school for over 60 years, first from
her father’s shoe business and then, from 1861 into the 20th century,
from the Raynes farmhouse. Among her pupils were author Sarah Orne Jewett
and her sisters, as well as generations of children from South Berwick’s
leading families. The house now contains Century 21 real estate.
2i c. 1890 – Willard House – 104 Portland Street
Henry C. Willard (1842-1920) ran the Willard Dry Goods store for many years in the Business Block at the turn of the 20th century.
2e
- c. 1810 – Jedediah and Jerusha Jenkins House - 105 Portland Street
In 1806, Jedediah Jenkins (1767-1852) married Jerusha Parks (1763-1855). Her brothers owned the Parks Store on Main Street. After their deaths, the house passed to Jerusha’s brother, Samuel Parks, who lived near the store. The property included a garden and a “very superior orchard,” as well as 5 3/4 acres of fields. When Samuel was declared insane at age 72, an auction was held in this house and the property sold. It then became the home of Nicholas Hanson, Jr., the druggist whose shop was in the Business Block, and his wife Lucy.
c. 1870 – John F. Walker House - 109 Portland Street
This home was likely built by John Francis Walker (1844-1890), the treasurer of South Berwick Savings Bank on Main Street, before he moved to the Nason Walker Estate at 99 Portland Street in 1885.
c. 1875 – Olive Raynes House - 110 Portland Street
Though schoolteacher Olive Raynes is more closely associated with her family home and school at 96 Portland Street, it appears that in the last decades of her life she lived in a new house at this address, built for her by her brother Charles.
2d 1786 Dr. Nathanael Low House – 117 Portland Street
Dr. Nathanael Low (1740-1808), a physician and astronomer born in Massachusetts,
published Low’s Almanac, one of the publications upon which
citizens of the early United States depended for taverns and stagecoach
schedules as well as astrological information, verse, lore, homilies, and
recipes, and jokes. During Low’s years in this house, when Portland
Street was part of the Boston to Portland turnpike, stagecoaches driving
right past his door followed schedules published in his almanacs.
2j c. 1870 - Lewis B. Hanson House – 120 Portland Street
Lewis B. Hanson was a blacksmith who worked from behind his home in the 1880s through the early 20th century. He also served as South Berwick’s town constable and tax collector. His son, Frank S. Hanson, also became a blacksmith.
c. 1795 – Joseph Murphy House - 123 Portland Street
“Joseph Murphey … was a cabinet maker of much skill, to which many pieces of old furniture to be found in our houses can attest,” wrote Mary Rice Jewett, sister of author Sarah Orne Jewett, in a memoir about downtown South Berwick. In the early 1800s Murphy had a shop at the Corner on the site of what is now the Odd Fellows Block. In 1818 he bought this house and the next year married Sarah C. Low, daughter of Dr. Nathanael Low, the almanac writer who was another Portland Street resident. The house was previously owned by brothers Samuel and John Lord and their brother-in-law, William Allen Hayes.
2k c. 1870 - Libbey House – 128 Portland Street
The family of inventor Mark Addison Libbey (1855-1940), whose brick building next door on Highland Avenue once contained a roller skating rink, included some of South Berwick’s most mechanically inclined and innovative entrepreneurs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
2l c. 1825 - John S. T. Cushing House & George Brown Canning Factory – 135 Portland Street
Built by Joseph Murphy, one of South Berwick’s leading cabinetmakers of the early 19th century, the house has had a varied history, from the life of its first owner, John Samuel Thomas Cushing (1801-1875), member of a leading merchant family in the era of tall ships, to the 1920s, when the George Brown Canning Factory stood in the back yard and processed sweet corn.
Cushing House & Brown Factory history
2m c. 1830 - Capt. Benjamin F. Goodwin House – 139 - 141 Portland Street
Goodwin Street, built by the town of South Berwick in 1871, divided a large parcel of farmland owned since the early 1800s by Capt. Benjamin Franklin Goodwin (1817-1891), who lived here for many years. His father, Elder Jedediah Goodwin, had been the first pastor of the Baptist Church that stood nearby on the present site of the Soldiers Monument.
Benjamin Goodwin House history
From left, the John S. T. Cushing House, the Capt. Benjamin F. Goodwin House, the Thomas Jewett House. The Soldiers Monument is out of view at right. Photo courtesy of Rick Becker. Click to enlarge
2n c. 1900 - Ben F. Davis House – 150 Portland Street
Ben F. Davis (1862-1933) ran a drugstore at the turn of the century in Central Square, downtown South Berwick.
c.
1875 – Tobey House - 156 Portland Street
Elizabeth W. Tobey died 9 February 1922, at 83, according to Vital Records of South Berwick. Her husband’s name and occupation and her parents’ names are unknown. According to the Independent of July 9, 1914, Melvin Tobey was a clerk in the Maddox Grocery Store.
c. 1870 – Darville House - 162 Portland Street
Joseph Darville was a baker, according to the 1904 South Berwick Register and census, and lived here with his wife, Ella F. Tebbetts. They may have moved here from Dover, NH. Their daughter, Rose Florence, is listed as a music teacher in the Maine Register of 1912-13, the state business directory. In 1923, Joseph married Mrs. Emily Hill of Dover at age 68. He died July 16, 1936 at age 81, and she inherited the house.
c.
1890 – Bradeen House - 170 Portland Street
Joshua
E. L. Bradeen (1846-1907), who lived here with his wife, Lydia L. Stiles
(1845-1932), was a machinist, according to the 1904 South Berwick Register
and census. Other family members included Harold E. Bradeen, also a machinist,
and Aaron D. Bradeen, a station agent. Harold married Mary E. Jenkins in
1912. She died in 1936.
3a
1803 Northend Cogswell House – 4 Goodwin Street
Northend Cogswell (1762-1828) was a merchant and Revolutionary War veteran
born in Rowley, Massachusetts. His wife Elizabeth was the sister of William
Lambert, living nearby at 194 Portland Street. Among the Cogswell children
who grew up here was Charles Northend Cogswell (1797-1846), an attorney
who served as Maine state senator and representative in the 1830s and 1840s.
c. 1870 – Charles W. Murphy House - 172 Portland Street
The 1856 map seems to show a house belonging to J. Pray here. Portland Street Cemetery records show Joseph Pray (1791-1873) survived his wife, Mary Pray (1806-1861), and five children, including twin boys who died on the same day at the age of six weeks. By the 1870s, Charles W. Murphy seems to have built this house. It is unknown whether he was related to the cabinetmaker Joseph Murphy, who lived across Portland street in the early 1800s. Charles married Rosetta Durgin when they were both 21, according to vital records. He died in 1899 at age 65. Rosetta continued living here with her son, Charles E. Murphy, a carpenter, and Nellie J. Murphy, a “shoe operator.” Rosetta died in 1922 at age 89.
3b c. 1795 Thomas Jewett House – 151 Portland Street
Thomas Jewett (1790-1864) was Sarah Orne Jewett’s great uncle. He
was brother and business partner of Capt. Theodore F. Jewett, helping to
lead their successful shipbuilding and commercial enterprises at Pipe
Stave Landing on the river near the Hamilton House, as well as the Old Jewett
Store at the corner. His wife was Betsey Lord Jewett, a sea captain’s
daughter from Rollinsford, NH. The Jewetts raised seven children here. In
1860, when Thomas Jewett was the last remaining Jewett brother in his generation,
he was said to be the wealthiest man in South Berwick. After his death,
the house became the home of his nephew and son-in-law, Elisha Jewett.
c. 1870 – Drew House - 165 Portland Street
Herbert G. Drew (1855-1923), who built this house, was a millwright, according to the South Berwick Register and Census of 1904. Perhaps the mill where he worked was the woolen mill at Great Works and he traveled to work on Academy Street. On November 24, 1905, the newspaper Independent wrote, “Herbert Drew collided with Mr. Hartford’s team, while driving on Academy St. last week, and both men were thrown from their wagons. Mr. Drew was so badly wrenched and bruised that he has been confined to his house and his wagon was injured. The horse cleared himself and ran some ways before being stopped.” After Drew, the house was owned by Lewis B. Hanson, a blacksmith who lived at 120 Portland Street.
3i c. 1870 – George H. Yeaton House -- 169 Portland Street
In the early 20 th century, this was the home of George H. Yeaton (1852-1942). He was a Rollinsford native but also attended Berwick Academy. He became a breeder of Ayreshire cattle on a beautiful farm that still stands off Route 4 in Rollinsford near the Hiram Roberts Grange, which he helped found.
George H. Yeaton House history
3c c. 1800 – Elisha and Sally Jewett House -- 176 Portland Street
Thought to have been built as early as the 1700s, the house at the corner of Portland Street and Agamenticus Road was in the 1850s and 1860s home to two Sarah Orne Jewetts who were relatives of the author by the same name.
Elisha and Sally Jewett House history
3h c. 1808 -- Parks-Harding House – 184 Portland Street
County probate records suggest this house was built about 1808 by Jacob Heard (1771 - 1844), who lived here with his wife and had several children. From 1814 to 1833, it was the home of merchant Thomas Boylston Parks (1789-1861), who was associated with the nearby Baptist Church and the Parks Store on Main Street . The house then passed to the family of Capt. Samuel Harding (c. 1780 - 1844), a sea captain. The Hardings, also Baptists, owned the house until 1865.
3d c. 1800 -- William Lambert House – 194 Portland Street
Dartmouth-educated William Lambert, born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1772,
practiced law and was considered to be a “worthy citizen of the town”
while living in the house through 1811. His granddaughter, years later,
was engaged to John Wilkes Booth at the time of the Lincoln assassination.
The house meanwhile belonged to Reverend Ebenezer Little Boyd, a Baptist
preacher in the early 1800s. In 1852, it passed to the ownership of Dennis
Ferguson, who operated a tannery across the street. By 1931 it was Purity
Hospital and then South Berwick Maternity Hospital until the late 1940s.
Many South Berwick residents of today were born in the tiny upstairs “birthing
room.”
3k c. 1800 – Israel W. Goodwin House - 204 Portland Street
Israel W. Goodwin was a tanner living here in the mid-1800s with his wife, Sarah Joy Goodwin.
3l c. 1885 – Arthur Muzzey House - 214 Portland Street
This was the childhood home of George A. Muzzey, one of South Berwick’s nine servicemen killed in World War II. His father, Arthur E. Muzzey, was a downtown jeweler, and his mother, Mary L. Muzzey, taught at South Berwick Central School.
Arthur Muzzey House history3e 1842 Schoolhouse No. 5 – 12 Agamenticus Road
Built in 1842 on this site near the intersection of Portland Street and
Agamenticus Road, Schoolhouse No. 5 was designed by a building committee
that included Portland Street neighbors (and parents) Benjamin Nason and
Francis Raynes. When first built, the structure had two entrance doors for
the boys and girls. It is now a private home.
Read a Jewett story with a scene from an old one-room
schoolhouse.
3f 1790 Butler House – 14 Agamenticus Road
One of the first settlers to farm on the Plains, as today’s South
Berwick Village was once known, was Thomas Butler, born in 1674. About 1790,
his descendants built the Butler House still standing near the intersection
of Portland Street and Agamenticus Road.
3g 1898 Soldiers’ Monument – Portland Street and Agamenticus Road
On this site in the late 1700s stood the Meeting House of the Plains, a Baptist Church where town meetings were held for decades. It still appeared on a map of the 1860s as the town house. In 1898, the town approved the Soldiers' Monument to be placed on the site, and here annual Memorial Day gatherings recalled the sacrifices of the Civil War. The small park here was originally known as Jewett Park after the family of Sarah Orne Jewett, as family members lived nearby. For over 100 years the monument has been the scene of tributes to South Berwick veterans of all wars.
Monument
history Click on picture
to enlarge
Read
a Jewett story about Civil War veterans.
3j c. 1800 - Hodsdon House – 31 Agamenticus Road
A Robert Hodsdon (sometimes spelled Hodgdon) may have built this house about the time of his marriage to Fanny Wadley on August 28, 1803. The house has a post and beam frame and appears to have probably been built as a commercial structure, perhaps a store. After the Hodsdons, the house was owned by merchant John S. Pike (1815 -1888) and his wife, Abby S. Pike (1814-1896). He was agent for The Union Store, located in the brick Business Block downtown.
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