Living in a Private House With a Public Meaning
A dining room with historic murals in Kennebunkport, Maine, connects its current owners with the past.
The writer in the dining room of her Kennebunkport home. The murals were painted by Louis D. Norton in 1925.Credit.Greta Rybus for The New York Times
By Sarah Vander Schaaff
There are many ways to identify the Federal house we recently bought in Kennebunkport, Maine.
It’s the bright yellow one across from the public library.
It’s the “Simon Nowell” house or the “Captain Simon Nowell-Luques” house.
It’s Luques Tavern.
And finally, it’s the house with the murals.
WATCH: Portland Snow Removal Film From About 80 Years Ago
It s always fascinating to see how things were done in the past, as Nana would say yee-ahs and yee-ahs ago .
I often heard about Maine winters during this bygone era from my father. He grew up in Oakfield. For those unfamiliar with that neck of the woods, it s a little town near the big city of Houlton way up north in Aroostook County.
Dad would tell me stories of walking to school (uphill both ways-of course) with the snow banks piled high above his head.
Come to think of it, I remember the wintertime growing up in Augusta and wicked tall blankets of white stuff surrounding me on my route to Hussey Elementary as well.
Eliot Cutler’s mansion sold to Bush family member for $7.6 million
The 2-time Maine gubernatorial candidate is downsizing, after selling the 15,000-square-foot oceanfront home in Cape Elizabeth to Jonathan Bush Jr.
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In a year of record-setting residential home sales, former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler s oceanfront home in Cape Elizabeth sold for $7.55 million, the highest price ever recorded for a single-family dwelling in Cumberland County. Photo by Maine Aerial Photography Services, LLC
Finally, a home in Maine’s red-hot real estate market sold for less than its list price.
Even so, it fetched a sum higher than any other single-family dwelling in Cumberland County since Maine Listings, a subsidiary of the Maine Association of Realtors, began keeping records in 1996. It also was the most expensive sale statewide in 2020, and the seventh-highest home sale price ever recorded in Maine.
Clara Sargent and James Maddix, Ronald Perrault s birth parents.
Angela Raven read the story last year about Ronald Perreault, who was left as a baby in a parked car in Portland 83 years ago, and considered reaching out to him.
“I had been doing some (genealogy) research in my own family and I just thought I might be able to help,” said Raven, who lives in North Yarmouth.
Clara Sargent and James Maddix, Ronald Perrault’s birth parents, and his younger sister.
Photo courtesy of Donna Woodward
She didn’t call, but Perreault’s story continued to rattle around in her head. It was fascinating. Who had left the swaddled infant? And why?