Several stops were planned, a veterans marker, several National Register sites, and a prep school, and if I could find it, an old cemetery- I'll go back and get it. Also saw another new marker that I will have to go back and get.
First stop was the Veterans Memorial, it was in a nice median, there was also a major Confederate Memorial there.
Next, a visit to the Sarah Orne Jewett House, which is also a Visitor Center:
Sarah Orne Jewett House
The Sarah
Orne Jewett House is a historic house museum at 5 Portland Street in South Berwick, Maine, USA. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991 for its lifelong association
with the American author Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), whose influential work
exemplified regional writing of the late 19th century. The house, built in
1774, is a high-quality example of late Georgian architecture. It is now owned
by Historic New England, and is open for tours every weekend
between June and October, and two Saturdays per month the rest of the year.
The Jewett
House is set prominently at the northeast corner of Main and Portland Streets
in the center of South Berwick, Maine. The house, a two story wood frame structure
with clapboard siding, was built in 1774 for John Haggins, a successful
merchant. It is surmised from the modest exterior and elaborate interior that
Haggins did exceptionally well during the American Revolutionary War, and was thus able to afford a higher
quality of workmanship for the interior
The main block
of the house is five bays wide and two deep, with a hip roof pierced in front
by three gabled dormers. A gable-roofed Colonial Revival portico shelters the
main entrance; it (and the dormers) were added in the late 19th century. A
two-story ell extends to the rear of the main block. The interior has an
elaborately-decorated entrance hall, with a keystone arch supported by fluted
pilasters, and a staircase whose carved balusters and posts were reported to
take two men 100 days to complete. The public rooms downstairs also feature
decorative Georgian carved paneling. The rooms are decorated to the late 19th
century, and the bedroom of Sarah Orne Jewett on the second floor is essentially as
it was when she died there.
Theodore
Jewett, also a merchant, moved his family into the house sometime in the 1820s.
John Haggins died in 1819, and his estate sold the house to Jewett in 1839. His
son, Dr. Theodore H. Jewett, moved into the house in 1848, and it is here that
his second daughter Sarah was born. From 1854 to 1877 the young family lived
next door, in what is now called the Jewett-Eastman House. Sarah Orne Jewett and her sister Mary
inherited this house in 1887, with their younger sister Caroline moving into
the 1854 house next door. The two sisters, neither of whom ever married, lived
in the house for the rest of their lives, Sarah dying in 1909, and Mary in
1930. The house was inherited by Caroline's husband Edwin Eastman; he gave the
property to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA,
now Historic New England). That organization now operates the
main house as a house museum dedicated to Sarah Orne Jewett, with the
Jewett-Eastman House serving as a visitors center.
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and was declared a National Historic Landmark on July 17, 1991. Sarah Orne Jewett
became widely known for her writing after the publication in 1896 of The Country of the Pointed Firs. The work popularized a form of
literature now called American literary regionalism, in which the character of a region
(in Jewett's case, rural southern Maine) is infused into the writing. She was
hailed by writer Willa
Cather for her
influence, and her publications and life are the regular subject of scholarly
interest
Jewett-Eastman House
The Jewett-Eastman
House is a historic house at 37 Portland Street in the center of South Berwick, Maine. Built about 1850, it is a fine local
example of Greek Revival architecture. It is most notable for its association
with the Jewett family, which included a prominent local businessman and a
doctor, as well as the writer Sarah Orne Jewett, who was raised in this house. It
served the town for a time as its public library, and is now owned by Historic New England, serving as a gallery space and as the
visitors center for the adjacent Sarah Orne Jewett House.
The
Jewett-Eastman House is located on the north side of Portland Street, just east
of its junction with Main Street at the center of South Berwick's main village.
It is located just east of the National Historic Landmark Sarah Orne Jewett House, which stands at that corner. It is a
2-1/2 story wood frame structure, with a front-facing gable roof and clapboard
siding. The original main entrance is located on the right bay of the three-bay
front facade, set in a recessed opening flanked by Doric pilasters and topped
by an entablature. The gable end is fully pedimented, with pilasters at the
building corners and an entablature encircling the building below the roofline.
Single-story wings extend to either side of the main block from near its rear,
and a hip-roof porch extends along the left side of the building, sheltering
what is now the main entrance in the left wing.
The house was
built about 1850 by Theodore Furbur Jewett for his son, Theodore Herman Jewett.
The younger Jewett had been living in the his father's house, which is where
his first daughter Sarah was born in 1849. He raised is
children in this house, which was passed to his daughter Carol when she married
Edwin Eastman. The Jewett homestead next door was given to Sarah and her sister
Mary, both spinsters who died without issue. Theodore Jewett Eastman, the son
of Carol and Edwin Eastman, donated both houses to the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), now Historic New England (HNE).
The house was
adapted for use as the South Berwick Public Library in the 1970s, and was sold
by SPNEA in 1984 to a local non-profit. The house was repurchased by HNE in
2011 after the library moved out, and has been adapted for use as a gallery and
function space, and as the visitors center for the adjacent Sarah Orne Jewett
House
 |
| A type of Carriage House in between the two properties. |
Portsmouth Company Cotton Mills:
Counting House
The Portsmouth
Company Cotton Mills Counting House is a historic industrial building at
Main and Liberty Streets in South Berwick, Maine. Built in 1832, it is the only
surviving element of the Portsmouth Company Cotton Mill, one of several textile
mills operating in South Berwick in the 19th century. It is now home to the Old
Berwick Historical Society, which operates it as the Counting House
Museum. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Portsmouth
Company Counting House is set at the southern corner of Liberty Street and Main
Street (Maine State Route 4), on the eastern bank of the Salmon Falls River. It is a 2-1/2 story brick structure,
set on a granite foundation and topped by a steeply-pitched gabled roof. The
gable ends are fully pedimented, with a recessed triangular panel in which a
three-part rectangular window is set. The building corners are pilastered, with
an entablature encircling the building below the roof. The south-facing main
facade is five bays wide, with the bays articulated by brick pilasters. The
entrance is in the center bay, providing access to three rooms on the first
floor and a large open space on the second. The interior has well-preserved
Greek Revival woodwork.
The Portsmouth
Company Mill was established in 1832, and operated for many years under the
control of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based Hale family. Although this
building is traditionally given a construction date of 1832, architectural
evidence suggests that it may have been built about 1850. The mill was one of
several operating on the river in the South Berwick area; this is the only
building of the company to survive. It is now owned by the Old Berwick
Historical Society, which uses it as a museum and meeting space.
Conway Junction Railroad
Turntable Site
The Conway
Junction Railroad Turntable Site is the foundational remnants of what was
once a major railroad junction in South Berwick, Maine. Consisting of a circular granite railroad turntable foundation and an engine house
foundation, it is the only major surviving reminder of Great Falls and South
Berwick Railroad. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The turntable
site is located at the southwest corner of Fife Lane and Maine State Route 236, south of the village center of South
Berwick. The turntable foundation is a circular structure about 60 feet
(18 m) in diameter with an interior depth of about 2 feet (0.61 m)
below grade. At the center is a granite pier, capped with concrete, on which
the turntable was originally mounted. To the west of this structure is a
three-sided granite foundation, which once supported an engine house. The
turntable is believed to date to 1855.
The first
railroad that came to South Berwick was the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad (PS&P), in 1842. The Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) extended its line eastward
from Exeter, New Hampshire in 1843, meeting the PS&P in South
Berwick village. The Great Falls and South Berwick Railroad in about 1855 built
a 3.0-mile (4.8 km) spur line from the PS&P at this point to join with
the B&M at Great Falls, and established its headquarters here, which became
known as Conway Junction because the Great Falls and South Berwick connected
near here to the Portsmouth, Great Falls and
Conway Railroad with service to Conway, New Hampshire. The rail lines in this area were used
until 1936, and abandoned in 1941. Route 236 was built over the PS&P right
of way in the 1940s, around which time the turntable and engine house were
dismantled, and the Great Falls and South Berwick right of way was also built
over. The foundations here are the only tangible remnants of this history.
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