The Judge's House

One of the longest mysteries for my old house in Maine...I took another look for the answer after five years of searching..

What Happened to Pauline? The death of the family heroine

I've picked up where I left off. Please join me.

The Day The Judge Died The Fate of the House Changed

I am reposting this from the wonderful Historical Society page--how many stories these houses could tell. I will add this to my next walk.

The most famous of all Kennebunkport tearooms was probably the Bonnie Brig. It sat at the corner of South Main St and Colony Ave across from the Arundel Casino. Author Booth Tarkington (with Harry Leon Wilson) made a facsimile of the Bonnie Brig Tearoom famous on Broadway as the primary setting for one of his most successful plays, Tweedles. Margaret Garrard purchased Glen Cottage in 1900. She hired Architect William E. Barry to design alterations to the old cape to make it into a suitable tearoom and ran the Bonnie Brig Tearoom for twenty years. Later owners renamed the tea house, "The Old Tree Tea Tavern" and then “Periwinkle” but in 1926 the name reverted to The Bonnie Brig Tearoom. The property is now a much-loved home.

The Judge's mother was a woman of "sterling worth and intellectual attainments..." Here is her obituary from April 1886. She was 57. You'll notice The Judge's dad was also...a judge.

Do you think that your future relatives will piece together the story of your life, or their family tree, from social media and emails? I think about that every time I find a little gem in an old newspaper--helping me piece together the life of The Judge. Here's one from January 21, 1921, that describes his illness. I know that at the time of this illness he was separated from his wife, the Spanish flu had just subsided, and that he would marry his second wife by late October. Piecing these clues together took time. But future researchers will face a different problem--too many nonessential posts to sift through, written without the thoughtfulness of letters or articles. What do you think? David Maraniss

My great-grandmother, Grace Dever, second from the left on the top. This photo was taken in Kansas around 1910, and I'm grateful to my own Aunt Jean for sending it to me.
I wish I had asked my grandmother about her mom's life in Kansas. We don't always know what to ask until we are older and it's too late....

One of the amazing things about tracing your own genealogy using online sources is that you eventually link up with people you do not know, who share a relative and family branch. I found this photo that way--Carrie Galliher, 1868-1944, my great-great grandmother. She was born and died in the same decades as my mysterious judge.

I talk about the artist Abbott Graves so much it's become a joke with my husband. Why am I fascinated by him? He certainly would have been a friend of The Judge's--they ran in the same circle and The Judge was deeply involved in the Lewis T. Graves memorial library named after Abbott's late son and positioned so close to our house I get their WiFi signal. But consider this: Abbott Graves volunteered to serve in WWI as an older man because he knew French, having learned it when he studied art at the Académie Julian. While stationed there, painting something to entertain the troops, he ran out of pigment and used blueberries to create blue. He also built this prairie style home in Kennebunkport, not far from Booth Tarkington's boathouse, The Floats. Can you imagine how modern it looked? The man who painted the Edwardian women on the boat deck and dreamy New England doorways, built a house in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Sometimes newspaper articles fill in details our own families do not pass down-especially when the circumstances are tragic. Here's what I learned about one of my other great-grandfathers...

...And She Became a Widow I've traced two out of four great-grandfathers so far, identifying where my relatives where in comparison to The Judge's children. I know very little about Bob McCoy, the other great-grandfather on my mother's side. (I looked at Wallace Brockman Porter here and Joe Maraniss in this post.) Most of wh...

One of the last Civil War Veterans in town died in our house in July of 1929.
He was the father of May Atkins, The Judge's second wife.
I told the girls this once night before we went to bed in Maine.
Perhaps it was not the bedtime story to tell at that hour...as I shut the lights off...and the floors creaked. , , , ,

How did I end up in The Judge's House? To answer that, I'm looking for moments in his life and my own that set us on paths that intersect, not in time, but as residents. On my mother's side, I found this moment that represents upward mobility--a life-changing scholarship my great-grandfather earned at age 16...

My Own Family: When Opportunity Knocked My great-grandfather on my mother's side was born in 1892--part of the same generation as The Judge's children. His father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a tallyman--someone who tallied cargo -and he was eligible to apply for a scholarship the railroad offered to the children of employees--...

Did you know these were called "Shakespeare Chairs"? I've been perusing a copy of The Shoe Retailer from 1904. It was published weekly, by the way, because there was just that much to tell. (I'm looking for mention of the father of The Judge's second wife, May, who had a shop in Kennebunkport.)

I have not been inside a proper shoe store in years---even before Covid changed things. I remember reading Judy Bloom's Fudge or Super Fudge with Ava and there is a funny and disastrous scene in a shoe store. Even then, ten years ago or so, the concept was old-fashioned. , ,