July /August 1997 | view story as a .pdf

To paraphrase “Inventing the Abbotts;” the 1997 movie starring Liv Tyler, “If the Kennebunks hadn’t had the Campbells, they would have had to invent them.” Heirs to the Palm Beach clothing fortune, the Campbells epitomized swank-a wealth, grace, and Gatsby-like lifestyle never seen before and never since. 

The year was 1936, and the town of Kennebunk was abuzz with rumors that the Jim Campbell family, heirs to the Palm Beach clothing fortune and owners of the Goodall Sanford and Goodall Worsted mills in Sanford, Maine, had just bought the old Rogers Estate—an English country mansion known to readers today as the Franciscan Monastery in Kennebunk, tucked like a jewel into 150 acres of gardens, walking paths, and wooded splendor along the edge of the Kennebunk River.

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