May 2012

Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt’s great-great grandparents owned and lived in the landmark brick townhouse that’s our magazine’s headquarters at 165 State Street.

This came to light when Hunt appeared in the television show Who Do You Think You Are? and traced her roots here. There’s a dramatic pause as she opens a moldy journal in Maine Historical Society and the camera traces her finger to her forebears’ address.

Augusta Merrill Hunt (1842-1932) was a pioneering Prohibitionist and a courageous women’s rights advocate. George S. Hunt (1829-1896), her husband, owned a fleet of ships in the West Indies trade, many of them in the sugar trade with Cuba. I’m not saying their relationship was like Helen’s and Paul Reiser’s in the sitcom Mad About You, but consider: He’s making a killing bringing the crucial ingredient for rum into town (I’ve once heard novelist William H. White call sugar cane “rum on the hoof”), while she’s busy abolishing it. Far be it from me to suggest the Hunts’ passionate pursuits went to different ends.

George S. Hunt even had a beautiful barque named for him, a rakish craft which slipped unknown past the TV coverage but appears here. The show didn’t discover or mention any of his ships’ names, either, which are music to the ear: Minerva, Henry P. Lord, Meriwa, S.W. Holbrok, Winslow, Charlena, Frank E. Allen, Ortolan, Sarah B. Crosby, Stella, Ada Gray, Arthur Kinsman, Blanche How, Eliza White, N.M. Haven, Rachel, Frank E. Allen, Minnie Traub, Pilot Fish, J. Polledo, and Manzanilla.

Now that’s good Helen hunting.