Just sprinkle in a Revolutionary War hero, and you’ve got one helluva saltbox

By Colin W. Sargent

Looking for the oldest house in Kennebunk? It depends on which cocktail party you’ve been to most recently.

In 1751, architect/builder James Hubbard (we called them joiners then) built this classic manse at 56 Summer Street. The land his saltbox surveyed included 27 acres near the Kennebunk River, where shipyards and mansions would one day earn this stretch the nickname Captain’s Row.

By 1775 he’d become so influential that on October 3, “our records state [that] a petition addressed to the general court…and signed by Col. Ephraim Doolittle asked that Hubbard, along with certain other officers, be commissioned, and on the following day the petition was read and committed by the General Court, and James Hubbard officially became a captain in Colonel Doolittle’s regiment,” says Leanne Hayden, collections curator at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk.

Likely he was ruffled by the high taxes the King was exacting in the Kennebunks and beyond. (Some of us know the feeling.)

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.