antique capital of the world

Many called Hallowell, Maine the “antiques capital of the world”. For over 5 decades, was certainly the antiques capital of Maine, boasting more than two dozen antique shops along Water Street.

As a kid growing up in Phippsburg in the ’60’s and 70’s, I remember occasional drives when we headed up to Hallowell to poke around the various antique shops and antiquarian book shops.

artist, Chris Cart

Nora Winslow Keene

I’m Nora, a dedicated public interest attorney based in Denver. I’m a graduate of Stanford University.

information highway

The earliest days of Hallowell the town was connected with the major cities south by the Kennebec River.

“So many coastal schooners, packet boats and other vessels called at Hallowell during the early years that Hallowell soon established a reputation that the latest news from around the world would arrive there first, even before Falmouth received it.”

from article by Gerry Mahoney on HistoricHallowell.org

My friend Steve Thompson posed for the printer inspecting the proof sheet.

artist, Chris Cart

first newspapers

Hallowell grew rapidly as a center for shipping and circulation of information. Many well educated people moved to Hallowell to begin new lives in a thriving new town.

In 1794 Howard S. Robinson moved to town and launched the first newspaper, The Eastern Star.

This newspaper only lasted a year but the desire for news soon brought Peter Edes to town who opened a printing shop and began published The Kennebec Intelligencer in 1795.

“Peter Edes has been justly called the most important figure in the early history of printing in this state, because he was the son of Benjamin Edes, the famous journalist of the American Revolution, because he was later associated with that celebrated Boston press of Benjamin Edes & Son, and because being one of the first printers of Maine, he brought to his work here a certain degree of prominence and reputation which others of his craft did not possess.”  

R. Webb Noyes (A Bibliography of Maine Imprints to 1820)

Peter Edes later changed the name of the Intelligencer to the Herald of Liberty. He had a thriving business printing everything from medical journals to a book of agricultural practices, called “the Rural Socrates”.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody — Hallowell Blue Stocking. Benjamin Vaughan wanted the females in his family to be well informed and exposed to liberal thinking. When they traveled to England to visit relatives they were introduced to members of the original Blue Stocking Club, a distinguished literary circle of mainly female writers famous for their dissenting views.

In 1823, Vaughan retained Miss Peabody as governess for his family’s children. She joined the local Blue Stocking Club but found it to be more social than literary. Vaughan quickly realized that Peabody was a woman of exceptional ability with strong intellectual aspirations. He invited her (the only female so honored) to join his nightly “metaphysical class” where clergy, Bowdoin scholars and town professionals discussed works such as Thomas Brown’s Philosophy Of The Human Mind and Inquiry in the Relation of Cause and Effect.

Ezekiel Goodale — Book Seller, Printer and Publisher. In 1771, public schools were established and in 1795 the Hallowell Academy opened, one of the first classical academies in the District of Maine (a distinction shared with Berwick Academy, which was chartered the same day). With them came a demand for books and printed material. In 1802 twenty-two-year-old Ezekiel Goodale arrived in town and opened the first bookstore established east of Portland, “The Hallowell Bookstore — Sign of the Bible.” He imported the best books available from England and stock from the Boston book trade. For those who couldn’t afford books he provided the services of his innovative “Circulating Library,” a subscription library offered to patrons for a small fee. An 1863 anonymous correspondent to the Hallowell Gazette recalled the excitement generated by the book trade:

a life on the sea

The Kennebec River was central to Hallowell in the days of sail, indeed the river was the highway connecting Hallowell, Maine literally to the rest of the ports in the known world. Seamen from Hallowell sailed ships along the coast and across the seas to Europe and Asia.

Captain John H. Drew (1834-1890), born in East Hallowell (today’s Chelsea) was a seaman and ship’s Captain for his entire life. John first went to sea at age 11 and took his first longer voyage to Louisiana as ship’s cook when he was 18. He spent 45 years on the world’s oceans, captaining ships around the Cape of Good Hope 40 times on route to the East Indies and navigating the notorious Cape Horn more than a dozen times on voyages to San Francisco, Hawaii, and China.

Captain Drew was the son of Allen Drew. The Drew family had been building ships for 160 years in Kingston, Massachusetts, when in 1799 William Drew moved to Hallowell and continued the family shipbuilding business with his son Allen. Allen became particularly well known as a ship carver.

I painted Captain Drew at the helm of one of his ships, racing another clipper home.

artist, Chris Cart

The “Kennebecker”

Captain Drew had sailed and seen so much of the world on his voyages, and yet he once wrote, “Hallowell is one of the dearest places in the wide world.”

Under the moniker “The Kennebecker” for 17 years from 1876 to 1889 Drew wrote Letters from the Sea, articles about his many voyages that were published in Boston Journal Newspaper.

One letter “Hallowell in China” recounts one of his voyages to the Far East. Another published in the Boston Journal, Saturday, March 29, 1879, “The Kennebecker in Ireland Or, the Cruise of the ‘Sandwich,’ Capt. A. M. I. Knott” mentions Herman Melville after Drew saw a large whale skeleton in Dublin.

Initially we could not find any images of Captain Drew to find his likeness. So I asked around to find a “ship’s captain” type. A friend didn’t hesitate in suggesting Dave Pottle, with his rugged features and full beard.
After the mural was all but completed a photo of the real Captain Drew turned up—he did indeed have a full beard. I left Dave Pottle standing in for him, though. I liked the connection of a modern Hallowell man posing for the 19th century seaman.

artist, Chris Cart