Editor:
    My hat is off to Joyce Butler for her knowledge of the Kennebunks and her writing ability. However, there was one thing in the report of her interviewthat just doesn’t come together. I quote “ . . . a group of farmers, in 1895, growing distraught with a plan to construct a water main through the village of what was then North Kennebunkport, broke off with the town, forming modern day Arundel.”
    First, North Kennebunk Port did not break away from Kennebunk Port until 1915, 20 years after 1895. (Please note: Kennebunk Port was two words up until the U.S. Postal Service demanded one word names for towns in the early 1950s. That also prompted North Kennebunk Port to change its name to Arundel. The stone lintel of the Port Post Office was inscribed with two words when built in the 1940s. It is now covered with a wooden name plate bearing the one word name “Kennebunkport). I always understood that the reason for secession was because the farmers in the inland portion of the town felt their tax money was used to provide for the affluent summer people on the coast and not enough provided for their needs. I guess a water main could have been the over limit straw.
    Second, since there was no North Kennebunk Port in 1895, the only village must have been what is now Dock Square and the water main must have been up North Street to the townhouse area where, at that time, there was the Kennebunk Port Town Hall and Poor Farm; the old meeting house, now the North Congo; a one room school house; a brick car barn for the Seashore Railway and the Arundel Grange Hall. It also may have been a sort of hub for the rail lines from the Cape Pier, Dock Square, Kennebunk, Sanford, Biddeford and Saco.
    I do have a nugget for Joyce. The farmhouse at Riverhurst (corner of Rte. 9 and Parsons Beach Road) was originally built in the Great Hill area and later moved overland to its present location. However, it never crossed the river. Explain!

Freeland K. Smith
Kennebunkport