Heritage Trail Audio Tour

Hear about the trail

The Village

1. Old First Parish Burial Ground & Meetinghouse
At the corner of Lower Main Street & Meetinghouse Road is the site of Freeport’s original meeting house. The meeting house was built in 1774, when Freeport was still part of North Yarmouth. The cemetery remains and contains some of the oldest grave stones in Freeport.

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2. Grove Street School
The Grove Street School, located on the corner of Grove Street and Maine Street, was designed by noted Maine architect John Calvin Stevens. It serves today as the town hall.

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3. Mallet Employee Houses
In the 1880s, Edmund Buxton Mallet, Jr. established many enterprises in Freeport, including a shoe factory, quarry and stone works, and a grist mill. In response to a need for housing for his employees, he initiated a program of building employee residences. Several examples of these houses still stand on Depot Street, once known as Oak Street, as you approach West Street.

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4. Harrington House
Now the home of Freeport Historical Society, Harrington House at 45 Main Street was originally built in 1830 by Freeport merchant, Enoch Harrington, for his new wife, Eliza.

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5. Mallet Office Building & Enterprises
E.B. Mallet, Jr. realized the business potential of Freeport in the 1880s and moved here after inheriting an estate from his uncle. The Fassett-designed office building, located where Mill Street intersects and becomes Depot Street, was the main headquarters of Mallet’s various enterprises.

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6. Bartol Library
Housing retail space today, this building at the corner of Nathan Nye & Main Streets is named for Barnabus Henry Bartol, a succesful New York and Philadelphia mechanical engineer and businessman born in Freeport.

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7. LL Bean
Leon Leonwood Bean operated an apparel business with his brother Ervin in the early 20th century. This and L.L.’s creation of the Maine Hunting Shoe led to the founding of the company that bears his name, LL Bean.

Jameson Tavern

Located at 115 Main Street. Dr. John Angier Hyde built this impressive, Federal style, two and one-half story house in 1795. It now operates as Jameson Tavern.

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The Bliss/Means Tavern
The Bliss/Means Tavern was located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Bow and Main Streets. The building sat as an angle, as the current building does now. Can you think why they would place the building this way?

8. Old Town Hall & High School
Samuel Adams Holbrook gifted the land bounded by Bow Street, School Street, Park Street, and the railroad to the town of Freeport. The easternmost part of the property is where Freeport’s first high school was built. The Old Town Hall is still located on Park Street.

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9. Derosier’s Market
Derosier’s Market is the oldest continually running business in Freeport. It was opened in 1904 as a grocery.

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10. Frost Gully Pumping Station
The Frost Gully Pumping Station provided water to an array of buried water mains and strategically placed hydrants in Freeport. Fire was considered a major threat to the town’s safety and prosperity.

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Wolfe's Neck

11. Mast Landing
Most of the houses in the Mast Landing neighborhood date from 1800-1850, a period when the settlement had its greatest significance in Freeport’s history.

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12. Wolfe’s Neck School House
From the late 1700s through the 1930s, Freeport schools were located convenient to the neighborhoods they served. At the height of their era, Freeport operated seventeen neighborhood schools.

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13. Captain Greenfield Pote House
The Pote House, one of Freeport’s oldest buildings, is an excellent example of an eighteenth century salt-box design.

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14. Wolfe’s Neck Farm
Wolfe’s Neck Farm consists of 662 acres. Eleanor Houston Smith and Lawrence M.C. Smith, of Philadelphia, originally bought the property in 1947 as their summer home.

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15. Means Massacre
In 1756, Thomas Means and his family lived along Flying Point Road in a log house and farmed in the vicinity. The story of the events that unfolded on May 10, 1756 is known as the “Means Massacre” and remains one of the most noted and traumatic events of Freeport’s past.

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16. Flying Point School House
For many years one-room school houses provided the only educational experience available to the town’s children. The Flying Point School House opened its doors for the first time in 1875, and closed them for the last time in the 1920s.

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VISIT US

OFFICE HOURS: T-F 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

PETTENGIL FARM: Grounds are open year round, dawn to dusk. House is open by appointment.

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