When people drive on River Road, heading to Westbrook, they may not even see a stone marker between the road and a small banking, which is part of the state of Maine property. This marker represents the beginning of Windham, as we know it. All land divisions started here in the 1700s. This is the marker for Lot No. 1 in the first of several 100-acre lot parcels that comprise the town.

Although Lot No. 1 was designated for the “school lot” (imagine, 100 acres!), a school was never built here; instead, Eli Webb was the owner and it is believed he built a barn and small one-story house. Sarah White Rea of Salem, Mass., inherited the property from her father and in 1783, she, her husband and family moved to Windham. Her husband, Dr. Caleb Rea, was Windham’s first doctor.

Dr. Rea had served in the Revolutionary War and was probably the first person who was licensed “to sell liquors in Windham,” the reason being that it was the only anesthesia. He traveled his rounds on horseback and his area of practice went from Windham to Naples, and to Baldwin and Westbrook. He spent evenings wherever he happened to be.

After he and the family had been here 13 years, living in the old run-down property, he decided to build a new house. He hired his brother, Pierce Rogers Rea, to construct an “elegant” home behind the old house. A newspaper article from the 1800s reported, “This house is remembered by many people still living in Windham, a part of it having withstood the ravages of time, until it fell prey to the flames in 1890.”

Dr. Rea never got to enjoy the new home. He caught a fever (from a patient, it is said) and died at the age of 38 on Dec. 29, 1796. His wife stayed in Windham and for a while, she and one of their daughters conducted a “school” for young women. Mrs. Rea died (in the new house) in 1836.

Rea was buried on his own property but in 1882, following concern that his grave would be obliterated, it was moved to the Brown Cemetery on Chute Road, where other family members are buried.

When you pass by the stone marker for Lot No. 1 on River Road, imagine an imposing 2½-story home – an “elegant” structure, and the short life of Dr. Caleb Rea.

In 1999, Dr. Benjamin Caleb Rea, a descendant of the first doctor, gave Windham Historical Society a large oil painting of his ancestor, along with artists’ renderings of the two buildings that were on Lot No. 1.