One of the Maine’s most iconic landmarks was once occupied by Maine’s most famous son and his family. And the story of its legendary history and how it got to where it is still greets visitors today.

In 1824 Colonel Jesse Pierce, a Brunswick store keeper, built a small home at 4 Potter St., which was “laid out and accepted in 1845, as far as Captain William Potter’s” home and “was continued to Union Street” in 1858.

But by 1827, Pierce’s finances suffered when his “store… was partially destroyed by fire.” Within two years, in 1829, “Pierce lost the Potter Street home to his creditors.”

One year later, the property was purchased by Mary Ann Fales who rented three rooms to Bowdoin College professor and American poet laureate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By 1836, Fales sold the building when she likely married a man named Allen.

In 1859, Bowdoin College Professor Joshua L. Chamberlain “borrowed $2,500 from a Brunswick bank to help finance” his purchase of the Potter Street house. Chamberlain and his wife had been renting the Potter Street home since 1856.

“It was one of the most charming homes in Maine,” and when the Chamberlain’s opportunity came to purchase the “1-½ story cape” for the sum of $2,100, the couple accepted.

In 1866, when Major General Joshua L. Chamberlain returned from his historic service to the Union during the American Civil War, the general had plans to expand the Potter Street home. But first, his service to Maine was just beginning.

When Chamberlain won the election of 1867 to become the 32nd governor of Maine, his wife, Fanny, became Maine’s First Lady, and the little home on Potter Street became the official home of the governor of Maine.

When Joshua and Fanny “sold a portion of their Potter street lot,” in that same year, they had the house and barn carefully moved to the corner where Potter meets Maine Street.

By 1871, after Chamberlain’s four terms as governor ended, he accepted a position as the sixth president of Bowdoin College, and Chamberlain’s grand plans for their home was implemented.

“There was plenty of [local] lumber available and [many mills] willing to saw them into whatever was needed.” Chamberlain engaged “Mr. Noyes, the architect… with the aid of men and beasts” to lift the home “11 feet into the air,” a sight “which puzzled and amazed the citizens of Brunswick.”

The chimneys were carefully supported and extended and a new “Victorian Gothic”-style first floor was built below the suspended structure.
“Following the completion of the structure furnishings, ceiling lights, a fireplace, and mantels, were sent from cities and towns in Europe” as the Chamberlain’s — along with their two young children — moved back into their home, which Fanny made “as comfortable as love can make it.”

By 1875, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow returned to Bowdoin College for his 50th class reunion and stayed with the Chamberlains, occupying the same rooms he shared with his wife. Longfellow called his years in the little Potter Street cottage, “the happiest years of his life.”

But Longfellow wasn’t the only celebrity to visit this “stately mansion.” In fact, local residents often gathered to catch a glimpse of the many of Chamberlain’s famous guests.

Men such as Civil War notables Generals Ulysses S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, Oliver O. Howard, George B. McLellan and many more visited the Chamberlain home, as did prominent politicians of the day, such as Willaim P. Fessenden, James G. Blaine and Charles Sumner.

Even a young southern woman from Alabama named Helen Keller visited with a then-sight-impaired Fanny Chamberlain. Keller would later live at Pennellville in Brunswick and she jokingly referred to Joshua as “my dear enemy.”

In 1939, Joshua and Fanny’s granddaughter Rosamond “sold the house to Emery Booker.” It had been 25 years since Joshua had died, and nearly 35 years since Fanny had passed, and the historical prominence of this illustrious family and their well-known home seemed lost forever.

For the next four decades, the building fell into disrepair, having become “a rooming house so decayed by sloppy fix-up jobs and partying undergraduates that it was scheduled for demolition to make room for a fast food restaurant.”

By 1983, the Pejepscot Historical Society “bought Chamberlain’s home” and began the process of raising a great deal of funds to set about the work of saving our local history and restoring the building to a time when the Chamberlain home was itself one of Brunswick’s greatest legends.

Today, this historic home is now the Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum, which is open to the public and remains as a fitting tribute to a prominent family, an impressive man and a time when this home was one of our legendary Stories from Maine.

Lori-Suzanne Dell is a Brunswick author and historian. She has published four books and runs the “Stories from Maine” Facebook page.