Name/Title
Thornton House lithographEntry/Object ID
1976.2.1Description
A lithograph print of "Thornton House by Coffin & Emery, Corner of Main St. & Thornton Avenue, Saco, Maine" On the back is written, "Thornton House. Built in 1810. Destroyed by Fire in 1851." According to John Haley, the house was originally built for Foxwell Cutts in 1810, but he had to sell it when he was financially ruined during the War of 1812. It was sold to his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas G. Thornton, US Marshall. When Dr. Thornton died in 1824, the house passed to his widowed wife, Sarah Cutts Thornton (Foxwell's sister), until she died in 1845. The house was transformed into a hotel. Haley dates the fire to 1850, but the property appears in the 1851 map, "Map of the Villages of Saco and Biddeford York County, Maine from Original Surveys" by O. Harkness and Henry Francis Walling.