Name/Title
Henry Emery House | 5 Key Street, Eastport, Maine | I7-0D4-03 | District #52Entry/Object ID
052Description
This house was originally built as a two story hip roof federal style house in 1822 for Henry T. Emery, a sea captain. His son, Henry T. Emery, Jr., was captain of the schooner Ripley that took John James Audubon from Eastport to Labrador in 1833. A newspaper account from 1882 states that “The next occupant was Capt. Thomas Rogers, the well known packet and steamboat mister of those days. It was then occupied by Spence Tinkham who moved to Calais and afterwards to Boston, and a good many years ago it became the property of Zebulon A. Paine the founder of the business firm which is still in vigorous existence, and the dwelling remains in his family. Mr. Paine substituted a pitch roof and the house has been modernized in other respects.” Along with the later gable roof (now of metal), two bay windows and a covered central semi-circular portico porch have been added to the front of the house and an enclosed porch has been added to the east of the house. The original clapboard siding of the house has been replaced with wooden shingles.
• From Eastport Sentinel, April 12, 1882, p.2, c.3-5:
Some old Eastport Houses.
—
AND THEIR OCCUPANTS.—A FAMILIAR RETROSPECT.
—
PART 3.
—
THE KEY STREET HOUSES.
All three of the Key street houses have lost the peculiar style of roof which gave them their identity and been changed in other ways. The one at the corner of Green street was built in 1822 by Henry T. Emery. Mr. Emery afterwards moved tbo Deer Island, and then to one of the interior towns of Penobscot County, then returning again to Eastport, he lived upon a farm beyond the Carrying place, and represented the town in the Legislature of the State. A son of his, J._. Emery, was former publisher of the SENTINEL. The next occupant was Capt. Thomas Rogers, the well known packet and steamboat mister of those days. It was then occupied by Spence Tinkham who moved to Calais and afterwards to Boston, and a good many years ago it became the property of Zebulon A. Paine the founder of the business firm which is still in vigorous existence, and the dwelling remains in his family. Mr. Paine substituted a pitch roof and the house has been modernized in other respects.
Response by Andrea Silverthorne to a Tides Institute & Museum of Art FaceBook post on February 7, 2025 about the proposed Eastport Central Neighborhood Historic District. She had asked if the house located at 5 Key Street in Eastport was included in the district. It is :
Andrea Silverthorne
Tides Institute & Museum of Art: It was my Great Grandparents home, Harold J. Beckett Sr. and his wife Mary Alice Rice Stoddard. They moved there as young parents with my great uncle Hal Junior, and my grandmother was born in that house in 1894, so was my Aunt Margaret Kay in 1918, in the Blue Room, as it was called, the southeast corner of the house. She became a well known writer and poet in her later years. And her best work is about that Eastport island. My grandmother moved back to that home in 1947 after her husband died to help her father in his candy and magazine store on Water Street, an endeavor of his retirement. Before that he had been a candy manufacturer with his half brother Frank from Calais. They were all Masons, 32nd and 33 degree. I can remember my uncle coming to take his father to meetings. My Grandmother’s brother (Stoddard) used to cut the grass for my Grandfather, and his children, Barbara and Elaine, became fast summer friends.
And so it came to be my childhood summer home. My father dutifully drove us there every June, and we took the train back to Florida in August. My Aunt Margaret and her children came too, six of us, now three. My grandmother had beautiful gardens surround the house and a lavish Hop vine ran over a pergola at the Middle Street entrance. The hydrangea’s sitting on either side of the front door were there when I was a child, so they have lived beyond their 50 year life span .
I can remember those times vividly. So many stories. They meant so much to me. It was, without a doubt, the Zenith of American times and character, and New England set its pace. The hydrangea’s were planted by my grandmother, they have lived well beyond their 50 year life.
The present owner let me in to see the house. Made me cry like a baby when I got back in my car. My grandmother died in 1960, and my uncle took over the house. He had already been living there to help his parents in their old age.
Andrea Silverthorne
Tides Institute & Museum of Art:: P.S. It was a white clapboard when owned by the Becketts, but my understanding was the shingles are the original house. The clapboard was put over them.
