History of the Blaine Mansion Sprague Journal of Maine History Vol. 8 December 1920 No. 4 pages 196-201 History of the Blaine Mansion (By NORMAN L. BASSETT) The history of the Maine house and lot both before and after it came into the Blaine family is very interesting. The lot is a part of Number 5 of the so called "front lots" on the plan made June 17, 1761, by Nathan Winslow, Surveyor, for the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. These lots were fifty rods wide and ran back from the river one mile. Between Lot Number 5 and the lot next south (Number 4) was a so called "Rangeway" which is now Capitol Street, William Vassal, from whom the town of Vassalboro was named, was one of the Pro- prietors Certain lots, called "Proprietors Lots" were allotted by vote and William Vassal became the owner of this Lot Number 5. On March 21 1770, when Kennebec County was a part of Lin- coln County and the registry was at Wiscasset, William Vassal conveyed the lot for the consideration of "love and affection" to his niece, Mary Prescott, spinster, of Chester, Nova Scotia. On December 22, 1770, she conveyed it for "100 pounds sterling" to Abraham Page, of Hallowell, Maine, who on July 3, 1780, for "600 Spanish Mill Dollars" conveyed to Mathew Haywood of Easton, Massachusetts. On April 22, 1800, Mathew Haywood conveyed to James Child of Augusta, that part of the south half of the lot between the river and the "County road." This was the road that ran from Augusta to Hallowell and is now Grove Street. The deed recalls the days when fish ran plentifully in the Kennebec River for there was a reservation of "one half of the privilege of fishing at the bank of said river." August 24, 1830, James Child conveyed to Captain James Hall of Bath a lot nine rods north and south and twelve rods east and west "on the west side of the new road leading from Augusta across Capitol Hill, so called, to Hallowell." This road is now State Street and became the established road replacing Grove Street, the lower part of which was discontinued. The corner stone of the State House was laid July 4, 1829, and the building was completed in 1832. Captain Hall added one rod to the western side of his lot by another conveyance from Mr. Child, dated September 13, 1833. Captain Hall built the house, which in the deed given after his death by his sons to their mother on February 14, 1843, is described as "his mansion house." This consisted of the front part of the present house and an ell. James Child conveyed to his son, James L. Child, the lot next north, which later became the homestead of the late Joseph A. Homan, and has been purchased this year by the State. The late Caroline G. Manley, mother of the late Joseph H. Manley, used to say that the Blaine House was built in 1833. She lived for many years in the Homan house. There is in the State Library a picture of the Capitol and its surroundings painted in 1836 by Charles Codman. just north of the Capitol are two houses, obviously the Hall house and the Child house. The shape of both houses, the roofs and windows are the same and close inspection shows the porch on the front of the Hall Mansion. It had been supposed that the original porch was an open one and that the walls and windows enclosing it bad been later put on but when these walls were removed this summer it was found that they had been there from the first. Why is P. question, for they have been concealing all these years beauties of old Colonial architecture. The front as it now appears is an old colonial design of the finest type. November 16, 1833, Captain Hall and James L. Child by agree- ment located the boundary line between them. As has been said after Captain Hall's death his sons conveyed to their mother, Frances Ann Hall, by deed dated February 14, 1843, and on February 22, 1850, she conveyed to Greenwood C, Child, another son of James. November 20, 1862, the heirs of Greenwood C. Child conveyed to Harriet Stanwood Blaine. Mr. Blaine made important additions to and changes in the house. He built on the west end of the ell practically a duplicate of the front part. The front part was always called in the family the "old part" and the addition the "new part." On the south side of the new part was an entrance with small square' porch. This entrance led on the right into "father's library" as it was called, and on the left into the "billiard room," a large octagonal room. President Grant with his daughter Nellie and his sons Ulysses; and Jesse came to Augusta on Tuesday, August 12, 1873, and remained until Friday, the 15th, when he went with Mr. Blaine to Bar Harbor. He was the guest of Mr. Blaine, then Speaker of the National House of Representatives, The daughter of -Mrs. Manley recall's that she was taken into the Blaine House to meet President Grant and was presented to him in the "billiard room." This proves that the new part was built prior to President Grant's visit. But the time of the changes is more closely fixed by a letter of Mrs. Blaine's, dated May 29, 1872, to her son Walker, who was then in Europe, in which she wrote "You will find the old house all renovated." She referred to the many things which had been done. In the south side of the old part and to the left of the hall were two connecting rooms called the "front parlor" and "back parlor." In the north side and to the right of the hall were two rooms, the front called the "sitting room" and back of that the dining room. At this time a rectangular addition with long win- dows was built upon the south wall of the old part for a con- servatory, the entrance into which was from the "front parlor." At this time also, or only a little later, the partition between the "sitting room" and the dining room was taken down and the two rooms thrown into one long dining room. Two pillars which stood out a little from the north and south walls took the place of the partition. These pillars have in the recent changes been removed. In that part of the dining room, which had been the "sitting room" was the original wainscoting put in when the house was built. This was not reproduced in the rest of the room when the two rooms were thrown together but a different style used. The old wains- coting has now been reproduced in the rest of the room. Mr. Blaine was so much pleased with the effect of the one long room that the following year the two parlors were changed in the same way. The partitions between the two and the conserva- tory were taken down and replaced with the pillars now there and the three rooms made into one large living room. That part which bad been the conservatory was. afterwards always called in the family the "Alcove." In the south side of and center of the old ell was an entrance, with double doors and small oblong porch which led into the low ceilinged hall or corridor between the hall in the old part and the "library" and "billiard room" in the new. On the last evening, Thursday, of President Grant's visit a reception and ball was given in his honor by Mr. Baine, "An elaborately constructed dancing pavilion gracefully trimmed with flags and streamers" was built for the occasion. The pavilion was a platform covered by a marques tent erected between the old and new parts in- front of this porch and the guests went from the house into the pavilion through this entrance. In later years, the space between the old and new parts on each side and in front of the porch was filled in to make an open veranda with balustrade in front and the steps leading up into the porch were placed in front of this veranda. At the east end of the veranda was a window into, the living room; the wall and wains- coting tinder this window were hinged so that it could be used as a door on to the veranda. This window is now a door from the living room into the new lounge. The long hall or corridor up- stairs connecting the old and new parts and over the corridor below just described, was known in the family as the "gallery." The kitchen and other service rooms were in the north side of the ell and new part. The service entrance from the street was through a vestibule built on the north side of the house where the ell joined the old part; doors also opened into these rooms from the hall on the southern side of the ell which has just been described. In the recent changes all that part of the house between the old and new parts was torn down and has been replaced with new structure and a changed plan. When the Codman picture was painted there was; no cupola on the original home. A lady now living in Augusta, whose memory goes back many a year, states that there was a cupola on it when Mr. Greenwood Child lived there and that flowers used to be placed by the windows in the cupola. It was observed that the ornamentation on this cupola and also on the one on the new part, on the porch over the south entrance and on the "alcove"' was of the same design. This ornamentation has now been replaced with the simple details of the front porch. If there was a cupola on the old house the ornamentation of it was copied for the additions or else its ornamentation, originally different, was made like that of the new. There were in the old part four chambers, the southeast, called after the chamber set in it "The Ash Room;" the southwest, called from its color plan "The Blue Room;" the northeast "Aunt Susan's Room," for Mrs. Blaine's sister Susan Stanwood who lived with them for a number of years; the chamber next west called "Alice's Room," after the daughter Alice, who became the wife of Colonel Copping. The next room on the west was the chamber made up of part of the old house and of part of the connection, between the old and the new part, and called from its peculiar style of roof and walls "The Irregular Room." In the changes recently made this room has been done away with. The room of Mr. and Mrs. Blaine was in the new part over the "library." President Grant occupied this room during his visit. That part of the hall upstairs between the front wall of the house and the doors into the front chambers was separated from the rest of the hall by an arch. This space was known in the family as, "the archway." When Governor Hill occupied the house this space was made into a bathroom. This has now been removed and the hall left as it was originally except that the arch was not put back and the doors into the front chambers have been moved further toward the front wall. The effect of the window at the end of the hall is very fine. Mr. Blaine's son James G. Jr., his daughter, Mrs. Margaret Damrosch, and granddaughter, Margaret Blaine Damrosch II, were born in the "Ash Room;" his granddaughter, Anita Blaine Damrosch in Mrs. Blaine's room; his daughter, Harriet Beale and her son, Walker, in whose memory Mrs. Beale gave the house to the State, were born in the "Blue Room." John F. Hill occupied the house from May 1897 until he moved into his new residence in December 19o2, near the close of the second year of his first term as Governor. The house has there- fore already been the gubernatorial residence. When President Roosevelt came to Augusta, Tuesday evening, August 26, 1902, he was entertained by Governor Hill. The two rooms over the Library and Billiard room were then a suite and President Roosevelt occupied these, his chamber being the one over the Billiard room. A stand was erected on the terrace at the northeast corner of the house, to the right of the front entrance, from which he spoke soon after his arrival. Mrs. Blaine took up her residence again in the house in the spring of 1903 and died there July 15, 1903, a little more than ten yeas after Mr. Blaine's death in Washington, January 27, 1893- Her death was the only one in the house during the ownership by the family, a period of a little more than fifty-six years. Mrs. Blaine devised the home one-fourth each to her son, James G. and her daughters Mrs. Margaret Damrosch and Mrs. Harriet Beale, and one-eighth each to her grandsons, James G. Blaine Copping and Connor Walker Blaine Copping, sons of her daughter Alice. January 26, 1909, James conveyed his one-fourth to his sisters Mrs. Damrosch and Mrs. Beale. As a twenty-first birthday present to his son, Walker Blaine Beale, Hon. Truxtum Beale purchased the interests of Mrs. Damrosch and Blaine and Connor Coppinger who conveyed to Walker on his birthday, March 22, 1917. April 6, 1917, the United States declared war upon Germany and the next day Walker Beale, then a junior at Harvard tele- phoning from his college dormitory, placed the home at the disposal of the Committee of Public Safety of Maine, which had just been organized. The Committee occupied it until December, 1918. Upon the death of Walker Blaine Beale his five-eights interest descended in equal shares to his father and mother. Mr. Beale conveyed his interest to Mrs. Beale who then became the sole owner. She gave it to the State in memory of her son on March 10, 1919. (c) 1998 Courtesy of the Androscoggin Historical Society ************************************************* * * * * NOTICE: Printing the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. * * * * The USGenWeb Project makes no claims or estimates of the validity of the information submitted and reminds you that each new piece of information must be researched and proved or disproved by weight of evidence. It is always best to consult the original material for verification.