Cobblestones Home : Colonial Trail : Longfellow House

That house is the Longfellow House. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grandfather General Peg leg Wadsworth started construction on the house in 1785. He made the house out of Pennsylvania bricks. Since the bricks had to be shipped up from Pennsylvania, Peg leg had to wait for the second shipment to arrive so he could finish the house. When the bricks finally came, he finished the house in 1786. Sadly in 1814 the roof caught fire. That’s when Henry’s father decided to add a third story. You might have known that the Longfellow house had a big garden; but did you know that the house use to have an apple, pear and plum tree orchard. It even had a cow pasture! In 1901 the house was donated to the Maine Historical Society and they opened it to the public. That made it the first “historical house museum” in Maine. Speaking of firsts, it was also the first house in Portland made entirely of bricks. Finally a last bit of info, did you know that some of henry’s poems were made in the house?

I think the Longfellow House should be on our freedom trail because it has a lot of history. One of the best poets of

his time lived there, and even wrote some of his poems there. Also the house dates back to a few years after the revolutionary war. Finally it’s pretty cool to take a tour of the house and learn about it. The architecture of the house is really nice and the garden is awesome. The whole place looks so out of place because on all sides of the house and garden there are huge buildings and noisy roads. If I hadn’t been there before, I would have never guessed that there would be a garden behind a building in the middle of downtown Portland.

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