Sitting at the triangle of Black Point Rd, Winnocks Neck Rd, and Old County Rd, the historic McCullum (Hunnewell) House—also known as the “Red House”—holds a special place in the town’s story. Believed to be one of the oldest houses in Cumberland County, it was long associated with the Hunnewell family, particularly “One-Arm” Roger Hunnewell, a veteran of Louisburg.. This 1915 news article from the Narragansett [Times] explores the house’s construction, its changing ownership, and its connection to Captain Roger Hunnewell, who was killed in 1703 during a skirmish at Black Point. The “Red House” still stands as a symbol of Scarborough’s past, conflicts, and early Scarboro history.
The Narragansett [Sun][i] ___ber 16, 1915
OLD MAINE HOUSES
Number Six
The house shown above stands at the head of Plummer’s Neck in Scarboro, and is known as “the red house,” formerly for many years as the McCullum house, and at an earlier day as the Hunnewell house, since “One-Arm Hunnewell” spent most of his life there. It is now owned and occupied by Edwin E. Daniels.
The sloping appearance of the north corner of the house is not a freak of the | camera, but is in the house itself,1 which apparently was built that way, having perhaps first stood on a side hill.
Curiously enough, although this is perhaps the oldest house in Cumberland county, there is even greater interest in telling what is not than what it is. It is not the house, nor the land it stands on with the house on the land, of the noted Hunnewell, the famous old military man and Indian-killer. The evidence of the wonderfully complete manuscript records of the Mr. M. P. Hunnewell, is that he lived on the1 Bowley farm, (the home of the ancestors of the late Elder Peter Libby of Buxton and Master Joseph Libby of Portland), and deeds are on record where grandsons of Capt. Hunnewell sold large tracts of land northerly of the Bowley house to the Libbys.
An unmistakable proof is the town record of the laying out of the piece of road from the house where Mr. Lyons now lives to Mr. Bowley’s house. The road from Portland formerly went straight past Mr. Lyons’s house and •entered the Black Point road about where the Fogg road does now, while
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the Fogg road, instead of coming out as now, kept south up Poak’s Hill and came out on the north side of the graveyard. (At a still earlier day, back of 1760, the Fogg road kept straight down and came out near Joseph Fogg’s house.)
The town vote referred to was at a meeting held May 2, 1796, and reads as follows:
“By the Request of a sufficient Number of freeholders and Inhabitants of the town of Scarborough we have laid out a Road as follows Viz. Beginning a Little to the South of Hunwells old home so called and Run South Eighty Degrees east across Leat Thomas Libbys land to catch and join that leads over the Causeway. Said Road to be four Rods in width.”
Wm. Tompson ] Selectmen
Peter Libby ] of
Per Stalely ] said town
Excepted by the Town May 2, 1796
Voted to Discontinue a Road from where said highway begins till it comes to William Thompson’s land.
That the people of Scarboro in 1796 knew where “Hunewell’s old home” was and not to be disputed is shown. The Indian Killer was one of the most famous of Scarboro’s inhabitants, and the house he had lived in was within one half mile of Black Point village, and from “One-Arm” Roger Hunnewell, who was living at the time this vote was recorded.
The site of the house cannot now be exactly located, as the slight knoll on which it stood has been excavated for
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sand, and the traces of the old foundation have been removed. It stood where the excavation now is at the bend in the present road, across the road from Mr. Lyons’s house.
Capt. Hunnewell was killed Oct. 6, ; 1703, with a large party of Black Point ; and Biddeford Pool men, who had joined their strength to venture into the woods to drive out their cattle. Only one man escaped, and he without I knowing what became of the others. I While their bones lay bleaching , through the winter, Capt. Hunnewell’s I widow, a refugee in Boston, did not lose her faith in his prowess to believe he still lived. Her pitiful petition, dated March 20, 1704, is printed at page 333 of the records of the General Court at Boston.
It should be a sufficient quietus to the false story, started by the careless statements of some $5-per newspaper writer, to say that 55 years elapsed after Capt. Hunnewell’s death before any Hunnewell ever owned the land where the red house stands.
The deed to his grandson, Roger Hunnewell, who had lost his right arm in the taking of Louisburgh, bears date 1758. This deed was from Moses Plummer, for two acres of land, without buildings, the price £5, 6sh., 8 p. Eleven years earlier, 1747, he had bought from James Libby seven acres of land on the opposite side of Nonesuch river, next north of the Causeway bridge and road, “with the house and barn and fences thereon situate.’’ Three years after buying the Plummer two-acres he gave a deed of it, for £50, to James Libby, Moses Plummer and his brother, Richard Hunnewell “together with the dwelling house and barn standing on said land.” This was a deed of trust, or for security.
But it must not be supposed that the red house was built between 1758 and 1761. An aged Scarboro man, Mr. Plummer, used to attribute great age to this house, saying that he had been told it was built at the same time with an old house on Plummer’s Neck. Also it is said that the beams of the house show holes for guns, which would have been needless in Scarboro in a house built so late as 1758. It seems quite likely that the house was first built near Jamaica mill and was moved across the river by Mr. Hunnewell, who was given a license to retail liquors, as with only one arm he could hardly support his family. In Oct. 1757 the Boston and Portland post road was removed from the Causeway Bridge, where it passed the land and buildings bought from James Libby, and laid out over Oak Hill, very near where the newly macadamized state highway now passes. It may be that the house was moved so as to convenience the patronage of the many families then living on Plummer’s Neck.
The circumstances of Hunnewell’s losing his arm have been lost from memory, but certainly his Colonel, John Tyng, was good to him. Perhaps Col. Tyng owed a good deal to Hunnewell’s courage. At any rate he obtained the legal title to Hunnewell’s property, gave a life lease of it good for the lifetime of Mr. Hunnewell and his wife, and the property was held in the Tyng family over fifty years. In 1811 the Tyng heirs, after Mr. Hunnewell and his wife had both died, deeded the property to their son, John Hunnewell, who soon sold out, the land on the east of Nonesuch river to Richard Libby, while Capt. Cyrus Libby acquired the house and house lot. From Capt. Cyrus Libby the title can be easily traced to Hugh McCullum, and from him to the present owner.
ENDNOTES
[i] The clipping says the paper is “The Narraganset,” but the remainder of the paper is cut off. Ads on the back page side are for Portland, Maine businesses. My query of ChatGPT indicated “The Narragansett Sun was published in Portland, Maine, from 1892 to 1916. This weekly newspaper served the local community during that period.”
The back side also provides a date of “BER 16, 1915” suggesting it was published in the Fall of 1915.
