by Josephine Deupree
In
post-Civil War America, there emerged an expanding group of people who had
leisure time and the money to enjoy it, and the summer vacation was born. This
generally involved city folk going to rural places with recreational
opportunities, facilitated by quick, affordable train transportation.
In
Maine, large hotels sprang up to cater to these people, but many families
decided they would prefer to own or rent private vacation homes. This resulted
in the development of summer communities in choice locations beside the ocean
or lakes.
Groups
of people from America’s big cities often picked the same vacation spots.
Sometimes these people were neighbors, relatives or work colleagues at home. As
a result, many Maine summer communities have a strong association with a
particular city. For Biddeford Pool, that city was Cincinnati.
 |
| John, Grandpappy, Jim on the lawn at 7 Staples St. circa 1920. |
Although Richard Deupree worked his way up the ladder in
Procter & Gamble and eventually became President and Chairman of the Board,
in 1920 he was still in sales, becoming General Sales Manager in 1917.
There were many other Cincinnati families at the Pool at
that time, and many still have ties to the Pool today: Taft, Black, Clark,
Whittaker, Wilby, Moore, Anderson, Blake, Kittredge, Shaftoe, Bigelow, Busby,
Shaffer. How wonderful it would be if we could establish a time line for all
these families!
The Deupree family consisted of Grandpappy, his wife Martha,
sons Richard Jr., John and James, and daughter Elizabeth (Betty Goldsmith.) According
to cousin Susan, they came by train with a stop in Boston and then by truck
from Biddeford.
Grandpappy probably first rented the house on Staples St. and
bought it a few years later. At some point, he bought (or built) 39 Lester B
Orcutt Blvd, the house currently owned by his grandchildren the Goldsmiths, and
sold the house on Staples Street to my father (circa 1940). It still belongs to
our family.
According to my brother Jesse’s account, during the Depression
(he was by then President of P&G), Grandpappy was poised to purchase the
Hoyt mansion on Granite Point. However, his children wanted to stay at the Pool,
so he bought the house on LBO and property at East Point, including Eagle’s
Nest.
He intended to build on East Point, but his wife Martha’s
death in 1943 put those plans on hold. He then sold Eagle’s Nest to Harry Busby
and his interest in East Point to the Russells. By the time he married his
second wife, Emily Powell Allen (the wonderful lady we all knew as GeeGee,) he
split his time between the Pool and Wequetonsing, Michigan, where GeeGee’s
family summered.
Grandpappy was instrumental in bringing the Ittmanns to the
Pool. According to Bobby Ittmann, his father, who also worked at P&G, had
spent summers at Prout’s Neck, circa 1947/1948. During the Christmas season of
1948, Mr. Ittmann attended a party at my grandfather’s house. Grandpappy
encouraged Mr. Ittmann to rent his house on Staples St. as my father did not
use it until August. And so he did. In 1950, Mr Ittmann bought a house which he
sold to Davy Taft nine years later. At that point, the Ittmanns bought the
Flagg house, on St. Martin’s Lane.
My grandfather had a passion for horses: he enjoyed riding
and hunting and going to the races; he had a stable of many horses in
Cincinnati. Joe Deering had horses at his property on St. Martins Lane (now the
Morgan property) and they rode the horses on the Big Beach.
Grandpappy often visited the race track in Scarborough and, according
to a family story, he won on a horse named Sea Fox. He then bought a 19-foot
sailboat that he christened Sea Fox. She graced the Pool for many years.
(originally published Feb. 8, 2019)
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