Falmouth (Maine) Historical Society

2025 Documents - Annual Meeting

This year's Annual Meeting was held Tuesday, January 21st, at Falmouth Town Hall.

Agenda

A brief business meeting with a look back at last year’s accomplishments.
Short presentations sharing recent research into local history. These topics were selected from about fifty research projects conducted in response to requests from the community during the past year.

Here are the presentations:

Full Meeting Bundle (Slides and Minutes/Speaker's Notes)

Annual Meeting (Slides and Minutes)

The Opening Volley (Slides and Speaker's Notes)

The Humphrey Merrill House (Slides and Speaker's Notes)

The Town of Falmouth recorded the meeting; click on the image at right to open the video.

Item 1 starts at the beginning of the business meeting.
Item 2 picks up at the beginning of the presentations.

The Humphrey Merrill House. Kyle Lucas, owner of 220 Middle Road, wanted the answer to a simple question: Who built my home and when was it built?” He overcame every imaginable challenge while reconstructing the narrative for his home in a journey that took him back to 1731. He will tell us how he solved this historical jigsaw puzzle and found the answer: Humphrey Merrill, 1831.

The Opening Volley. History tells us the uprising by Native People that spread across New England in 1675 followed decades of mistreatment by English settlers. “King Philips War” came to Falmouth in September 1675 with raids from the Presumpscot to Spurwink. This marked the beginning of a violent half-century during which Falmouth was on the frontier and the front line. An attack on an isolated homestead overlooking the Presumpscot River terrified the forty families of European settlers then living in Falmouth. Many fled south to Salem and Boston for safety. We were asked a simple question: Where was the Wakely homestead? Period accounts were vague about the location. This was a job for our history detectives!

Attack on Homestead During King Philip's War

Falmouth Heritage Museum
60 Woods Road, Falmouth, Maine 04105
Telephone: (207) 781-4727
Email: info@thefhs.org

Mailing Address
The Falmouth Historical Society
190 US Route One PMB 367
Falmouth, ME 04105