Wadsworth-Longfellow House
- Dante Mazza
- May 21
- 32 min read
The house in July 2024
"Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere..."
Almost every American has probably heard those words at some point, but relatively few know much about the man who wrote them. His name is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and he was the most popular English-language poet of the 1800s.
On the facade of Columbia University's Butler Library in New York City, his name is carved in stone alongside those of the greatest American writers and thinkers, including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville, and directly above that of Edgar Allan Poe.
Today, he is nowhere near as famous as any of those other writers. Still, in the 20th century, he was so highly regarded that his childhood home in Portland, Maine, was designated as the second National Historic Landmark in the entire state. Significant for its contributions to 19th-century literature, the Wadsworth-Longfellow House stands proudly in downtown Portland as the centerpiece of the Maine Historical Society and a living tribute to one of the city's favorite sons.
Longfellow's name (top, center) is listed among those of other American literary greats on the facade of Butler Library at Columbia University in New York City
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The Early Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This boulder and plaque mark the spot in downtown Portland where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807. The plaque says the boulder came from his grandfather's farm, "where the poet spent many happy, youthful days"
His Family and Birth
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in what is now downtown Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807. He was the second child of Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah Wadsworth, making him the descendant of two prominent families. His father's ancestors had inhabited Byfield, Massachusetts, since the 1600s. His maternal grandfather was Peleg Wadsworth, a Harvard graduate and Revolutionary War general who also descended from 17th-century settlers of Massachusetts.
During the Revolutionary War, Peleg was an engineer in the Massachusetts militia. At the start of the fighting in 1775, he helped position the Continental troops at Roxbury and Dorchester Heights during the successful Siege of Boston, winning control of that key city. Peleg rose through the ranks to become a Brigadier General. He was placed in charge of a section of coastal Maine. The entire state was then part of Massachusetts. He made his headquarters in Camden, Maine, where, in February 1781, the British captured and hauled him off to Fort George in Castine, now the site of the Maine Maritime Academy.
After the war, Peleg settled in Portland, where he became a town selectman and later served seven terms in Congress representing what would eventually become Maine. He also led an early effort to separate Maine from Massachusetts, serving as chairman of a commission to study the issue. He would live to see his dream become a reality in 1820 when Maine was added to the Union as a free state to counterbalance the addition of Missouri as a slave state.
General Wadsworth purchased the land on which the Longfellow House now stands in 1785 and built the home shortly thereafter. He was still living there at the time of Henry's birth, so Henry was not born in the house. Instead, parents Stephen and Zilpah were living temporarily about a mile away at the home of Stephen's sister, Abigail. Her husband, Captain Samuel Stephenson, was on a business voyage to the West Indies, so her brother and sister-in-law moved in to keep her company.
Under those circumstances, one of America's greatest writers was born in his aunt's home on the corner of Fore and Hancock streets in Portland. That house, seen below, stood until 1955. It has since been replaced with a Residence Inn, but a plaque marking the spot of the poet's birth, seen at the top of this section, remains.
A photo of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's birth home, built in 1784 and destroyed in 1955, taken as part of a report on local historic structures by the federal government in the 1940s
The plaque marking the site of Henry's birth home says it is mounted on a boulder taken from his grandpa Peleg's farm in Hiram, Maine, a town he helped found about 35 miles northwest of Portland. Eight months after Henry was born, General Wadsworth moved to the 7,800-acre estate full-time, freeing up his big brick house in downtown Portland for his daughter, grandson, and son-in-law. The house would remain the private residence of Longfellows like Henry for nearly 100 years. In Hiram, Peleg established Wadsworth Hall, a large home that "served as church, court, school, and muster place for the community." He died in 1829 at the age of 81.
Henry was named after his mother's brother, Navy Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth. Lieutenant Wadsworth served in the Navy during the First Barbary War against pirates from what is now Libya. He was assigned to the first-ever USS Intrepid, which was actually a captured pirate ship. On September 4, 1804, Lieutenant Henry volunteered for a perilous mission. The Intrepid was rigged with explosives and sailed into Tripoli harbor with a small number of volunteers. The plan was a Trojan-horse style plot in which the ship would gain access to the harbor by masquerading as a pirate ship, as it once was, and dock amidst the enemy fleet. After that, the men would light the fuses on the explosives and escape in rowboats before detonation.
Sadly, the plot was discovered as soon as Intrepid tried to enter the harbor, and enemy cannon fire triggered the explosives prematurely, killing all aboard. Lieutenant Henry and the other brave men from that mission are buried in Libya in a grave maintained by the government there, and honored on the Tripoli Monument at the U.S. Naval Academy. Lieutenant Henry was further honored less than three years after his death when his sister bestowed his name upon her newborn son, a boy who would become one of the greatest poets in American history.
Henry the poet's father, Stephen Longfellow, was also an accomplished man in his own right. Like his father-in-law, he was also a Harvard graduate but chose to pursue a legal career rather than one in the military. However, he also got involved in politics, serving one term in the House of Representatives. He also founded the Maine Historical Society, which now owns the Wadsworth Longfellow House and is headquartered next door. He and Henry's mother, Zilpah, Peleg's daughter, were married in the house in 1804, and each would eventually die there as well.
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Growing up in Portland
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is one of the three most historically significant people born in Portland, Maine. The two others are Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed, who was born just down the street from Henry and represented the local area in Congress, and General Neal Dow, a Mayor of Portland who served in the Civil War, got the state legislature to ban the sale and production of alcohol, and ran as the Prohibition Party candidate for President in 1880. A Portland home of each man has since been honored with a National Historic Landmark designation, and each was heavily influenced in their illustrious careers by being from and in Portland.
Henry was no exception. Multiple authors describe the Portland of his youth as being rife with poetic inspiration. It was the very definition of a bustling port city, with craftsmen, artisans, dock workers, animals, and ships all coming, going, and working at a rapid clip. From the second story of his home, blocks from the waterfront, young Henry enjoyed a sweeping vista that stretched from New Hampshire's towering Mount Washington, home of some of America's most extreme weather events, to Portland Head, where the iconic lighthouse constructed during George Washington's administration along the rocky coast is one of the most iconic postcard-perfect sights in the nation. The National Historic Landmark nomination form describes the home, which stood amid fields on the edge of town, as initially having "a nearly unrestricted view of Portland Harbor to the southeast and Back Cove to the north."
When the young boy later became a prolific poet, he often turned to his youthful days in Portland as a source of inspiration, as in his 1858 work
"Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town And my youth comes back to me."
Longfellow also turned mundane industrial tasks that he witnessed performed in Portland into beautiful poetry, such as "The Ropewalk", where he describes the process of manufacturing ropes:
"In that building, long and low, With its windows all a-row, Like the port-holes of a hulk, Human spiders spin and spin, Backward down their threads so thin Dropping, each a hempen bulk."
One of the most definitive accounts of Henry's life is contained in a multivolume biography written by his younger brother, Samuel, in 1886. From that work, we learn a lot about what Henry was like as a kid and what life was like for the children inside the Longfellow House.
Samuel describes their mother Zilpah as a "lover of church and sermon and hymn" and a "devoted mother" who "was always cheerful with a gentle and tranquil fortitude" and who served as "the sharer of their little secrets and their joys, the ready comforter of their troubles, the patient corrector of their faults." She was in charge of the home where the Longfellow kids grew up with "books and music," including works of Shakespeare, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote. Henry's favorite book is said to have been One Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights, from which the story of Aladdin is drawn.
On Sundays, Samuel writes that they went to church twice, with attendance mandatory. Henry would bring "apple-blossoms from the great tree in the garden" in the summer. After church, their mother would lead Sunday school/Bible study, reading passages from the family Bible and singing hymns.
On weeknights, things were busier. There was a piano in the parlor, where music and dance lessons were held, and the period's popular music (mainly military marches) was played. The Longfellow kids would pull "their books and slates" and do their homework in the sitting room. Once they finished working, the children would play games until bedtime. In the winter, they often played in the kitchen with its warm fire. Then they retired upstairs to the bedrooms and the "comfortable feather-beds" before awaking in the morning to "break the ice in the pitchers for washing." There were no hot showers back then. Yet, as Samuel writes, "hardship made hardihood."
Outdoors, the male Longfellow kids enjoyed all the popular boys' games, including ball, kite-flying, swimming, snowballing, skating, shooting at birds in the woods, and fishing.
Henry later wrote that his childhood recollections appeared "rather as poetic impressions than prosaic facts." He had the instincts necessary for success in his craft early in life. Contemporary accounts of Henry's early life seem to back that sentiment up, with Samuel reporting that Henry:
"is remembered by others as a lively boy, with brown or chestnut hair, blue eyes, a delicate complexion, and rosy cheecks; sensitive, impressionable; active, eager, impetuous, often impatient, quick-tempered but as quickly appeased, kind-hearted and affectionate, the sun-light of the house. He had a great neatness and love of order. He was always extremly conscientious, 'remarkabley solicitious always to do right,' his mother wrote. 'True, high-minded, and noble-never a mean thought or act,' says his sister; 'injustice in any shape he could not brook.' He was industrious, prompt and preserving; full of ardor, he went into everything he undertook with great zest."
The first written record of the existence of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow beyond perhaps his birth certificate comes in a letter written by his mother when Henry was just eight months old. The family stayed with her father up in Hiram, and Mrs. Longfellow writes that Henry "is an active rogue, and wishes for nothing so much as singing and dancing. He would be very happy to have you raise him up to see the balls on the mirror." Energetic and creative at such a young age, Henry's path through life seems clear, as can be seen in retrospect.
The patriotism that pervades many of his works can also be traced to a significant event in his youth. The War of 1812 broke out when Henry was just five years old, and a letter from the time reports that "Our little Henry is ready to march against the British at a moment's notice; he had his tin gun prepared and his head powdered a week ago."
By 1814, Henry was writing. His earliest surviving written work is a letter to his father, who was in Boston on business. Henry writes:
"Dear Papa, Ann wants a little Bible like little Betsey's. Will you please buy her one, if you can find any in Boston. I have been to school all the week and got only seven marks. I shall have a billet on Monday. I wish you to buy me a drum."
His father later replied that he had found a drum for sale in Boston. However, ships were not allowed to travel between Boston and Portland at the time due to the war, so he was unsure if he could make the delivery. We don't know if Henry ever got his drum, but this letter marks the moment the future poet began his journey with two things that would transform and shape his life: writing and education.
At age 10, Henry is recorded as having his arm in a sling after somersaulting at school. Even so, his mother says in a letter from the time that he had plenty of energy and kept an active schedule:
"He went to dancing-school Saturday afternoon, but excused himself from meeting [church] on Sunday; Monday attended at the Academy Examination; Tuesday attended the [military] Review. Wednesday afternoon the boys went to school to contend for the prize in reading. Henry was in high spirits. He 'did not know as he should get it, but wanted to try, and have it over.'"
We know Henry was writing at this age, which means, of course, that he was reading as well. But he was also something of a young literary critic. His mother once wrote, "Henry is reading Gay's Fables. He is quite indignant over 'The Hare With Many Friends' -but now consoles himself with saying he doesn't believe it is true!"
The young boy and the stately home where he lived made a strong impression even on visitors. Samuel Longfellow quotes one family friend writing in 1877, recalling the poet's early years:
"Most distinctly do I recall the bright, pleasant boy as I often saw him at his father's house while I was living in Portland, in the years 1816-17. My recollection of those interviews in that time-honored mansion, and of the excellent man whose reception of me was ever cordial, and whose conversation was to me so agreeable and so instructive, have never ceased to be a pleasure"
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Henry Goes to School
Samuel Longfellow devotes an entire chapter of his brother's biography to his "School-Days".
Henry first attended a small brick schoolhouse on Portland's Spring Street run by a woman known as "Marm" or "Ma'am" Fellows, who "taught him his letters and respect for elders, if nothing more." He was just three years old at the time.
Next, at age five, he attended the local public school, "but the companionship of some of the rough boys was so very distasteful to him that he stayed only a week."
Henry then went to private school—first a small operation run by Nathaniel Carter, then the Portland Academy, where he enrolled at age six in 1813. Mr. Carter had taken over the Academy and brought Henry along as a student, which led to him writing in June of 1813:
"Master Henry Longfellow is one of the best boys we have in school. He spells and reads very well. He also can add and multiply numbers. His conduct last quarter was very correct and amiable."
Henry would complete a whirlwind of early education as a student at the Portland Academy and be ready for college at 14. He was variously reported through the years as "ambitious", tall for his age, and willing to listen to the counsel of his friends. Samuel includes in his biography a lengthy but revealing remembrance of Henry from an old schoolmate:
"I recollect perfectly the impression made upon myself and others. He was a very handsome boy. Retiring, without being reserved, there was a frankenees about him that won you at once. He looked you square in the face. His eyes were full of expression, and it seemed as though you could look down into them as into a clear spring...He had no relish for rude sports; but loved to bathe in a little creek on the border of Deering's Oaks; and would tramp throught the woods at time with a gun, but this was mostly through the influence of others; he loved much better to lie under a tree and read...If he was a thoughtful, he certaintly was not a melancholy, boy; and the minor key to which so much of his verse is attuned, and that tinge of sadness his countenance wore in later years, were due to that first great sorrow that campe upon him, which was chiselled still deeper by subsequent trials"
On March 17, 1820, at just thirteen years old, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had his first recorded experience with poetry. As part of a handwriting exercise at the Portland Academy, he wrote a copy of the Samuel Rogers poem "Venice, an Italian Song." For some years, it was mistakenly believed that this was Henry's first poem. It turns out that his first actual poem was just a few months away.
The school year at Portland Academy was divided into four quarters, after each of which the students enjoyed a break. Henry spent his breaks on the farms of his grandparents. Grandpa Longfellow had a place a short distance from Portland in Gorham, Maine. Grandpa Wadsworth had the previously mentioned estate in Hiram, which would become the basis for the young poet's first published work.
On November 17, 1820, the Portland Gazette newspaper published Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Lovell's Fight," also called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond." It is his first known published work, written on the round table in the Wadsworth Longfellow House, which is now displayed in his mother's bedroom and shown below.
According to the home's official audio tour, "The round table is where it is believed Henry composed his first published poem, The Battle of Lovell's Pond"
Henry based the poem on a Revolutionary War battle that took place near his grandfather's farm in Hiram and ends with this beautiful tribute to the fallen:
"The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest."
Samuel's biography includes a precious anecdote about the night Henry submitted the poem to the paper. He was as nervous as any young person could be expected to be:
"[Henry] recalled, in after years, the trembling and misgiving of heart with which he ran down to Mr. Shirley's printing-office at the foot of Exchange Street, and cautiously slipped his manuscript into the letter-box. The evening before the publication of the paper-it was a semi-weekly-he went again, and stood shivering in the November air, casting many a glance at the windows, as they trembled with the jar of the inkballs and the press-afraid to venture in. No one but his sister, the receiver of all his confidences, had been let into his secret; and she shared with him the excited expectation with which the apperance of the paper was looked for, the next morning."
The next day, after his father had finished reading the paper, Henry and his sister grabbed it and found the poem printed. "Inexpressable was the boy's delight," Samuel writes. Henry's joy was diminished later that same day at a friend's home, whose father openly trashed the poem (without knowing the author was present), calling it "remarkably stiff" and unoriginal. Though Henry felt devastated to hear such a negative review, his first critic would not have the last say on the poet's work.
In 1821, at 14, Henry graduated from the Portland Academy and enrolled in Bowdoin College, up the road from Portland in Brunswick, Maine. His parents felt that he was too young to leave home, so Henry, his older brother, Stephen, and one of their young neighbors completed their first year of college in Portland, studying under one of their Portland Academy instructors. When the new school year started the following fall, the three boys left for Brunswick and got the whole college experience.
Henry graduated from Bowdoin in 1825, returning to Portland and the home to study law with his father. During that stay, he wrote "The Spirit of Poetry", an evocative tribute to the magic of the woods:
"The silent majesty of these deep woods, Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air Their tops the green trees lift.  Hence gifted bards Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. For them there was an eloquent voice in all The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old poetic legends to the wind."
Henry also took inspiration from the Portland waterfront during this time back home, as recorded in the poem "Musings":
"I sat by my window one night, And watched how the stars grew high; And the earth and skies were a splendid sight To a sober and musing eye. From heaven the silver moon shone down With gentle and mellow ray, And beneath the crowded roofs of the town  In broad light and shadow lay. A glory was on the silent sea,  And mainland and island too, Till a haze came over the lowland lea,  And shrouded that beautiful blue."
After graduation, Henry was offered a job as his alma mater's inaugural professor of modern languages and librarian. Though everyone knew he was the best fit for the role, Henry still needed further education to prepare for a professorship. So, in 1826, he decamped from Portland for a three-year tour of Europe, which back then still had a superior intellectual tradition to the United States.
The trip began Longfellow's professional life and career, taking him permanently away from Portland.
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Later Life
In preparing for his professorship at Bowdoin, Henry traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and England, all at hefty expense to his wealthy father. During his time away, he learned French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, which he would use back at Bowdoin to translate literature. During his time in Spain, he encountered famed New York author Washington Irving, who encouraged Henry's writing.
After his time abroad, Henry returned to Maine for his professorship and worked as the librarian at Bowdoin. On September 14, 1831, he married his childhood friend Mary Storer Potter in Portland. Shortly thereafter, Henry was offered a new Modern Languages Professorship at Harvard. He again had to study abroad before starting, so he set off for Germany with Mary in tow. Sadly, on November 29, 1835, she died of a miscarriage in Rotterdam. Henry was distraught, and though he continued his trip, it was much less productive than expected. Henry would reflect on her death in his 1839 work "Footsteps of Angels":
"And with them the Being Beauteous,  Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven. With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine, Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine. And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies."
Upon returning to the United States, Henry took the position at Harvard, which meant he had to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Even so, Henry continued to regard the house in Portland as his permanent home. He returned from time to time over the years, including one visit in August of 1837. Henry wrote portions of his novel Hyperion in the house on one of these visits. The book was inspired by the events that had just transpired in Henry's life, including his travel abroad, the death of Mary, and one other: his failed courtship of a woman named Frances Appleton.
Frances was the daughter of Boston businessman Nathan Appleton, one of the financial backers of the Massachusetts textile factories that powered the Industrial Revolution in America and a founder of the mill-filled city of Lowell. She is remembered as being "independent-minded" and "indifferent" to Henry, and did initially refuse his advances, as recorded in his letters to friends: "The lady says she will not, I say she shall! It is not pride, but madness of passion...Thou foolish woman to disdain such love as this!"
Eventually, Frances relented to the relentless Henry. She sent him a letter agreeing to his proposal, and he, overjoyed, walked 90 minutes on foot to her home. Today's most prominent bridge between Cambridge, where Henry lived, and Boston, where Frances lived, is named the Longfellow Bridge. It carries cars, pedestrians, and the T across the Charles River. The pair were married in 1843.
As a wedding present, Nathan bought the new couple the home Henry had been renting since arriving in Cambridge. In beautiful historical symmetry, George Washington used it as his headquarters during the Siege of Boston in the Revolutionary War, the very operation in which Henry's maternal grandfather, Peleg, had played such a vital role. Henry and Frances would live in the home for the rest of their lives.
Given its deep connection to Washington and Longfellow, the house was deemed so historically significant that it became part of the National Park Service. Today, it is known as Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site.
Henry's story continues there, but this post will remain with the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland. The house's National Historic Landmark Nomination form describes the later years of Henry's life this way:
"Longfellow left the Harvard faculty in 1854 to devote his full energies to poetry. The wide popularity of his works--Voices of the Night (1839), Ballads and Other Poems (1841), Evangeline (1847), Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1857), Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), and others--eamed him a contemporary reputation as America's greatest poet. He received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge in 1868, and by 1900 his verses had been published in 12 languages. After his death at Craigie House [Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters] on March 24, 1882, a memorial to him was erected in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey (he is the only American so honored)."
Though Henry eventually left his birth city, it never left him. Portland and his time there remained sources of inspiration for his work, including in his 1858 poem "Changed", one of the last works he is known to have composed in the house:
"From the outskirts of the town Where of old the mile-stone stood, Now a stranger, looking down I behold the shadowy crown Of the dark and haunted wood. Is it changed, or am I changed? Ah! the oaks are fresh and green, But the friends with whom I ranged Through their thickets are estranged By the years that intervene. Bright as ever flows the sea, Bright as ever shines the sun, But alas! they seem to me Not the sun that used to be, Not the tides that used to run."
Though the Wadsworth-Longfellow House is most significant and best remembered for its role as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's childhood home, it has a rich history and tradition that extends far before and after the poet lived there. Read on to discover the remarkable story of the house itself.
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A History of the House
A print of the house in Samuel Longfellow's biography of his brother
The Wadsworth Longfellow house is older than Portland itself. It's the oldest standing brick structure on the peninsula that makes up the city's heart.
Its story begins in 1784, when General Peleg Wadsworth acquired a one-and-a-half-acre lot on the peninsula. The deed for the property still survives today and was reprinted in the book Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Portland: The Fireside Poet of Maine by John William Babin and Allan M. Levinsky, and is shown below:
According to the nomination form, Peleg "immediately constructed a barn at its northern (rear) edge and a 2-1/2-story, gable-roofed store at its southeastern corner."
Then, in 1785, Peleg began constructing the first brick structure on the peninsula. The bricks came from Philadelphia, enough to build walls sixteen inches thick, but only enough to build out the first story. A second shipment was ordered, and the house was finished in 1786. In this first iteration, the house was "a 2-story Flemish bond structure with a high gabled roof broken at either end by twin interior chimneys." On the inside, the house "followed a center hall plan with four rooms on each floor. The parlor, located at the southwest corner of the building, was then the largest reception room in Portland."
That reception room was likely used well in 1804, when Peleg's daughter Zilpah married Stephen Longfellow inside the home. In 1807, Peleg's time in the U.S. House of Representatives ended, and he retired to his farm in Hiram, leaving behind the Portland home for Stephen and Zilpah to enjoy. This occurred just eight months after the birth of their second child: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The home's new occupants did some rearranging. According to the nomination form, "General Wadsworth's chamber, at the northwest corner of the first floor, became the dining room, and the original dining room, at the southeast corner, became Longfellow's law office. The adjacent store was demolished and a one-story brick addition, known to the family as the 'Little Room,' was constructed at the eastern side of the house to serve as an entrance and waiting area for the office."
In 1814, the chimney connected to the kitchen caught fire. The blaze destroyed the home's attic and roof, but the rest was left intact because it was built of brick. Stephen Longfellow found an opportunity in the incident, choosing that moment to add a third story of brick to the home and create five new bedrooms in the process.
Peleg, still the owner of the home, died in 1829. He left the property to his daughters, Zilpah and Lucia. Authors Babin and Levinsky report that two years later, "In 1831, the Portland Fire Department was established, and a stove was installed in the Longfellow House."
By then, Henry had graduated from college, married, and taught at Bowdoin. His career path would take him away from Portland, and he would not inherit the home from his mother. Instead, that honor fell to his younger sister Anne Longfellow Pierce.
Anne was born in the home on March 3, 1810, and died in it on January 24, 1901. Of the 90 years of her life, she spent just three living somewhere other than the Wadsworth Longfellow House. It was her home in the absolute most genuine sense of the word. So, when she left the home for the Maine Historical Society after her death, she was really leaving a piece of herself and her family to posterity forever.
It's no surprise, then, that Babin and Levinsky write that she left behind eight pages of instructions on how exactly she wanted the house to be left, including the precise location of chairs, tables, and portraits. The Longfellow family got first dibs on some of the furniture and artifacts; the rest stayed behind and are still there. Many items inside have never left the home since they were brought there some 200 years ago.
According to a 1946 government report on historic resources connected to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "By the terms of the gift, the Maine Historical Society was required to construct its library and headquarters at the rear of a courtyard north of the house. This was done and the building dedicated on the centennial of the Poet’s birth, February 27, 1907."
That building still stands across the garden from the rear of the home, as shown in the photo below. It's now known as the Brown Research Library.
The Brown Research Library was the original headquarters of the Maine Historical Society and stands behind the house. It was built at the request of Ann Longfellow as part of her gift.
Anne was well ahead of the curve on historic preservation, and thanks to her efforts, the Wadsworth Longfellow House is recognized today as the first historic site in the state of Maine. Eventually, the federal government would catch up with Anne's example by establishing the National Historic Landmarks program in 1960. In his announcement of the program, Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton said the federal government was meeting a "long-felt need" to "give moral support and recognition to organizations now concerned with the preservation of archeological and historic properties." Thanks to Anne's gift, the Maine Historical Society was just such an organization.
The government began the National Historic Landmarks program by focusing on archaeological and early colonial sites, including forts, missions, homes, and government buildings constructed by British, French, and Spanish settlers as well as Native Americans on the North American continent before the establishment of the United States. Seaton released a long list of sites eligible to be designated as National Historic Landmarks. The places that accepted his offer are considered the first NHLs in America. In Maine, that honor goes to the Lady Pepperrell House in Kittery Point, listed under the theme "Development of the English Colonies 1700-1775" and described as "A house of great architectural distinction...built about 1760." But the Wadsworth-Longfellow House was not far behind.
Just two years later, on December 19, 1962, Seaton's successor as Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, announced the completion of another theme study: " Literature, Drama, and Music," under which the Wadsworth-Longfellow House was officially designated as a National Historic Landmark. On the same day, the home in Brunswick where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin was selected under the same theme, tying both homes for the status of second NHL in the entire state. Henry's later home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was also designated under the same theme on the same day.
Efforts to properly commemorate the house's new National Historic Landmark status began in the new year after the holidays. On January 4, 1963, letters announcing the designation were sent to the President of the Maine Historical Society, both of the state's Senators, one of whom was future Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and the local Congressman.
On January 7th, the Maine Historical Society submitted its formal petition to the National Park Service for the commemorative certificate and bronze plaque marking the house as a National Historic Landmark. As part of the designation, the Historical Society had to agree to the following pledge:
"1. Fully conscious of the high responsibility to the Nation that goes with the ownership and care of a property classified as having exceptional value and worthy of Registered National Historic Landmark status, we agree to preserve, so far as practicable and to the best of our ability, the historical integrity of this important part of the national cultural heritage. 2. Toward this end, we agree to continue to use the property only for purposes consistent with its historical character. 3. We also agree to permit an annual visit to the property by a representative of the National Park Service, as a basis for continuing landmark status."
While the plaque and certificate were being created, there was some correspondence regarding the formal name of the house. In Secretary Udall's press release, it was called "Early Home of Longfellow." The name was changed to the correct and current "Wadsworth-Longfellow House" before the plaque and certificate were made. The Northeast Regional Director of the National Park Service received the NHL certificate on March 19, 1963. The bronze plaque was shipped to the Maine Historical Society on October 15, 1963, and was later mounted between two windows on the front facade, where it remains today and can be seen below.
The House's National Historic Landmark plaque
The certificate remained with the government for quite a while as plans were made for a formal National Historic Landmark dedication ceremony. That did not occur until June 9th, 1965, well over a year after the home was designated. Part of the delay can be attributed to the fact that winters are slow in Maine, given the weather. Even today, the house only opens to visitors between June and October. The Historical Society wanted the ceremony to coincide with its annual meeting. A description written up by Park Service Project Coordinator Edwin Small sure makes it seem worth the wait:
"The presentation ceremony took place on the afternoon of June 9 as part of the annual meeting of the Maine Historical Society, which was held in the auditorium of the Society’s library and museum building at the side and to the rear of the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. About 125 members were present for the annual meeting and acceptance of the certificate was made by the well-known specialist in the field of maritime history. Professor Robert G. Albion, who is currently President of the Society and a resident of Portland. The presentation was covered by the local newspaper. The Portland Press Herald, which had both a reporter and photographer in attendance."
The write-up of the event in the next day's Portland Press Herald reports Small as saying that Longfellow was "Certainly the best-loved American poet of his time," who "put the roots of the American heritage in the hearts of the American people."
Small visited the house throughout the ensuing years to check up on it and always found it in good condition. The only structural problem ever recorded with the house was moisture seepage through the thick brick walls, a common problem in historic buildings made of brick or stone.
Small wrote in his report on the home after visiting for the ceremony that he found it "one of the most refreshing" historic homes he had visited in years and "especially convincing as a home in which members of the Longfellow family resided for almost a century and where the young Longfellow worked on some of his significant poems at intervals between 1820 and l813."
In a later 1868 report, Small wrote something that remains true today: The Maine Historical Society "has kept pace with visitor demands and has paid timely attention to repairs and preservation - all within the limits of a rather restricted budget and revenue from admissions."
Not only has the Historical Society done an excellent job of preserving this historic treasure, but the group has also successfully made the house one of the top tourist attractions in Portland. While that distinction has had overwhelmingly positive effects on the house, it also led to the most bizarre and disconcerting day in its history: September 10, 2001.
At the end of Babin and Levinsky's book, published in 2015, they include an appendix written by Judie Percival, who spent over 15 years as a tour guide in the house. She shares a "guiding story never put to pen" that she swears is "absolutely true as witnessed by me":
On a busy Monday afternoon in the fall of 2001, Judie was conducting her fourth tour when she led the group into the parlor. Suddenly, "two visitors, completely not aware of anyone else, pushed to be directly in front of me. One never smiled and the other would half smile, but their eyes never left me...They never spoke or asked a question."
When the tour was over, the group departed through the front door. Judie said goodbye to each visitor on their way out, including the two silent men who had pushed their way to the front of the tour. Just as she was preparing to wrap things up, "suddenly the more pleasant male returned, stepped in front of an exiting guest and grabbed my hand with both his hands; he shook my hand, half smiled and left! He returned not one more time but a total of three times to acknowledge me. The last two handshakes were normal."
Judie writes, "I shall never forget. I couldn't forget him or his friend with the dead eyes, especially having spent one hour in their presence." The day was September 10, 2001. Judie had just seen two men living their last full day on Earth. At 6:00 am the next day, Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari boarded a flight at the Portland International Jetport to Boston Logan, where they transferred to American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles. That plane would never make it to LAX. Instead, Atta, Omari, and other fellow conspirators hijacked the flight and deliberately flew it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, commencing the 9/11 terror attacks.
Judie identifies Atta as the man with the dead eyes who never spoke, and Omari as the man who returned to shake her hand. Both men appear on security camera footage from the next morning at the Portland Jetport. These sworn enemies of America had spent their final day on Earth learning about its history and one of its most celebrated writers. In doing so, they added significantly to the lore of this already celebrated historic site and landmark.
The Wadsworth-Longfellow House remains open to the public for tours under the excellent stewardship of the Maine Historical Society. Read on to take a virtual tour of the house, both inside and out.
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Exterior Architecture and Garden
The front facade of the house in July 2024
On the June day in 1965 when the Wadsworth Longfellow House was formally designated a National Historic Landmark, National Park Service official Edwin Small noted during his address that beyond its association with the famous poet, the house is "also architecturally significant in the evaluation of brick houses in this country."
Given that the house dates back to the late 1700s, well before the invention of photography, and and considering the fact that there are not many surviving buildings of any kind in the United States from that time, the house serves as a bit of an architectural time capsule. The nomination form calls it a "considerably altered example of Georgian architecture." Indeed, the home features several of the distinguishing characteristics of that style. It's made of brick, has clean lines, and lots of symmetry. The nomination form specifically points out the following features:
The house stands on a stone foundation. The roof is metal. Everything in between is brick. The walls of the original two floors are brick laid in Flemish bond, while those of the third story, which was added later, are laid in running bond. You can see the transition in this photo.
The small pedimented portico with two Doric columns at the front entrance is one of the most ornamental features of an otherwise quite plain, though elegant, house.
Other ornamentation includes a narrow brick belt course across the facade, which marks the floor level between the first and second floors.
And brick segmental arches above the windows, a feature that did not make it to the third story
When the third story was added, the original chimneys were extended up to the new height of the roof, but no fireplaces were added in any of the new bedrooms
The high gabled roof is broken at either end by twin interior chimneys.
After Henry's father Stephen Longfellow moved into the house, this one-story brick addition, known to the family as the "Little Room," was constructed at the eastern side of the house to serve as an entrance and waiting area for his law office. When Longfellow moved his practice to other quarters about 1828, the office was furnished as a living room, and the "Little Room" was converted into a china closet.
The one-story service wing at the rear of the house started out as a wooden back porch. It was eventually bricked in and served as a gift shop when the house was first designated a National Historic Landmark. Today, it serves as a display area.
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The home has always been surrounded by nature. Originally, Peleg had herb and vegetable gardens in his backyard, along with an orchard. As the lot size shrunk over the years and the city of Portland grew up around the home, the garden became more traditional in scope. For the past 100 years, it has been tended by the Longfellow Garden Club, which has done a beauitful job, as seen in the gallery below.
Garden Gallery
House Tour: Room by Room
This section follows the route of the self-guided audio tour through the house offered by the Maine Historical Society.
Visitors first listen to introductory remarks from guide Tamara Lilly in the home's front stair hall, the first room through the front door under the pedimented portico. Lilly notes, "Henry would often visit his boyhood home and would write poetry here his whole life."
Stop #2 is the Dining Room/Sitting Room, which served as the law office of Henry's father, Stephen Longfellow, from 1815 to 1826. Stephen worked from the large bookcase placed in the archway. The Longfellow children also often did their homework in this room in the evenings after school.
Mounted on the walls of this room are Charles O. Cole's 1842 unfinished oil portrait of Henry and Eastman Johnson's charcoal drawing of his second wife, Anne.
This China Closet is connected to the former law office because it was initially built to serve as a waiting room for Stephen's clients. In that era, it was called "the Little Room." According to a display in the room, "Tradition says that as a child, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow liked to sit back here and write."
Henry was no fan of the conversion from waiting room to china closet. He once wrote "— no soft poetic ray has irradiated my heart — since the Goths and Vandals swept over the Rubicon of the 'front entry' and turned the Sanctum Sanctorum of the 'Little Room' into a China Closet."
Modern visitors are welcome to write their own compositions and pin them up on the lines here.
The parlor was the social center of the house, described by the audio tour as the setting for everything from holiday parties to weddings and wakes. The nomination form says that at the time of the home's construction, this was the largest reception room in Portland. Henry spent time here, writing a letter to his father when he was 13 years old, reporting that he was "sitting in the parlor with [his brother] Alexander by me almost asleep-he hanging his head upon my shoulder." Henry even noted the time: 8:25 pm.
The portrait of George Washington over the fireplace is a nod to General Peleg Wadsworth, Henry's maternal grandfather and the builder and first owner of the house. Peleg served under Washington during the Siege of Boston early in the Revolutionary War. The portrait has been in place since 1802.
Stop #4 on the tour is what Henry's sister Anne, the last individual owner of the house, called her Summer Dining Room. It is a peaceful, light-filled spot at the back of the house where Henry is known to have written.
This is the desk where Henry wrote his 1841 poem "The Rainy Day" while looking out back at the garden:
"The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary."
This is the modern version of the garden view Henry would have had while composing that poem.
Next up is the kitchen, which the tour says the Longfellow children cherished as "a warm and favorite place to play." The kitchen looks a lot like it did when they were growing up here, though Anne added a stove and replaced the wallpaper in 1851. Since slavery is not a direct part of Maine's history, all the help the Longfellows had around the house would have been paid servants, usually young Irish women who also lived in the house with the family.
On display in the kitchen is a piece of Longfellow family china that Henry wrote about in his 1878 poem "Keramos", which tells of a ceramic artist at a spinning wheel:
"Turn, turn, my wheel!  Turn round and round Without a pause, without a sound: So spins the flying world away! This clay, well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; Far some must follow, and some command, Though all are made of clay! Nor less the coarser household wares, The willow pattern, that we knew In childhood, with its bridge of blue Leading to unknown thoroughfares; The solitary man who stares At the white river flowing through Its arches, the fantastic trees And wild perspective of the view"
The plate shown above shows the willow trees, the bridge, and the river Henry writes about in the poem.
The Rear Hall of the house features a wallpaper that Anne picked out specifically for the space in 1853, along with "early nineteenth-century leather firebuckets, made by local saddler Aaron Fitz" and "a handsome gothic-revival ceiling lamp."
The tour next moves upstairs to the bedroom of Henry's parents, Stephen and Zilpah. Stephen died first, so the chamber is decorated as it was when Zilpah lived there alone for a few years ending with her death in 1851. Henry wrote about her death, saying, "In the chamber where I last took leave of her...a sense of peace overcame me as if there had been no shock or jar in nature, but a harmonious close to a long life."
As mentioned earlier in this post, the round table on display near the bed is the place where Henry wrote his first published poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond."
Henry's sister Anne, the final owner of the home from the Wadsworth Longfellow family, lived in this room. She took up residence here after just three years away during her marriage to George Pierce. He died in 1835, cutting their marriage short, and she spent the rest of her life in this house. Many of the books in the bookcase here belonged to George. The tour takes the time in this room to note the other members of the Longfellow family who lived in the home at various points of their adult lives, including Henry's Aunt Lucia Wadsworth and brother Alexander Longfellow.
Stop #8 on the tour is the Children's Bedroom, where the audio describes Henry's childhood. That topic is covered in great detail in the earlier sections of this post and will not be repeated here.
This room was also called the Kitchen Chamber because it sits directly over the kitchen, making it the warmest room in the house when the kitchen fire is roaring. The back stairs nearby also made kitchen access easy, including on Thanksgiving mornings when the Longfellow kids are said to have sat and enjoyed the "delightful odors" wafting up from below.
Henry's nephew Henry Wadsworth Longfellow II lived in this room at age 10 after the death of his grandma Zilpah and his father Stephen Jr. in 1851.
The next room is arranged as a guest chamber. Henry himself stayed here as a guest during his second marriage with wife Frances Appleton. His father died in this room in 1849. Some of Henry's personal belongings are on display here, including:
This trunk from his luggage collection
His traveling writing desk
The third floor, which was a later addition to the house, is not open to the public but is accesed by these stairs. The Maine Historical Society offers this description of the third floor:
"'Seven very convenient and pleasant chambers' were built on the third floor in 1815. Lucia Wadsworth occupied the two southeast chambers with a panoramic view over the city, harbor, and islands of Casco Bay. Tradition gives Henry use of the large southwest chamber. The younger boys slept in the northwest chamber and the daughters in the northeast chamber, both with views to Back Cove, Deering's Woods, and Mount Washington. Among the graffiti dating between 1830 and 1857 on one window frame are the inscriptions 'how dear is the home of my childhood' and 'Friday eve'g July 14th 1837 - a magnificent sunset of golden clouds.' The walls were decorated in 1815 with bright green calcimine paint. The paint was still visible when the third-floor rooms were photographed in 1904. At that time, the southwest room, 'the poet's sleeping chamber,' was furnished with early nineteenth-century Maine furniture. Of note is the bed's counterpane, the only surviving part of the curtains first made in 1808 for the best bed in the parlor chamber on the second floor."
Besides the main carpeted stairs, which are the first thing a visitor would see upon entering the home, there is this less elaborate, much more discreet set of hidden stairs to the second-floor bedrooms that were likely used by the hired help.
The Historical Society points out some key details of the stair hall, including the "original eighteenth-century wainscot paneling" and the "costly French rococo-revival paper, featuring large cartouches... particularly sophisticated with the use of two alternating rolls." Plus, the wallpaper features "borders representing architectural molding and leaves at the ceiling and wainscot" as seen in the photo above.
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