When you own an old house in Maine, you own its ghosts, too. But its history – the story of the British soldiers who were quartered in the basement, the poem crafted in an upstairs corner room, the founding father’s layout for Main Street – belongs to the rest of us.

In part, that’s what John Roberts, a board member of the Blue Hill Historical Society, is hoping participants in the 2006 Blue Hill Historic House Tour will take with them after walking through 11 homes and two churches in and around the village of Blue Hill.

“History helps you understand – and everyone should – the place you are living and working in,” said Roberts, a retired surgeon and history buff. “It gives you pride in place. I’m passionate about Blue Hill because I know about its history and heritage.”

As one of the coast’s buzzing summer communities, Blue Hill, which was founded in the 1760s, can be bumper-to-bumper tourists and summer people on a sunny Saturday morning in August. At such times, it’s easy to forget that the boutique-y hotspot was once farmland with mills and a ship-building industry that, in a 60-year period, saw the construction of 130 oceangoing wooden vessels. Its residents also mined copper and quarried granite.

But a walk through Seven Chimneys, a Federal Era brick structure in a meadow on Peters Point, reminds even the most contemporary rusticator that there was life in Blue Hill before tourism and residents “from away” became one of the area’s economic engines. The house, which is featured on the tour, belonged originally to Lemuel Peters, a town official with interests in the shipping industry. Lemuel’s father John, a surveyor from Massachusetts, was one of the town’s founding fathers, and he, too, lived on the property. Both men had 12 children.

In the course of nearly 200 years, the house passed out of the Peters family. Subsequent owners added embellishments: Doric columns, a swimming pool, a sun porch, an expansive northern wing, a carriage house and a looming barn that holds 150 tons of hay. In recent years, the property was transformed into an inn for well-off summer visitors.

But when Diane and Jim Lyon, Manhattanites who have owned a summer home in the area since the late 1960s, heard Seven Chimneys was for sale six years ago, they trekked north from the city in the middle of winter to have a look at it. Both of their daughters, who spent summers in Blue Hill, have children of their own, and the Lyons needed more space. With snow on the ground, they bought the place.

“I saw it as a challenge,” said Diane, who has filled the rooms with her collections of antiques, paintings, etchings and collectibles. “I saw this house as a place we could all be together as a family. And I also felt a sense of wanting it to stay at least the way it was when we found it.”

Although the new owners have made changes of their own – they removed the Doric columns, opened a few walls and moved the driveway from the front to the back of the 23-acre property – the house has not been chic-ified.

“I’m very old fashioned,” said Diane, a former director of admissions at a girls’ school in New York City. “I went through a phase in my childhood of wanting only a washbowl and pitcher. So I guess I was the right person to own this house because I don’t want anything new.”

The tour, which offers admission not only to homes but to history, was jointly organized by and will benefit the historical society and the Jonathan Fisher House, a foundation dedicated to Blue Hill’s first settled minister. Both the Fisher House and the Jeremiah Holt House, which is also on the tour, are regularly open for public visits, as are the sanctuaries for both village churches: the First Congregational Church and the First Baptist Church. But strolls through the other houses on the tour are rare: the brick Seneca Parker House near downtown, the Joseph Wood hour in the “Tide Mill” district, the classical shingle-style Lappahanink summer home on the shore, and the Tuscan-style villa, Arcady, near the reversing falls just outside of town.

Only four months ago, Blue Hill made news when residents overwhelmingly rejected a proposed update of the town’s comprehensive plan. But a view back in time through the houses first erected on the streets can go a long way in creating community spirit.

“Each house has a story, and the story of the past is relevant to the present and to the future as well,” said John Roberts, whose own modified Cape is one of five on the periphery around Seven Chimneys on the point. “For one, the history shows you how resilient Blue Hill can be and may show what is the next stop on the train for this town. It helps to understand the dynamics of the people who lived here. To me, there are solutions to our controversies and the more we know about the history, the better we can get along because we respect each other for that.”

Memoirs, letters and other records will be on display at each of the houses. These are the “ties that bind a small rural community,” say organizers. The houses may have their ghosts and legends, but they also are a reminder that history carries lessons about more than the past.

The 2006 Blue Hill Historic House Tour of 11 Notable Houses will take place 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday, July 20 rain or shine. Tickets cost $25 per person for the self-guided tour and may be purchased in advance at Emerson Antiques on Water Street, North Lights Books on Main Street and Mainescape Garden Shop on South Street in Blue Hill. On the day of the tour, tickets may be purchased at the Jonathan Fisher House, 44 Mines Rd. in Blue Hill. For more information, call 374-9933 or visit: autograff.com/housetour