Fort Fairfield house tour offers historic, modular

Historical to modular, restored to contemporary, homes are featured in the House and Garden Tour from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 28, in Fort Fairfield, to benefit Frontier Heritage Historical Society.

Tickets are $25 by advance sale only.

For reservations, send a check or money order for FHHS in care of Jean Deschesne, 51 Elm St., Fort Fairfield 04742, or in care of Mavis Towle, 19 Milk St., Fort Fairfield, 04742.

Tickets, including maps and descriptions, can be picked up from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. the day of the tour at the historic Friends Church, Route 1A, Fort Fairfield.

For more information, call Deschesne, 473-7273, or Towle, 472-4041.

The tour includes the 100-year-old, Queen Anne-style, 21-room Philo H. Reed house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been in the Reed family for four generations.

It was nice to talk with Ruth Reed Mraz, who told me that she and her brother, former ambassador and Maine Gov. John H. Reed, grew up in that house, which now is owned by P.H. Reed’s great-granddaughter Rayle Reed and her husband, Edward Ainsworth.

Unfortunately, the house had broken pipes, floods and heat damage in 2006, but has been restored and includes many antiques. Mraz will be there to tell you all about that and the home’s history.

Other homes are Peter G. Hunt Jr.’s “handsome Four-square Craftsman,” Mraz wrote, the “customized modular home of the Rev. Mark and Claudette Babin; the Bill and Dawn Findley country farmhouse “that began life as a granary in the 1880s,” and the “contemporary bilevel home of Tim and Susan Oldenberg.”

The “jazz piano stylings” of Kent Hewitt are featured at this week’s SummerKeys’ Mary Potterton Memorial Concert at 7:30 tonight at Lubec Congregational Christian Church, Ann Carter wrote.

There is no admission fee, but donations for the piano fund are welcome, and intermission refreshments will be provided by Monica’s Chocolates.

From Kathy Gagnon we learn the Millinocket Historical Society will open the town museum to the public from 1 to 3 p.m. Thursdays, July 19 and July 26, in the municipal building on Penobscot Avenue.

The MHS “is also seeking donations to purchase materials to help with the efforts to preserve the collection of photographs, clothing and other items in the museum,” Gagnon wrote.

The MHS meets at 6:30 p.m. the third Thursday of each month in the courtroom, “and anyone interested is welcome to attend,” she added.

Lynn Curtis King e-mailed that the Seal Harbor Library will be host to two fundraisers.

The first is a silent auction beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday, July 19, at the library on New County Road in Seal Harbor.

You will enjoy appetizers while bidding on books signed by Maine authors including Dorie McCullough Lawson, Stephen King, Martha Stewart, David Rockefeller, Philip Conkling, Martha Tod Dudman and Peter Bachelder, King wrote.

You also will hear from University of Maine professor Steve Hornsby, who has information and photographic plates from the “Historical Atlas of Maine,” which will be published later this year.

The second fundraiser is an evening with Maine author Sanford Phippen, which follows the silent auction at 6 that evening, at the Church of the Holy Family on Main Street in Seal Harbor.

The Hancock native “will read from various published works, share stories and anecdotes of the Mount Desert Island area,” King explained, “and discuss some of his new works,” including the above book, to which he is a contributing author.

For more information, call the library at 276-5306.

Randy Adkins is chairman of the 61st annual Orono-Old Town Kiwanis Charity Auction, reports fellow Kiwanian George Gonyar of Orono.

This year’s highly successful fundraiser begins when gates open at 5 p.m. each day Thursday, July 19 through Saturday, July 21, at the Kiwanis Barn on Forest Avenue in Orono.

At the sale, as usual, you will find great bargains in the Book, Toy and Trash and Treasure Barns.

Items available will range from new to used and include furniture, cars, bikes, televisions, lawnmowers, gift certificates and many other pieces of merchandise in the auction tent.

A raffle and food sale complement the activities Saturday, and Gonyar promises that if you attend and help the Orono-Old Town Kiwanis raise money for its many and varied charities, “you’ll have a great time!”

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.