SANFORD – The historic Goodall Mansion, home of the town’s 19th-century textile baron and his descendants, has gone on the market for $500,000.

“Things are progressing; we’ve had eight showings. There’s an awful lot of interest in the building,” said Arlene Fortier of DeWolfe Real Estate, broker for the property.

Built in 1871, the 18-room mansion was home to Englishman Thomas Goodall, who was 44 when he moved to Sanford with his family in 1867. He built textile mills that employed as many as 6,000 workers.

The mansion on 21/2 acres in downtown Sanford is shielded from Main Street by rows of pine trees planted years ago by Virgil Pitstick, husband of Thomas Goodall’s great-granddaughter, Ruth.

Ruth Pitstick died in 1997 but two years before her death, she and her husband planned to turn the property over to the National Trust at the end of this year.

“The time comes when you have to scale down,” Virgil Pitstick said in an interview just days before an August auction of much of the mansion’s contents. “This has become a back-breaker financially, what with the upkeep, the taxes, insurance and maintenance.”

Part of the proceeds from the sale of the property will go into an endowment fund to enforce easements. The trust will monitor the property every two years, said Marilyn Kochan, director of the National Trust’s Gifts of Heritage program.

The Goodalls were a private family, and few townspeople have been inside the mansion, Fortier noted. But during the auction preview, many came to view the graceful staircase from the main hall to the upstairs, and to walk through the rooms where the family lived, held parties and raised children.

“The general repair of the building is good,” Fortier said, noting that the National Trust would prefer that the mansion be sold as a single-family dwelling. Some prospective buyers would use it for that purpose, while others have considered the possibility of a home and offices, or a bed-and-breakfast.

Besides the mansion, the property includes a mission-style caretaker’s cottage, with three bedrooms and two baths.