The farm located at 372 Fields Pond Road in Orrington has had more than one owner. M.J. Curran purchased the property in 1914 from Arthur Conquest, who had run it as a horse farm for several years. The road, the adjacent 85-acre pond, and the farm itself bears the name of the first to claim title to the farm property in 1804, Peter Field. The farm included the present 31 acre site of the non-profit living history farm and museum entity, The Curran Homestead, 192 acres donated to the Maine Audubon Society and the site of the Fields Pond Audubon Center which also includes much of the perimeter of the pond and an island in its midst. A small portion of the original property was sold to satisfy the demands of the estate of Catherine Curran, which also included the bequest of the remainder of the property to one or more non-profits.
The property had likely been the site of squatters since colonial times until as late as the last quarter of the 18th century when Peter Field purchased the property which originally only included an approximation of the current pond having been damed or the purpose of paper manufacturing at its opposite end much later.
Miss Catherine Curran passed away five weeks after her brother Alfred in 1991, who had co-owned the farm with his brother Edward since the death of their father M.J. Curran in 1941. Alfred willed the farm to Catherine, his last living sibling of the five Curran children ( that also included: Frank, who served as the head administrator of the Eastern Maine Medical Center, Edward, and Michael) and had planned with her the perpetuation of the farm as they had known it during their lives through its eventual ownership by one or more non-profit entities.
The present 501 c3 non-profit entity The Curran Homestead, Inc. came to the site in 1993, and through volunteers spent much of the next fifteen years raising money and working at saving the deteriorated main barn and ell, farmhouse, Field House, and other farm outbuildings from certain loss. Some of the work, the replacing of sills and footings to the barn and ell, was contracted out as specialized tools and skills were needed. Although the buildings have had extensive repaits, their maintenance is continuous and in order to insure this the organization always welcomes donations and volunteers for both its facilities and the realization of its educational mission. |
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