General’s Federal

From the narrow windows of his 1799 Federal above Lincolnville’s Ducktrap Harbor, General George Ulmer could survey his small empire. He’d achieved success quickly and, by some accounts, ruthlessly, in the years following the Revolutionary War, when he and his brother, Philip, also a veteran, claimed thousands of acres of timberland in the Ducktrap area of Lincolnville and built sawmills, a shipyard, and a toll bridge. Serving as a land agent for General Henry Knox earned Ulmer political appointments as a sheriff, justice of the peace, and tax collector, further amplifying his wealth.

The square, hipped-roof home on South Cobbtown Road is as imposing as the tall, broad-shouldered General George Ulmer was purported to be. A five-panel door with latticed sidelights and a four-light transom and decorative inverted cove brackets below the cornice telegraph his refined taste. But Ulmer’s fortunes deteriorated rapidly in the face of natural disasters and sour business deals, and he sold his home a little over a decade after it was built. Slightly altered — most notably with the addition of a 20th-century columned porch — it remains a mighty testament to one of Lincolnville’s wealthiest turn-of-the-19th-century residents.