FREEPORT, Maine — About 50 people at the Freeport Historical Society’s annual meeting initially sat in stunned silence Sunday evening after retired Cole Haan CEO George Denney announced he would donate $1 million to the organization.
Then they “erupted into applause,” Jim Cram, the society’s executive director, said Tuesday.
Denney of Freeport is a past board member who is “very active” with the historical society, according to Cram, and was primarily responsible for the iron fence that lines the society’s headquarters, the Harrington House, on Main Street.
He declined, through Cram, to speak to the Bangor Daily News.
The donation comes at a critical time for the organization, as board members work to address structural issues at the Harrington House. Cram said the board was about to begin a capital campaign to raise about $900,000 to fix the building’s roof, which sports tarps in several places, and to build a new archival vault for a collection that includes original deeds, daybooks from doctors’ offices and ship captains’ logs dating to the early 1700s.
“The vault has been studied for 25 years,” Cram said. “We need a true archival vault that is fireproof and has HVAC, to protect our documents from fire and humidity.”
Board members will meet again Thursday to begin to develop a plan.
“We’re taking this seriously,” Cram said. “We want to try to match it with additional grants and donations. The intent is to put a lot of money into an endowment and leave the organization stronger.”
Construction of the vault is scheduled to begin in 2017, and Cram hopes it will be open by 2019, when they celebrate the historical society’s 50th anniversary.
Meanwhile, the society is moving forward with a new project based at Mast Landing, the site of a 100-foot granite dam that once was part of a sawmill, grist mill and spindle mill near the shipbuilding operation.
Working with local public school students, the historical society plans to develop an illustrated history of Freeport during the next several years, beginning with Mast Landing and then moving to neighborhoods, such as Porters Landing and South Freeport, according to Cram.