GORHAM – The Hamblen family, among the earliest settlers in Gorham, will be honored at this year’s two-day Gorham Founders Festival.

The Hamblen descendants will be feted at the opening reception from 5:30-7 p.m. on Friday, July 25, that kicks off the founders festival. The event continues on Saturday, July 26. The town will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its incorporation in 1764.

Charlie Hamblen, 54, this week talked about the struggles that faced his forebears, who carved from the wilds the farm where he and his family live today. His ancestors built the house 226 years ago.

He said Jacob Hamblen, who most likely arrived about 1743, was among the first 10 families to arrive in what was then called Narragansett No. 7. Charlie Hamblen described hardships of the settlers, who cut trees by hand and pulled out stumps with ox power.

“They were hardworking guys,” Hamblen said. “They worked until they died.”

Marcena (Hamblen) Phillips said on Tuesday that the early Hamblen family lived in the fort for protection. She said the women and children stayed inside the fort while men and boys tended the crops during the days.

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” she said about crowded fort conditions.

Charlie Hamblen is the son of former longtime Town Councilor Calvin Hamblen, who lives on the home farm.

Phillips and Charlie Hamblen are cousins. Phillips, daughter of Henry Hamblen, who is 87, grew up in a farmhouse her parents inherited on Libby Avenue.

Charlie Hamblen and his wife, Deidre, raised their four children on their 100-acre farm off Gray Road that has been in their family for several generations. Hamblen’s ancestors bought the land in 1783 and built the house in 1788.

He said their property was honored years ago as one of Cumberland County’s three bicentennial farms that had been continuously owned by the same family for 200 years.

“We’re still here keeping house lots off,” he said.

The farm today produces hay and hops. There are three beef cows and a family garden.

In times past, Hamblen, who works for Acadia Insurance Co. in Westbrook, said the farm had 50 cows.

“George Hamblen was the first on the land,” Charlie Hamblen said.

An oil painting of George Hamblen hangs on a wall in the home. The Hamblens traded six barrels of cured hog meat for the corner beams of the house. “It’ still standing 200 years later,” he said.

The house, situated on a hill, had a well in the cellar, while a spring was some distance away near what is now Gray Road. The farmland rolls down to Little River.

“That’s the way it was 200 years ago,” Charlie Hamblen said as he surveyed the landscape.

Hamblen said his great-grandfather, Albert Hamblen, was the family’s last to earn a living on the farm.

“He drove wagons into Portland to sell hay to the stables,” he said.

Joseph Hamblen, Charlie’s grandfather, took over the farm in 1913. But he earned a living delivering mail in White Rock. He drove a horse on his route before switching to cars.

Gorham’s founding families endured cold winters and muggy summers in a wilderness without roads.

“They were looking for opportunity,” Charlie Hamblen said. “Opportunity was the land.”

Through the centuries, the Hamblen ancestors suffered through some harsh storms. In 1906, high winds blew down their barn, and some years later in the 1920s or 1930s, telephone poles to the farm were downed in an ice storm.

Many of Charlie Hamblen’s ancestors are buried in a cemetery on the farm they worked.

Phillips said 27 Hamblen descendants live in Gorham today. She and Charlie both plan on attending the upcoming founders festival.

“Can’t forget the heritage,” Charlie Hamblen said.

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A CLOSER LOOK

The Westbrook Gorham Community Chamber of Commerce sponsors this year’s fourth Gorham Founders Festival, Friday, July 25-Saturday, July 26, at the field adjacent to the Narragansett Elementary School on Main Street. ?

For an updated schedule, see https://sites.google.com/site/gorhamfoundersfestival2014/.

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Charlie and Deidre Hamblen and their son Grant, 15, are pictured at the farm Hamblen ancestors founded in 1783. Many of the Hamblen forebears are buried here in the family cemetery at the farm. 

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