A Memorial Day parade passing by the Inness Photo building at 160 Ocean St. in the 1950s. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

We take a look this week at the Inness family that lived in South Portland and ran their popular Inness Photo Service business in our Knightville/Mill Creek neighborhood for over 60 years.

Edwin L. Inness, founder of Inness Photo Service. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

The founder of the company, Edwin L. Inness, was the son of Everett and Alice Inness, and was named after his grandfather, Captain Edwin L. Inness. Capt. Inness was born in 1852 in Nova Scotia and was the first of the family to move to South Portland. He was a fisherman for much of his life, but in his later years worked as a Portland Harbor pilot. He lived at 96 Stanford St. in South Portland.

Capt. Inness’ son Everett also followed a seafaring path, serving as a chief engineer for the U.S. Maritime Service during WWI, and then making a career as a chief engineer for Moore-McCormack Lines (operator of steamship shipping lines). Everett and his wife, Alice, lived in South Portland, for many years at 59 Broadway. By the mid-1930s through World War II, Everett and Alice ran the store at 185 Preble St. in South Portland. This was an old-time store with much of the food stored in barrels, like sugar and molasses, then measured out for customers. During the war, the home at 59 Broadway was taken by the shipyard and demolished (to make way for a shipyard housing complex known as Cushing Village) and they moved into an apartment above the store. They would later live at 4 Drew Road.

Their son Edwin L. Inness was born in 1908, attended neighborhood schools and graduated from South Portland High School in 1926. He attended Northeastern University in Boston. Ed most certainly did not follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, but instead went to work as a staff photographer for the Portland Press Herald and the Evening Express.

In 1929, Ed eloped and married Ruth Whitney in New Hampshire. The marriage didn’t last – they lived with Ed’s parents, but separated a year later and were divorced in 1931. He then married Edith Haines in June of 1932; Edith had also been working at the Portland Press Herald, as a drama critic. These were the Depression years and they first lived with his parents at 59 Broadway. Their first child, Edwin H. “Eddie,” was born in 1933, followed by Jan, Jill and John. In 1942, Ed and Edith bought the home at 69 Clemons St. They lived there until 1944 when they sold that home and bought the home at 30 Richards St. in the Sylvan Site neighborhood.

Ed Inness had already become well known to the local community by 1933, through his work at the newspaper, when he decided to go into business for himself. His photography equipment and film developing business was known as Inness Photo Service and started with a small studio in Portland in 1933. By 1935, he had moved his business to 79 Ocean St. in South Portland; his wife Edith worked as the receptionist in the store. Around 1937, he moved the business down a few storefronts, to 87 Ocean St., and he ran the business there for about 18 years.

As motion pictures with sound were developing into the mainstream, in 1938 Ed became a dealer and distributor of Bell & Howell motion picture equipment. He formed a partnership with Kermit F. Hanson in 1940. Hanson had graduated from South Portland High School in 1924 and had followed an interesting career path that led him to traveling around the world. At one point he worked for Paramount News, filming news reels that appeared in movie theaters. Ed Inness and Kermit Hanson started up a separate company, Inness Photo Visual Equipment Co., that specialized in motion picture equipment and service. Even when Hanson left to serve in the Navy during WWII, the audio-visual company continued side-by-side with Inness Photo at first (Inness Photo Service at 87 Ocean St. and Inness Photo Visual Equipment Co. at 87A Ocean St.). In the late 1940s, they moved the audio-visual business to a storefront in the Masonic building at 111 Ocean St. and Hanson was running that operation. They parted ways in the early 1950s with Hanson continuing to operate the audio-visual business at 111 Ocean St., but under a new business that he established, Headlight Film Service.

Edwin H. “Eddie” Inness, shown here in the store in 1989, took over the business after his father died in 1983. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

In 1955, Ed Inness purchased the home and three lots of land at 160 Ocean St., on the corner of Thomas Street, and moved the business there. His son Eddie, who had served in the Army in 1953, stationed in Germany, joined him in the business in 1955.

Ed and Edith Inness’ daughter Jill made the headlines in a big way in 1962. Jill had graduated from South Portland High School in 1960 and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. During her service in the USMC, she met another Marine, James Cagney Jr., who happened to be the adopted son of the famous movie actor. They both finished their service in August 1962 and immediately made plans to be married. The newspapers ran numerous stories about the wedding on Sept. 6, 1962 was held at the First Congregational Church on Cottage Road. James Cagney and his wife were both in attendance at the wedding. While James Jr. and Jill planned to live in New York state where he would raise cattle on his father’s ranch, James tried it and found that he didn’t like that type of work. When he was in the Marine Corps he had worked for a time as a mechanic. So, with Jill now pregnant, they moved back to South Portland and moved in with Ed and Edith in their home on Richards Street. James Jr. decided he wanted to run a service station, so they were back in the news in February of 1963 when he started working at Roscoe Green’s service station at Pond Cove in Cape Elizabeth, just for a short time, so he could learn the business. He then operated his own Shell station at 414 Forest Ave. in Portland, starting in February 1963, but he apparently didn’t enjoy that line of work either, as he closed the station in June. Their son, James IV, was born the following month. James Jr. and Jill later divorced.

Ed Inness died in 1983 and his son Eddie took over the operation of the business which remained at 160 Ocean St. for many years.

John Inness, who ran the business after his brother Eddie retired in 1990. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

Ed Inness’ son John followed in the same career path, but not in the family business at first. Instead, he made a career in marketing with Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, New York. In his later years, however, he and his wife moved back to this area and he went to work with his brother Eddie at Inness Photo. After Eddie retired in 1990, John bought the business and continued to operate it at 160 Ocean St. The city of South Portland bought the building in 2000 with a plan to demolish it and build a new City Hall behind the current City Hall. John Inness retired in 2001 and sold the business, which moved to Route 1 in Scarborough in 2001, ending a roughly 66-year history of operation in South Portland. The building on Ocean Street was demolished, but the plans for a new City Hall did not move forward.

South Portland Historical Society offers a free Online Museum with nearly 17,000 images available for viewing with a keyword search. You can find it at sphistory.pastperfectonline.com and, if you appreciate what we do, feel free to make a donation by using the donation button on the home page. If you have photographs or other information to share about South Portland’s past, we hope you will reach out to us. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.