The Earliest Story

In September 1898, thirteen summer residents of Biddeford Pool gathered at the Sea View Inn to organize a “Club or Reading Room for the season of 1899.”  From this has evolved the present “club for golf, tennis and other games and/or literary and social purposes.”

By its second season, the Aben-a-kee Club had been named, a clubhouse rented, and tennis courts and golf links laid out on leased farm land.  The Club was thus in the vanguard of the movement to form country, as opposed to city, clubs, and to build golf links.

The Abenakee Club was incorporated in 1908.  The by-laws stated that the governing board should consist only of men, though women were the sole directors the first five years.

In the same year the present clubhouse was constructed on land contributed by Mrs. J. Clifford Richardson of neighboring “Stonecliffe.”  She also leased to the Club additional land for part of the golf course.  After her death, her heir renewed the lease with the stipulation that the land not be used on the “Sabbath Day.”

Through other leases, then purchases, over the next thirty years, the golf course was expanded to its present size.  Tournaments (one with a James Montgomery Flagg drawing as a prize) became frequent. In 1913, when five tennis courts were in operation, winners of the ladies’ and men’s tennis tournaments were awarded silver trophies.

The Club became the center for a myriad of different social activities: bridge tournaments, tea parties, vaudeville shows, tableaux, children’s plays, movies, several dances each summer, even a reception for the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, in 1910.  Taft was later elected an honorary member.

—The Abenakee Club of Biddeford Pool, Maine: A Centennial History, by Caroline D. Bain, 1998