Reach View-Richard Currier Homestead (HOM.30)
Photos and text about the Richard Currier Homestead
Reach View-Richard Currier Homestead
An early photo of Reach View and Reach Road
History of Reach View by Elizabeth Richardson
Reach View has been home to members of the Currier family and their descendants since the late 1700s. Richard Currier, born Dec. 7, 1773, in New Hampshire, first built a small home on land he bought in 1797 from his future father-in-law, The Rev. Ebenezer Eaton, one of the original proprietors and settlers of Plantation 4. In 1799, Richard married Abigail Eaton, daughter of Ebenezer and Abigail Herrick Eaton. They lived together in Reach View until Richard died in 1859. Richard willed Reach View to their unmarried son Ebenezer Eaton Currier, who lived there with his mother until her death in 1870. He was responsible for rebuilding much of the house after 1864, when it was hit by lightning and seriously damaged.
Eben’s niece Abigail Currier Coombs and her husband Elbridge Coombs moved to Reach View shortly after the death of his mother in 1870, in order to care for “Uncle Eben” who sold it to them two years later. After the death of his wife in childbirth, Charles A. Holden bought it from the Coombs in 1887. His mother Harriet Maria Currier Holden, who was a sister of Eben Currier, wanted to return to her home to raise her grandchildren Bess, Constance and Charlie. They planted trees and expanded the house by adding the bay windows and piazza. Constance Holden inherited it upon the death of her father in 1919. In 1923, she married the Coombs’ grandson Clinton L. Cole, who died in 1936. In 1950, Constance Holden Cole gave the house to her niece Constance DuBose Jones, who passed it on to her daughter Elizabeth Jones Richardson. In 2014, she put it in trust for her son Owen Sidney Richardson.
Reach View, circa 1900. In 1864 the house was hit by lightning and partially destroyed but Ebenezer Currier, Richard and Abigal’s son, rebuilt it.
1870 obituary of Richard’s wife, Abigail Eaton:
“Sedgwick, June 13, widow ABIGAIL CURRIER, relict of the late Richard Currier, age 89 years, 4 months, 15 days. The deceased was one of eight children, four sons and four daughters, of the late Rev. Ebenezer Eaton, one of the pioneers in the cause of Christ in the days of the fathers. Seven of the children are now in their last resting place. The subject of this notice declared herself to be on the Lord’s side and publicly united with the people of God in Sedgwick July 1822.”1
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1 Ellsworth American, Ellsworth, Maine, June 13, 1870.