Tate House Museum
Sited on a knoll overlooking the 18th century mast yard on the banks of the Fore River in the Stroudwater Village section of Portland, Tate House – an elegant Georgian townhouse with a unique clerestory set in a gambrel roof – was built in 1775 for George and Mary Tate and their family. George Tate, the senior mast agent to the British Navy, held a prominent position in the colonies because Britain’s naval supremacy depended on a steady supply of masts that came from logging the massive white pines in New England. By law all white pine trees over twenty four inches in diameter were the property of the King and were marked with the sign of a “broad arrow” (three axe slashes). George Tate was responsible for the overseeing of the marking, removal, and the Fore River so they could be transported to the great shipbuilding cities in England. Like the tax on tea, the broad arrow mark came to symbolize the tyranny of the Crown and reactions to the Broad Arrow Policies (the precursor of eminent domain) helped to foment the Revolution in the Province of Maine. Tate House Museum stands as a physical reminder of the economic importance of the colonial mast trade and its role in our history as a source of the American Revolution.
Having survived the destruction of Falmouth during the Revolution and the fires that devastated Portland in the nineteenth century, Tate House is the only pre-Revolutionary home in Greater Portland open to the public.
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