Property History
Long before King's Landing welcomed its first guests, this hilltop above the east cove of Moosehead Lake was home to one of Greenville's founding families: the Sawyers. For generations it was known as the Sawyer House, and later the Captain Sawyer House, and its story runs straight through the early days of the town and the golden age of steamboating on the lake.
An early Greenville family
The Sawyers were among Greenville's earliest settlers, having migrated north from Saco. Henry P. Sawyer's grandfather, Andrew Stackpole Sawyer, had put down roots in the young town by the 1850s. The family home still stands high on a hill on Lakeview Street, overlooking the lake and within an easy walk of the village. Local accounts place it among the oldest houses in Greenville, with its origins traced variously to the 1830s and to an 1849 farmhouse.
A carpenter, a courtship, and a steamboat
Henry P. Sawyer (1850-1909), son of Arthur B. Sawyer (1821-1910) and Eunice (Lombard) Sawyer, came to the region as a young carpenter. In 1877 he traveled up to the Roach River House at what is now Kokadjo to build an addition to the hotel, and there he met Louisa May Davis. The two married in 1879 and settled in Greenville, where Henry threw himself into the lumber trade, buying and rebuilding sawmills and, after one mill burned in 1882, cutting the timber for a home and raising it by hand before the year was out.
His ambitions soon reached up the lake. In 1883 the Sawyers hauled mill machinery across the ice to Kineo, where the lumber they sawed framed a new mill, then the Kineo Annex and boarding house, and in time the grand Mount Kineo House. By 1884 they were back in Greenville running a large mill at the end of Lake View Street. A few years later Henry turned to the water for good, building a steamboat in the mid-1880s and christening her the Louisa in his wife's honor. From his years of shipbuilding and navigation on Moosehead Lake he became known simply as Captain Sawyer. His father, Arthur, followed him north, moving to Greenville after 1880 and living out his last years in the family home.
The steamboat era
The Louisa and the steamers that followed carried mail, freight, and passengers to the sporting camps and grand hotels scattered around the lake. Competition for that trade was spirited: by one well-loved account, Captain Sawyer and a rival captain of the Coburn line each bought a bicycle and could be seen racing across the two-mile Northeast Carry, each angling to coax travelers emerging from the woods aboard his own boat. Louisa worked at her husband's side, helping ready the boats between runs.
Henry and Louisa raised three children on the water: Stillman (1880-1961), Fred (1884-1951), and Florence (1886-1972). Stillman grew up watching his father build steamboats and became an engineer and builder in his own right, constructing the Twilight in 1910; Fred worked the lake for years as a captain, engineer, and mail-boat man. For decades the Sawyer men helped shape the commerce and character of early Greenville and Moosehead Lake.
"Grammy Upstairs"
Louisa May (Davis) Sawyer (1856-1957) outlived her husband by nearly half a century and became a beloved Greenville figure, famously independent well into her nineties. She thought nothing of spending whole winters deep in the woods with family at Camp Ogontz, and a newspaper of the day admired her plain refusal "to grow old." To later generations she was known with great affection as "Grammy Upstairs," for the rooms of the family home where she lived for as long as the grandchildren could remember.
Her son Stillman kept the home into his final years, and over time the house was altered and enlarged with each new chapter of family life.
The Captain Sawyer House
In time the home became a bed and breakfast. Its later owners, Ted and Donna Savery, knew it simply as the Sawyer House, but in tribute to the seafaring family behind it they renamed it the Captain Sawyer House. In the summer of 2000, a Sawyer family reunion drew dozens of descendants of Greenville's earliest settlers back to the home to share their memories of growing up beneath "Grammy Upstairs."
A new chapter
While the original home is long gone, this property still carries the legacy of those who first called this beautiful stretch of Moosehead Lake home. King's Landing is a comprehensive revitalization to honor that spirit, blending the charm of the past with modern character and one-of-a-kind local artist-designed luxury, all in a place where people have gathered for generations to share community and traditions.