![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/colin08.jpg\" "\\"colin08\\"")
<\/a>Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt<\/strong>\u2019s great-great grandparents owned and lived in the landmark brick townhouse that\u2019s our magazine\u2019s headquarters at 165 State Street.<\/p>\nThis came to light when Hunt appeared in the television show Who Do You Think You Are?<\/em> and traced her roots here. There\u2019s a dramatic pause as she opens a moldy journal in Maine Historical Society and the camera traces her finger to her forebears\u2019 address.<\/p>\n Augusta Merrill Hunt (1842-1932) was a pioneering Prohibitionist and a courageous women\u2019s rights advocate. George S. Hunt (1829-1896), her husband, owned a fleet of ships in the West Indies trade, many of them in the sugar trade with Cuba. I\u2019m not saying their relationship was like Helen\u2019s and Paul Reiser\u2019s in the sitcom Mad About You<\/em>, but consider: He\u2019s<\/em> making a killing bringing the crucial ingredient for rum into town (I\u2019ve once heard novelist William H. White call sugar cane \u201crum on the hoof\u201d), while she\u2019s<\/em> busy abolishing it. Far be it from me to suggest the Hunts\u2019 passionate pursuits went to different ends.<\/p>\n George S. Hunt even had a beautiful barque named for him, a rakish craft which slipped unknown past the TV coverage but appears here. The show didn\u2019t discover or mention any of his ships\u2019 names, either, which are music to the ear: Minerva<\/em>, Henry P. Lord<\/em>, Meriwa<\/em>, S.W. Holbrok<\/em>, Winslow<\/em>, Charlena<\/em>, Frank E. Allen<\/em>, Ortolan<\/em>, Sarah B. Crosby<\/em>, Stella<\/em>, Ada Gray<\/em>, Arthur Kinsman<\/em>, Blanche How<\/em>, Eliza White<\/em>, N.M. Haven<\/em>, Rachel<\/em>, Frank E. Allen<\/em>, Minnie Traub<\/em>, Pilot Fish<\/em>, J. Polledo<\/em>, and Manzanilla<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now that\u2019s good Helen hunting.<\/p>\n May 2012 Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt\u2019s great-great grandparents owned and lived in the landmark brick townhouse that\u2019s our magazine\u2019s headquarters at 165 State Street. This came to light when Hunt appeared in the television show Who Do You Think You Are? and traced her roots here. There\u2019s a dramatic pause as she opens a moldy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-5781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-may-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14477,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions\/14477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"