For the first century of our nation’s existence, the Customs was the Federal system that supplied
the largest source of income to the United States government. In addition to collecting revenue,
Customs Districts also managed important functions for commerce, from registering ships to overseeing
lighthouses.
In this presentation at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 18, in the historic Westport Island Town
Hall, Nathan R. Lipfert, curator emeritus at Maine Maritime Museum, will discuss the customs officers of
Bath Customs District, where they worked, what they did every day, the wide range of
their responsibilities, and the many conflicts of interest they were prone to. Besides
the Custom House in Bath, many river towns had resident officers with satellite offices. In addition to
keeping track of (and charging duties and fees for) vessels and cargoes entering and leaving the river,
responsibilities included measuring and documenting new vessels (a major job on the Kennebec),
managing and funding a marine hospital, recording foreign passenger arrivals, overseeing local
lighthouses, and administering the cod fishing bounty, among other tasks.
The talk will be based on research done for Lipfert’s “The Bath Custom House: Notes on the History of the Customs District and Custom Houses of Bath, Maine.” A brief discussion of the Wiscasset Customs
District, of which Westport was a port of delivery, will be included, with a comparison of the Bath and Wiscasset Custom Houses.
Lipfert served from 1971 to 2017 in various curatorial capacities at MMM: Assistant Curator, Curator,
Library Director, Curator & Library Director, and Senior Curator. He has curated dozens of exhibits,
written many articles, papers, lectures, etc., and ran an annual maritime history symposium for the
Museum from 1993 to 2017. He is the recipient of MMM’s 2011 Mariner of the Year Award, and Maine
Historical Society’s Neal W. Allen Jr. History Award in 2017. He co-authored “Lobstering and the Maine
Coast,” and co-authored and edited “Maine & The Sea: 50 Years of Collecting at Maine Maritime
Museum.” He is the author of the 2021 book “Two Centuries of Maine Shipbuilding: A Visual History,”
which received a John Lyman Book Award (Honorable Mention) from the North American Society for
Oceanic History. He completed “The Bath Custom House” in 2022 and is working on a book on
shipbuilding tools.
The program is open to the public, free of charge (donations appreciated!) For more information, please
email FOWIH19@gmail.com