In Blue Hill Village opposite the Town Hall, stands a grand, white clapboard house with four chimneys set in brick ends.

This house was built in 1830 for Sea Captain Joseph Mann, during the time when sailing ships were in their glory! From virgin forests, over 100 ships were built by Blue Hill men, who sailed them to all corners of the world.

Wives and mothers kept the home fires burning, waiting for the return of their husbands and sons. Hardly a family was spared the loss at sea of a loved one in those days. Such was the fate of Captain Mann. His last ship, the Wyandotte, was lost at sea will all hands on board, in the Gulf of Mexico in 1842.

In 1871, the house was sold to Issac Merrill, another Sea Captain who, for over 50 years, sailed Blue Hill ships for Blue Hill people, taking his last ship out of Blue Hill Bay as Captain, at the age of 74! Merrill's wife and Mann's wife were both Hinkleys, and cousins, and through their genealogical lines can be traced back to the Mayflower, and to one of the two first settlers of Blue Hill: Joesph Wood.

Merrills lived and thrived in the house till the late 1940's, when it was sold to another family who lived in it for two generations. The great-grand-daughter of Captain Issac Merrill, Jane Hemmerly-Brown, and her husband Dan, bought it back in 1980. In 1994, after raising their family in the house, they renovated the house and created the Captain Issac Merrill Inn, and in so doing and exciting chapter in the history of Blue Hill in the 1800's has been brought back to life.