Peleg Wadsworth built a two-story brick house on what was then Back Street in Portland in 1785-86. He and his wife, Elizabeth, raised 10 children there.

Their daughter Zilpah and her husband Stephen Longfellow raised their family in the house and, in 1815, added a third story.

The Longfellow's daughter Anne Longfellow Pierce donated the house to Maine Historical Society in 1901 as a memorial to her brother, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

This image appeared in the Portland Evening Telegram on June 1, 1941 under the headline, "Efforts of Longfellow Garden Club Make Poet's Garden Mecca for Visitors to City."