Maine Connection to Faneuil Hall

Perched above the roofline — a rooster, a horse, a whale — turning slowly in the wind. Most people drive past them without a second thought. They read as decoration, as charm, as something old that nobody replaced. But someone made that. And the story of who made the most famous one in America starts right here in Maine.

The Man from Kittery

Shem Drowne was born in December of 1683, near Sturgeon Creek in what is now Eliot, York County, Maine — the third son of Leonard Drowne, a shipbuilder who had come over from Cornwall, England. His father helped organize the first Baptist Church in Maine. When King William’s War brought raids and violence to Maine’s English settlements, the Drowne family eventually moved to Boston in 1699.

Shem made his life there, establishing a metalworking shop on Ann Street in the North End and becoming a highly respected member of Boston society. He became deacon of the First Baptist Church in 1721. According to the colonial diarist Thomas Newell, Drowne was the first tinplate worker ever to come to Boston, New England. He was also, as it turned out, America’s first documented weathervane maker.

A Working Instrument

Before weather forecasting, before radar, before any of it — the weathervane was a serious tool. Farmers read them before planting. Sailors before leaving harbor. Fishermen before deciding whether to go out at all. Knowing which way the wind was blowing wasn’t a curiosity. It was a condition of a good decision.

The forms people chose told you something about their lives. Along the Maine coast, it was fish and ships and seabirds. Inland, horses and roosters and cattle. The weathervane above your barn was a quiet declaration: this is what we pay attention to.

Drowne’s lasting legacy is in four copper weathervanes he crafted, three of which still mark the skyline of greater Boston: the rooster atop the First Church of Cambridge, the swallowtail banner on Old North Church, and his last and most famous — the grasshopper on the cupola of Faneuil Hall, completed in 1742.

The Grasshopper

The Faneuil Hall grasshopper is not a small object. It is copper, gilded in gold leaf, with glass doorknobs for eyes — fifty-two inches long, thirty-eight pounds. It was modeled after the grasshopper atop the Royal Exchange in London, a globally recognized symbol of commerce. Peter Faneuil was a wealthy merchant, and his intent was likely to attract business to the new market by echoing that recognizable symbol.

It has turned with the wind above Faneuil Hall for nearly three hundred years.

In 1755, an earthquake knocked it to the ground. Drowne’s son Thomas repaired it and placed a note inside the grasshopper’s belly — addressed “to my brethren and fellow grasshoppers.” A weathervane with a letter inside it, written by the maker’s son, sitting undiscovered above one of the busiest intersections in Boston. That detail alone is worth stopping on.

The Theft

In 1974, the grasshopper was stolen from its rooftop perch. A detective who was a direct descendant of Paul Revere was placed in charge of the case. The culprit turned out to be a steeplejack who confessed to the theft hoping to get a plea bargain on a drug charge. The grasshopper was recovered, re-gilded, and remounted — this time with a locking mechanism.

Some things are worth securing.

The Twin

Here is the part most people don’t know. Drowne made two grasshoppers. The second one, nearly identical to the Faneuil Hall original, was made around the same time — also for the Faneuil family. Historians didn’t even know it existed until recently. It had originally been installed on Peter Faneuil’s house in Boston, then ended up on a barn in New Hampshire, and eventually came to be owned by a family in New Jersey — before experts traced its provenance back to Drowne.

In January 2023, Sotheby’s put it up for auction as part of their Important Americana sale. It sold for well over half a million dollars.

Nearly three hundred years after Shem Drowne hammered it into shape in a North End shop — a Maine boy’s work, turning up in a New Hampshire barn, selling at Sotheby’s for more than most Maine houses.

What the Wind Tells You

June is when Mainers start paying this kind of attention again. After a long winter of reading the forecast and hoping, the wind shifts — and suddenly it’s worth watching.

At Maine Home Connection, we think about that a lot. Knowing which way things are moving. Reading conditions carefully before advising someone on one of the most significant decisions of their life. It’s not so different from what Shem Drowne understood, standing at his workbench in Boston — a Maine boy, paying close attention to the wind.

Until next time — imagine more.