The first house in Portland built entirely of brick was erected in 1785, by General Peleg Wadsworth, who was Adjutant-General of Massachusetts during the Revolution; it is now known as the Longfellow house, and stands next above the Preble House, on Congress Street. The poet was not born in this house, but was brought to it as an infant, and it was his home until his marriage, in 1831. It is now owned and occupied by his sister, Mrs. Pierce, who has provided that eventually it shall become the property of the Maine Historical Society, which ensures its preservation as a reminder that Maine gave our country its most widely known and best-loved poet. The house in which Longfellow was born is the three-story frame building at the corner of Fore and Hancock Streets. Around the corner, on Hancock Street, is the house in which Speaker Reed was born. For his services in the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts gave General Wadsworth a large tract of land in Oxford County, to improve which he removed to Hiram, and the family of his son-in-law, Stephen Longfellow, thereafter occupied his residence in Portland. To the end of his life, the poet made this house his home whenever he visited the scenes of his youth, and many of his best poems were written there. The central part of the hotel adjoining was the mansion of Commodore Edward Preble, built just before his death in 1807, and some of the best rooms in this hotel have still the wood-carving and other ornamentation given them by the hero of Tripoli. A grandson of the Commodore was one of the officers of the _Kearsarge_ when that ship sunk the rebel cruiser _Alabama_, in the most picturesque naval engagement of modern times.