This Beautiful Mansion in Maine Used to Be the Home of a U.S. Vice President

Paris Hill is a village in Oxford County, Maine that looks stuck in time. Most houses on Parils Hill were built between 1800 and 1860, including a home where a United States Vice President was born.

Vice President Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin was born on August 27, 1809, in the home he would later inherit. As an adult, he had an interest in law and politics and went on to become Vice President of the United States under President Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

Paris Hill Village

The village of Paris Hill was, at one point, where the majority of businesses were in the first half of the 1800s. When the Grand Trunk Railroad came to Paris, the business district moved from Paris Hill to South Paris. The Paris Hill Village is still visited by tourists regularly.

Hannibal Hamlin Mansion

Shortly after Hanibal Hamlin was born, his father, Cyrus Hamlin, built a three-story white house with large windows that looked out over the New Hampshire mountains on one side and the Paris Hill Common on the other.

Since then the home has had several additions it and today it is 6,000 square feet in size and has six bedrooms. In 1979 it became listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today it's owned by the Bahre family who still live in the house after the passing of Bob Bahre, the well-known businessman, developer, and auto-racing entrepreneur who owned many businesses in the Oxford Hills including Oxford Plains Speedway and the Oxford Shopping Plaza.

News Center Maine's 207 did a story in July of 2024 for Paris Hill's Founder's Day that features the Hanibal Hamlin mansion among the other sites to see on Paris Hill.