James Sullivan, born in Berwick, Maine in 1744, came to Biddeford in 1769 and around 1770 built a two-room house at the corner of Main and Hill Streets; by 1774 he had enlarged it into one of the best houses in the village. The first residential lawyer in the Saco River community, he lived there until 1778, served as a representative to The First Provincial Congress, and was appointed the King's Counsel for York County. After moving to Massachusetts, he served on the Massachusetts Supreme Court, authored the first history of Maine, The History of the District of Maine in 1795, and was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1807 and re-elected in 1808. The home's second occupant was Edmont Coffin, a town clerk of Biddeford, and fire destroyed the house in early 1900.