Home and Shop of Polly Porterfield

1296 Westbrook Street

Polly Porterfield (1780-1854) and her sister Peggy owned and operated what we would view today as a gift shop out of her house, the “West India Company.” She never married and was called the “spinster of Durham.” She would offer neighborhood boys peppermint sticks if they would pick up twigs in her yard and bring them to her. Polly is interred in the Stroudwater Burying Ground on Westbrook Street, which is adjacent to her home on the corner of Westbrook and Congress Streets.