Built in 1871, she is the oldest known two-masted schooner in the United States, and one of a small number of this once-common form of vessel in active service.

[5] According to the current owners' website and to researcher and author Virginia L. Thorndike, the schooner was built by the sons of Maine storekeeper Lewis R. French and named for their father.

In Thorndike's book Windjammer Watching on the Coast of Maine, the author writes that the three sons had an agreement with their father that he would finance the building of the vessel, and yet he never did.

[7] Garth Wells and his wife Jenny Tobin operated the schooner until April 2022,[8] when they sold the business to Captain Becky Wright and Nathan Sigouin.

[3] She is the oldest two-masted schooner in the United States (slightly older than Stephen Taber, also built in 1871), and is one of only two that has a full keel (the other, the Governor Stone, is also a National Historic Landmark).