Harpswell’s Captain Johnson H. Stover Jr. House is a Federal-style knockout.

As Bill McLin puts it, he and Mac McKeon are “caretakers of the best of the past.” They have two historic wooden yachts, 30 classic cars, and two mid-century modern homes, one in Maryland, the other Palm Springs. Their third home, on Stover’s Cove in Harpswell, is much older. Built in 1808 by Captain Johnson H. Stover Jr., a grandson of one of Harpswell’s early settlers, it was the largest and finest house on “the Neck” at the time. McLin and McKeon, longtime summer residents of Harpswell, had admired it for years before they bought it in 2016. Among the things that attracted them: how little it had been altered and the quality of its construction. Even in the wildest weather on the exposed Neck, McLin says, “There isn’t a creak or a groan.”