Stephen and Patience Young Longfellow lived in the Longfellow Farm in Gorham. Stephen was a representative and senator in the Massachusetts legislature and served as a judge.

Their son Stephen, also a lawyer, was the father of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who spent time as a child with his grandparents at the farm.

The elder Longfellow had hundreds of elms set out on the 500 acres in 1787. The property became known as "The Elms."