“That’s going to be cool,” Alton King IV, 13, said about the basketball hoop in the lot of the old Alna town office. Meeting with the Wiscasset Newspaper Friday, he and brothers Elijah, 14, Christian, 16, and Mathew, 12, all Pearsons, and sister McKayla King, 14, also started figuring out which trees will be good to climb.

Their sisters Hannah King, 2, and Allyson King, 4, ran on and off the handicap ramp and smiled and laughed as Hannah opened the mail slot of the door town officials and other residents, until recently, passed through to register their cars, pay their taxes, and meet.

July 24 at the new town office next door on Route 218, selectmen accepted Jean Bradford and fiancé Alton King III’s $125,000 offer on the early 1800s cape. The couple plan to make it a home again, for them and their seven children. “I couldn’t be more excited,” Jean Bradford said hours after selectmen’s 3-0 vote.

The town’s asking price at forsalebyowner.com was $130,000. 

“So that’s good news,” Second Selectman Doug Baston said. 

“Very good news,” First Selectman Melissa Spinney said.

The town has planned to use the sale money to finish the new town office and maintain town buildings. After the meeting, Spinney said she was happy the cape was going to a family, and just weeks after it went on the market. She had expected to have to show it many times, Spinney said.

Asked later what made her want to get the cape, Bradford said: “I was first intrigued by the fact it was the Alna town hall, so I checked out the address on Google maps and saw it had two acres with it and a beautiful lawn which is what I wanted most for my kids to have a nice yard to play in. So my realtor set up the showing and I fell in love with it. The fact that it has history is fascinating and it has so much still original to it.

“Plenty of space for my seven children and no kitchen? No problem. Alton is a man who can do anything! This house has everything we've been looking for and I couldn't pass it up!”

King is a carpenter with Ward & Sons Construction in Wiscasset. He wants to keep the two-century-old home as close to original as possible. He took Allyson to see it and she played around the ramp, as people were gardening over at the new town office, he said. “She was so happy.”

The couple who plan to go from Bath renters to Alna homeowners also like having the fire station on the other side of the road. 

Friday, Bradford eyed some budding flowers out front she wanted to identify. She and the children talked about making a half court at the hoop to play horse.