ORIGIN STORIES
First Nations
From the time that the French established a fort at Port Royal in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada in 1607, and the English settled Plimouth in what is now Massachusetts in 1620 and Portsmouth (New Castle) in 1623, their national rivalries and imperial intentions played out against the “First Nations” people who had inhabited the northeast North American coast for 10,000 years. After the decimating epidemic of 1616-19 and war with the Iroquois, the First Nations of the four Maine coastal alliances and families had formed a confederacy of the Wabanaki, the “people of the dawnland.” The meeting in Portsmouth July 11-14, 1713 was important for the First Nations diplomacy employed, the acknowledgement of a New Hampshire governing Council separate from Massachusetts, and for the impact it had on opening the Portsmouth door to development as a commercial and military hub on the frontier.
The last decades of the 1600s were tumultuous ones for Portsmouth. Land title problems caused by conflicting political claims in England to the land of the original New Hampshire proprietors and politico-religious differences in the province contributed to instability. The earliest settlers were Anglicans—Ambrose Gibbons, Henry Sherburne and Thomas Walford were among the most prominent. But by 1650, Puritans, including John, Richard and Robert Cutt, dominated Portsmouth. New Hampshire was a part of Massachusetts. The town, as others in New Hampshire, grew slowly through the 1680s.
During the 1690s, King William’s War accelerated growth in Portsmouth. Major landowners began to subdivide their holdings; refugees from the decimated Maine and interior New Hampshire towns swelled the population, and the market for naval stores supported greater exports. The Treaty signed with the Wabanaki in 1713 allowed for resettlement of the interior and profitable trade with the First Nations. Portsmouth, already a hub of mercantile activity, grew rapidly. This was also the first treaty the New Hampshire Council had signed as a recognized body separate from Massachusetts. Merchant families such as Pepperrell, Wentworth, Sherburne, Jaffrey and Rindge took advantage of these opportunities.
The Sherburne House (c.1695-1703) at Strawbery Banke and the Jackson House (c. 1664) on the bank of the North Mill Pond are the sole existing buildings from that time period and the last physical connections with the earliest period of history at “Strawberry Banke” -- the original name, from the 1600s of the settlement here on the Piscataqua River.
Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail
Documentary evidence indicates that the African Burying Ground was in use as early as 1705. The area that is now Chestnut Street was an undeveloped parcel on the outskirts of town. In 1760, Portsmouth Town Records refer to it as “the Negro Burying Yard”; an 1859 plan of Glebe land (parcels set aside for the ministry) identifies the site as a Negro Burying Ground. But over time, as Portsmouth grew, the African Burying Ground was paved over, built over and overlooked.
The first black person recorded in Portsmouth history arrived in 1645. He was sold on the dock to “Mr. Williams
of Piscataquak.” In 1708, New Hampshire’s Governor Dudley reported there were 70 enslaved Africans in the colony. A few black people in colonial Portsmouth were free. Most were not.
Preservation Backstory
Over the decades while we were busy making history, saving history -- preserving the tangible remains of that history and stopping time to observe its importance – became as central to Portsmouth’s ‘origins story’ as the historical instances themselves.
But then and now the progress that Portsmouth has made through boom and bust often threatened some of the places that make the destination distinct.
Looking around at the historic sites that define the landscape, it seems each has a story with a backstory of doom.
The John Paul Jones House was to be demolished to build an insurance company office block. The Warner House was slated to be the site of a gas station. The 39 buildings of Strawbery Banke were to make way for garden apartments that the evicted residents of Puddle Dock couldn’t afford. The Wentworth-Gardner Mansion was to be disassembled and rebuilt in Central Park for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A faction of Japanese had similar plans for Wentworth By the Sea Hotel.
Then the advocates stepped in. Dorothy Vaughan famously exhorted the Rotary to take action. Mrs. Wendell and Mrs. May used their own house furnishings to save the Warner and Wentworth houses. The Portsmouth Historical Society was founded to save the John Paul Jones house. And Friends of Wentworth, with other partners, saved Wentworth By the Sea.
Now the Carey Cottage at Creek Farm is on the chopping block and the well-named Portsmouth Advocates are trying to raise the alarm that a piece of what makes Portsmouth distinctive is in mortal danger. That there’s more than a building at stake.
