HISTORY MATTERS  

Wait a minute. Before you start designing your company float for the city's humongous 400th anniversary celebration in 2023, answer this one question -- Was Portsmouth really founded in 1623? And no, that big rock with the carved date at the foot of Market Street does not prove a thing. Rocks can lie. Historians have been debating this question for over 200 years, and their answer is -- well, sort of.  (Continued below) 

HISTORY MATTERS

The enormous 400th anniversary celebration of the founding of Portsmouth is now just 10 years away. It could be the biggest economic boom in city history. Think of tons of tourists spending bags of money throughout the year. Or, we could wait until the last minute, not build that parking garage, and squander the whole thing. (Continued below) 

HISTORY MATTERS  

New Hampshire's last royal governor and his wife had a taste for ritzy real estate. I know because I've visited all three of John Wentworth's North American mansions -- in Portsmouth, in Wolfeboro, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And at every mansion there is a sad story to tell.   (Continued below) 

HISTORY MATTERS

March 5 is my wife's birthday. It is also the 140th anniversary of the 1873 ax murders on the Isles of Shoals. That's especially weird since my wife and I are summer stewards on Smuttynose Island. We stay in the old Haley Cottage about 10 feet from where the "murder house" once stood. And this year, to make things weirder still, I am writing a book on the Smuttynose murders. (Continued below)