The largest collection of Portsmouth-built ship paintings and artifacts ever assembled in the city’s history has come and gone. Collected over decades by businessman Joseph Sawtelle, who is also gone from us, it was a rare opportunity to see what the Piscataqua region has produced. But luckily there is a book available called MARITIME PORTSMOUTH that depicts the collection. Buy one today.  (Continued below)

They are the most forlorn graves in New Hampshire. Their three tiny headstones are hidden deep in an alcove tucked among rocks and vegetation and facing the open sea at the Isles of Shoals. Waves crash endlessly against the rocks below. The fog horn at nearby White Island moans. But few visitors to historic Star Island ever slide down the large stone, guarded by angry gulls, and venture through a break in the bushes to discover the ancient Beebe Cemetery. (Continued below)

HISTORY MATTERS

Life was a battle for Fitz-John Porter. Court-martialed and disgraced early in the Civil War, General Porter spent 16 years struggling to exonerate his record and clear his name. But the battle raged on even after his death. More than 40 years after the Civil War citizens of Portsmouth were fighting over where – if anywhere – to place a large bronze monument of Porter on horseback.  (Continued below)

HISTORY MATTERS

Back in 1999 the “Sailors and Soldiers” Civil War monument in Goodwin Park was literally collapsing into itself. I know because, like an idiot, I took a flashlight and crawled inside through a hole about the size of a microwave oven. Installed in 1888, the original metal armatures that held the heavy hollow structure upright were completely eaten away. (Continued below)