HISTORY MATTERS

All too often our history is a booming catalog of war. But there are quiet struggles too. This one is for Edith Pierson and all those who stand silently for peace. Portsmouth history tells us, you are not alone.  In 1847 the city’s best-loved minister took a stand against the first American invasion of a foreign land. (Continued below)

HISTORY MATTERS

By rights May 14 should be a Portsmouth holiday. That’s the day in 1745 that our guys fired the first shot against the French at Fort Louisbourg on a damp marshy peninsula in Cape Breton, Canada. By the end of June the siege was over. The British had won and we were the British. (Continued below)

The first reports called it suicide. Famed Boston artist William Morris Hunt, age 55, was discovered drowned in a tiny pond near the center of Appledore Island on September 8, 1879. Hunt had been staying at the Appledore Hotel at the Isles of Shoals since July with his close friends Celia and Levi Thaxter. Hunt had gone out for a morning walk alone, and when he did not return, a search party fanned out across the small island. (Continued below)

HISTORY MATTERS  

Passover is near. The joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the Israelites exodus from Egypt is familiar to all, even if we only know the movie version with Charlton Heston as Moses. But what do we know of our own Jewish heritage here in Portsmouth, home to the oldest operating synagogue in the state of New Hampshire? (continued below)