Seacoast History Blog #113
May 07, 2011

I simply cannot keep up with this town. Three times this week I was biking through town working on this new Segway tour and I thought I was paying attention. But this evening, while attending the opening of a new exhibit at Strawbery Banke Museum – there was a building I’d never seen before, not seen the day before. “That’s where they’re going to build the new gundalow,” my wife Maryellen told me. And she should know. She’s preparing for the biggest exhibit of maritime art in the city’s history at the Discover Portsmouth Center. The paintings arrived today from the Sawtelle Collection and Prof. Richard Candee was beginning to assemble the show on the newly painted walls with the new track lighting in the old Portsmouth library. But that was just a warm-up. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #112  
April 17, 2011

At first reader John Cowles thought he had located a previously unknown image of island poet Celia Thaxter. I think probably not. I’ve seen a score of images of Celia over the years and the one below bears only a slight resemblance. So the question is, who is she? The engraving came with a pile of other engravings the same size, John says. Those he recognized were often famous writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Others were US political figures like John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Salmon Chase, William Seward, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #111
March 30, 2011  

The original report in the New York Times was later changed from “suicide” to an “accidental drowning”. But what really happened to the famous Boston-based artist William Morris Hunt? Below is the early report from the newspaper as it appeared in September 9, 1878, just five years after the Smuttynose Murders on an island nearby at the Isles of Shoals. We’re digging into this story for a future feature, but here’s how it looks so far. Based on a telegram from Appledore Island, the NYT initially announced that 55-year old William M. Hunt had drowned himself in a tank near the Appledore Hotel. Other reports describe the site as a “pond” on the island.   (Continued below)  

Seacoast history Blog #110
March 21, 2011  

Whenever I see an alien, I think of Betty Hill. Most of them, like the computer graphic greenie Paul (from the move “Paul”) owe their very existence to the lady from Portsmouth, NH. Betty and her husband Barney all but invented the familiar little green almond-eyed guy that has become an icon of out space fantasies. Their description of the guys who reportedly abducted the couple in the White Mountains in the early 60s set the standard for what has followed in alien movies in the last half century. I'm not talking about the insect Sigourney Weaver alien or the slimy-faced monster in Predator -- but the familiar cateye guy we know so well. (Continued below)

Seacoast history Blog #109
March 15, 2011  

Eric R. Christian of Eliot, Maine noticed a forgotten bit of seacoast history while surfing online. He discovered a reference to a circus gymnast who performed his highwire act in the center of Portsmouth’s Market Square in 1863. In a letter dated July 5, 1863, George P. Paul of Eliot told his uncle about the event. His uncle Aaron Jones Fletcher was then a soldier in the Civil War from Acton, Mass. Fletcher survived the war and lived to the ripe old age of 98. His letters found their way into the Acton Public Library. That letter was recently posted online. Here is what it said. (Continued below)  

Seacoast Blog #108
March 13, 2011  

Editor’s Note: years ago I published a Web page on antique trunks based on books by trunkmaster Pat Morse. Pat runs THE TRUNK SHOP originally owned by David Edelstein on Ceres Street in Portsmouth. For almost a decade letters continue to pour in from readers wanting to know more about their trunks. So when I spotted this Portsmouth-made trunk on eBay, I asked Pat to offer a few comments on this trunk and the antique trunk market in general. His shop is now in Barrington, NH.  Here’s what he had to say> (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #107
March 5, 2011  

I was in my Newmarket, NH apartment – a farmhouse now the site of a funeral home -- in February of 1973 when the phone rang.  

“Hey man,” the unfamiliar voice hooted on the other end. “It’s me Johnny Donnels and I want you to talk to someone.” 

“Hi, there!” the next enthusiastic voice shouted. “I’m Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and I hope you’ll come down and join us for Mardi Gras this year.” 

I didn’t know who Rambin’ Jack was, but I had heard of Mardi Gras, the blow-out block party in a world unlike my Puritan planet. Peter Graves, the man from the TV show Mission Impossible and Al Hirt the trumpet player were at Donnels studio too. They were already partying smack in the middle of the French Quarter.  (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 106
February 21, 2011  

I visited London a number of times in the early 1970s. I went back for a week in the 1990s, but that was before the Internet kicked in. Now I’m returning for a week and what a difference. For the last few days I’ve been walking the streets of London, virtually, using Google Streetview. It’s almost scary. After nailing down a place to stay, I was able to walk the neighborhood from my snow-covered New Hampshire office. I know where the grocery stores are near the rented apartment. I’ve located the local pubs and have been checking their Web site menus online. I strolled around the banking district (the rental is near the Tower of London) and visited the site of Samuel Pepys house that burned on Seething Lane in the Great Fire of the late 1600s. I looked at photos of his statue in the park there and read related bits from his diary. It’s freaky. But that’s not the point of this blog. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 105
February 1, 2011  

I’m a regional history writer, so when the producers of the PBS series American Experience send me a free DVD, I’m looking for the seacoast connection. Portsmouth has a pretty thin claim on polar explorer Adolphus Greely, but we take what we can get. When the six surviving members of the Greely Party out of 25 were rescued after three nightmarish years in the Arctic, they were delivered to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to recover their health. There is a single picture of them by local photographer Lafayette V. Newell from 1884. I waited all the way to the end of the hour-long documentary to see it. It flashed on the screen for a couple of seconds, but the narrator didn’t mention Portsmouth. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #104
January 12, 2011  

I make it my policy to stay out of politics in these pages. Not because I don’t have opinions. I have a boatload. But because the only emails I get back are from the nutjobs on the other shore. Those who agree tend to stay silent. Those who float around in the middle with no brain at all tend to stay in the middle. But today I am ashamed to live in a state where the majority of legislators in the House of Representatives are so evil and so stupid that the first thing they do in the new year is to allow handguns back into the statehouse building itself. Apparently those who see dark clouds forming overhead aren’t as pessimistic as I once believed. These aren’t just Republicans trying to regain the balance of power. These are very scary people who need to carry deadly weapons into the debate.  (Continued below)