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 LIVING WITH THE PAST Award-winning historian J. Dennis Robinson rambles on about local history in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire and beyond. Timely, personal and behind-the-scenes commentary posted often. To reply to any of these topics or suggest new ones please use our
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form. For ALL archived blogs click HERE .
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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 Seacoast History Blog #43
April 18, 2009
Forty years after the death of Barney Hill, I finally heard him speak. He was hypnotized, his voice halting and breathy, but masculine and clear. He was talking about his close encounter with aliens in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He sounded fearful and confused, struggling to believe his own eyes as he re-imagined that fateful night in the fall of 1961. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #42
April 7, 2009
You can find the strangest things in the Portsmouth Herald. Carol White did. While researching the genealogy of people in New Castle, she began digging into the life of Captain Charles E. Becker. When Becker died in 1926 at age 94 he was reportedly the oldest citizen of New Castle. His detailed obituary in the newspaper includes one very curious phrase, and thanks to Carol’s email, I’ve been Googling all afternoon. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #41
March 28, 2009
Joanne from Pennsylvania called the other day. She has a photo taken by LV Newell of Portsmouth, NH. That’s not rare. We’ve posted scores of them on this site (see Historic Portsmouth section). But Joanne’s photo was taken when Newell was at Point Lookout in MD. He set up shop shooting portraits of Union guards and Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. But his historic collection was later destroyed. (Story continued below with pix)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #40
March 25, 2009
I am about to order my first digital history book on Amazon’s Kindle2. It is either going to be Last Lion, the new biography of Teddy Kennedy or American Lion, last year’s biography of Andrew Jackson. Whichever book I select will cost $9.95 and it will be delivered in roughly 30 seconds from the moment I place the order. No wires are needed, I can download from anywhere. No trees will be harmed in the process. The Kindle holds 1,500 digital books. That’s more volumes than I have in my office and in the house combined. (continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #39
March 22, 2009
Mark Chag of the Atlantic News sent me a head’s up that some guy is selling off a Frank Jones collection on eBay. (I assume no woman alive collects paraphernalia from Portsmouth’s 19th century ale tycoon.) Jones was a major player in my book on the Wentworth Hotel and is pretty hard to avoid in any history of this region, since he owned the whole town. One item in the collection, Mark points out, is especially intriguing to those of us who can’t get enough of the powerful Mr. Jones. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast Blog #38
March 18, 2009
I have in my basement a wooden reproduction of the South Church on State Street in Portsmouth. I bought the doll-house size model from the man who made it maybe 25 years ago when I was living downtown. The flat roof outside my third floor apartment looked down into the gigantic windows of the Unitarian Church. I paid $100 for it back then. Now it needs a good home. Maybe yours? (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #37
March 12, 2009
I couldn’t do what I do without the Web. Writing history is enormously time- consuming. You not only have to write about the past in a way that captures the over-stimulated modern reader, but you have to get the facts right. Facts are hard to find. They hide in corners in dusty archives, spread all across the planet. That used to mean costly trips to libraries, getting access to archives, waiting for reference librarians to access those sources, taking notes on the fly. Now, in more and more cases, I can get what I am looking for in seconds by clicking a mouse. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast History Blog #36
March 8, 2009
I didn’t get it last year. Why would Oliver Stone release a feature film about George W. Bush when the president was on his way out the door? It was too late. The damage was done. By the end of his second term, only the most loyal supporters of the president could see his eight years as anything but a train wreck. Stone, surprisingly, did not set out to vilify Bush, but to understand him. When asked to assess his own place in history in his final days, Bush could only stare blankly at the camera and mumble incoherently. Even he seemed to see the writing on the wall. In "W" Oliver Stone makes the message crystal clear. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast Blog #35
March 1, 2009
I’m not the first to point out that there is an upside to a sluggish economy. It forces us to pause and assess. That is especially true for nonprofit history organizations that always run on fumes. So it was no surprise to learn that the Gundalow Company is wisely holding back on plans to build a second wooden vessel. Instead, director Molly Bolster invited a sizeable group of gundalow lovers to a brainstorming session last week at Stoodley’s Tavern. (Continued below)
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Written by J. Dennis Robinson
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Seacoast Blog #34
February 23, 2009
If you missed the public forum about the Discover Portsmouth Center last week, let me bring you up to date. The old library building is closed for the season after its first successful year, but it isn’t sleeping. The 1810 Benedict Building is now occupied by the Star Island Corp that moved in from down the street. There is talk about filling the former children’s library area with another nonprofit tenant. Two new exhibits for 2009 are being developed. TMS Architects has turned in preliminary designs for a future rehab of the double-building. And a group of us, thanks to a grant from the NH Humanities Council, are planning future exhibits (Continued below)
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