MARK YOUR CALENDAR

OnSunday, October 20 at 4 pm, Emerson (Tad) Baker will speak on the topic of "Beer, Taverns & Witchcraft" at 4 pm. The program takes place in the Strawbery Banke Visitor Center lecture hall (14 Hancock Street in Portsmouth NH) and is free and open to the public. (See details below) 

Emerson Woods Baker II is public historian for the Salem State College History Department and teaches a variety of courses on museums, archaeology, material culture and architectural history that relate to historians working in the public sphere. His book The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England was published in 2010.

Prior to Salem State Baker was an historical archaeologist and a museum director and continues to stay involved in these fields through consulting for area museums, and directing ongoing archaeological excavations. He is the past Chair of the Maine Cultural Affairs Council, the Maine Humanities Council, and past vice-chair the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. Most of his fieldwork and research has centered on Maine, a place where English, French and Native American cultures collided. As such, his research involves Native American as well as Canadian history. Tad Baker served as an advisor to "We Shall Remain," a mini-series on The American Experience on PBS television. His principal area of interest is in 17th-century New England, particularly the transmission and adaptation of English regional culture to a New World. His book (co-authored with John Reid), The New England Knight, is the biography of  Sir William Phips, a Maine native who would rise from humble origins to become the first American to be knighted by the King of England, and first royal governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Successful treasure hunter, would-be military conqueror, and governor who ended the 1692 Essex County witchcraft outbreak. The work on Phips, and in Salem led him to pursue some research and develop a graduate course on witchcraft, magic, and popular culture in early New England.

The program includes light refreshments and the opportunity to view the "First Nations Diplomacy Opens the Portsmouth Door" exhibit displayed in the Museum's c. 1695 Sherburne House and the "Tapping Portsmouth: How the Brewing Industry Shaped the City" in the Rowland Gallery.

Prior speakers in the series included 1713 Treaty Tri-centennial Committee chair Charles B. Doleac, Colin Calloway, Dartmouth College historian and author of Pen & Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty-making in American Indian History; Jere Daniell, Dartmouth College professor emeritus and author of Colonial New Hampshire discussing Portsmouth Before & After the 1713 Treaty and Lisa Brooks, Amherst College, Native American Studies, discussing "The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast."

On Sunday, November 3, John Bear Mitchell, Native American Studies, University of Maine in Orono, discusses Wabanaki culture and story-telling traditions. 2 pm.

Two special exhibits, "First Nations Diplomacy Opens the Portsmouth Door," at the Portsmouth Historical Society's John Paul Jones House Museum and at Strawbery Banke Museum feature historical artifacts from the era and replicas of the original Treaty from the Library of Congress and the British Archives, signed by New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Native American dignitaries.

Additional programs in connection with the 300th anniversary of the 1713 Treaty of Portsmouth include: The Warner House (built in 1716, just after the Treaty) has scheduled the following related programs, all held at the Discover Portsmouth Center (10 Middle Street, Portsmouth NH):

·        Oct 16, Sandra Rux "Game Change: How the Treaty of 1713 Affected William Pepperrell Sr and Archibald Macpheadris" 5:30 pm

·        Oct 23 Martha Pinello "Archaeological Evidence for Native Americans in Portsmouth Before European Contact,"5:30 pm

From the time that the French established a fort at Port Royal in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada in 1607, and the English settled Plimouth in what is now Massachusetts in 1620 and Portsmouth (New Castle) in 1623, their national rivalries and imperial intentions played out against the "First Nations" people who had inhabited the northeast North American coast for 10,000 years. After the decimating epidemic of 1616-19 and war with the Iroquois, the First Nations of the four Maine coastal alliances and families had formed a confederacy of the Wabanaki, the "people of the dawnland."

The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ending Queen Anne's War in Europe attempted to set the French and English boundaries in the New World. It put the English in charge of the coastal regions that are now Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine and gave France control of the St. Lawrence River Valley around Quebec. The land in between was Wabanaki territory and both France and England agreed to respect the other's First Nations allies. The Wabanaki questioned how France and England could be talking about control of their ancestral land.  For there to be peace in "the dawnland" a treaty between the English and the Wabanaki was necessary.
The meeting in Portsmouth July 11-14, 1713 was important for the First Nations diplomacy employed, the acknowledgement of a New Hampshire governing Council separate from Massachusetts, and for the impact it had on opening the Portsmouth door to development as a commercial and military hub on the frontier.

The 300th Anniversary commemorations, produced through a special fund created by the Japan-America Society of NH (501c3), build on the research developed for the official website of the Treaty of Portsmouth Tri-Centennial Committee (www.1713Treaty of Portsmouth.org) to present the interpretations of scholars of the First Period in New Hampshire and Maine including Tom Hardiman at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Richard Candee at the Historical Society, David Watters at UNH, Tad Baker at Salem State and First Nations historians including Lisa Brooks at Amherst, and Micah Pawling and Robert Bear Mitchell at the University of Maine at Orono. The committee is partnering with exhibit sites (the John Paul Jones House Museum/Portsmouth Historical Society), Strawbery Banke Museum and other historic houses (Jackson House and Gilman Garrison/Historic New England, Warner House), historical commemorations such as the 300th anniversary of Old Berwick and various collections of c. 1713 artifacts.