| Finding a Haven in Haven Park |
APTLY NAMED BY ACCIDENT
Sometimes a park is just a park. But sometimes it is a hazy, swirling connection of things past and things present. Who knew that the safe green zone near Portsmouth’s South Mill Pond was once the home of a beloved and prodigious local minister?
Thirty years ago my greatest refuge from the storm of life was a park bench on the stinky millpond at Haven Park. I lived just up Pleasant Street. My world fell apart when my closest friend died suddenly and I wandered down to the park there often. I didn’t even know the name of the place, my private haven, but I liked the statue of the guy on the horse, and the sparse cluster of trees and the hump of land that lead down to the water. Elegant houses surround the rectangular park on three sides and it seemed to be cut out of the wealthy neighborhood by a sharp saw.
Turns out that is pretty much what happened back in 1898 when the last Haven died and requested in his will that the family’s stately home be torn down to create a public space. I’ve been vaguely aware of that fact for years, but a missing house is hard to picture. Then recently, while preparing my little weekly picture column for the local daily, I found myself staring at a photo of the Rev. Samuel Haven house prior to its demolition. It was a typical square three-story Portsmouth house of the era with shuttered windows, an iron and wooden fence and a gigantic tree in the front that completely blocked the sidewalk.
Rev. Haven, the owner of the house, had been a beloved minister at Portsmouth’s South Church. I didn’t make the connection at first, but Haven was recently featured in our exhibit at the Portsmouth Athenaeum. His is the first portrait inside the door, a serious looking guy with a starched clerical collar and a huge white wig that sits on his shoulders like two generous helpings of vanilla cotton candy. It was good, after all these years, to finally put a face to the name.
It does not look like the face of a man who sired 17 children who, in turn, branded the Haven name all over town. Samuel’s grandson Nathaniel Haven, Jr. is a pivotal character in the book I’m writing now about the history of Strawbery Banke. Nathaniel ran the local newspaper in the early 1800s and I’ll tell you a little more about him next week. But it was Samuel who built the house that was torn down to make way for the park that gave me so much quiet time to heal some thirty years ago. For that, belatedly, he has my thanks.
The more I read about Rev. Samuel Haven, the less of a stuffed shirt he seems to be. He was, according to the "Literary Lions" booklet that this newspaper recently published, a dabbler in homeopathic medicine. Haven was also an amateur chemist who manufactured saltpeter for use in gunpowder during the American Revolution. He dabbled in dyes, and according to local legend, he and George Washington had a good long talk about those experiments when the President visited Portsmouth in 1789.
Thanks to the old photo and the portrait and the research, I can almost see the old preacher now, tending to his backyard garden, his hands stained blue with chemicals, in what is now Haven Park. Samuel Haven died more than half a century before the Civil War, so he would not have a clue about the equestrian statue that now sits in his garden. He lived under three British royal governors and three American presidents. When he passed away in 1806, the city of Portsmouth was at its peak with long hard times ahead.
My friend, who passed away at age 23 in a violent second or two in the horrible spring of 1977, has no park named in her honor. But she knew this place. We studied the inscriptions on the statue there and wandered down to the water together and talked of all the great things we would accomplish in our long fruitful lives to come.
Copyright © 2006 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.