Educator Guide
Squeezing the history of New Hampshire's only seaport into 32-pages was tricky, but kids and adults are loving this quick, colorful, diverse, and deeply researched. Portsmouth Time Machine can be used as a curriculum overview, as a platform for discussion, or as a launchpad and idea-generator for individual student research projects. Below is a brief summary of the topics covered. Check back in the fall for our free downloadable pdf guide now in development. We look forward to your feedback.
EARLY DAYS: (pages 1-6)
While studying local history, a glitch on Ella’s cell phone sends her and Seth into a time warp. We begin with an acknowledgement of the ancestral land of the region’s First Peoples. We know indigenous people lived and hunted seasonally along the seacoast for at least 12,000 years. While our visit to an Abenaki camp a thousand years in the past is imaginary, it provides a starting point for the rich heritage of Native customs.
In my forthcoming book, “1623,” we take a deep dive into the facts about David and Amias Thompson of Plymouth, England. Often depicted as a Scottish fisherman, David was actually a trained apothecary born in London. Soon after they arrived at what is now Odiorne Point in Rye, NH, Pilgrim military leader Miles Standish visited their outpost at Little Harbor. David delivered a load of lifesaving fish to the starving Separatists at New Plymouth. The Thompsons moved to the Boston Bay area around 1627. David died the following year. Amias remarried and lived another 50 years in New England.
History often forgets that New Hampshire’s provincial capital was located at Great Island (now New Castle). The original colony of Strawberry Bank included modern day Rye, Newington, New Castle, Greenland, Newington, and the Isles of Shoals. Ten years before the Salem Witch trials, Goody Walford of Great Island was accused of witchcraft.
18TH CENTURY (pages 7-13)
As seen in NH’s colonial seal, local industry evolved from fishing to harvesting tall pines and building boats from a seemingly endless forest. A “royal colony” by decree, wedged between Puritan-controlled Massachusetts and Maine, the province was governed by a dynasty of royal governors named Wentworth. In 1774, what locals call the first battle of the American Revolution, was inspired by a visit by Paul Revere. Locals attacked the fort at New Castle and stole 100 barrels of gunpowder months before the battles at Lexington and Concord.
John Paul Jones, a mariner from Scotland, captained the sloop of war Ranger from Portsmouth Harbor to his famous raid on the British coastline. The house where Jones stayed twice, we believe, is a museum operated by the Portsmouth Historical Society. The Moffatt-Ladd House, home of Declaration of Independence signer William Whipple, is among dozens of historic sites open to the public in a city of only 21,000 residents. George Washington spent four days in town during his New England tour. He attended a dance, fished in the Piscataqua, and had his portrait painted. The ancestral home of his secretary, Tobias Lear, is still standing. PTM includes a bonus page dedicated to the city’s rich Black history represented by a popular walking trail.
19TH CENTURY (pages 16-22)
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Portsmouth’s thriving economy crashed and burned following three devastating downtown fires, Thomas Jefferson’s infamous maritime “embargo,” and the War of 1812. Rebuilt in brick, locals built fast clipper ships and slow gundalows, and even attempted whaling. Established across the Piscataqua River in Kittery, Maine in 1800, the Portsmouth Naval shipyard was the region’s economic heart in wartime. During the Civil War, the USS Kearsarge, a hybrid of steam and sail power, defeated the Confederate Raider Alabama during a sea battle off the coast of France.
After the Civil War, the “Old Town by the Sea” became a popular summer destination for visitors from nearby Boston and other hot smoggy cities on the Atlantic coast. Among the most popular spots was the Appledore Hotel where poet and painter Celia Thaxter hosted a celebrity salon. Her “island garden” is maintained to this day and the Oceanic Hotel (1875) on Star Island looks much as it did in the Victorian Era. The landmark Music Hall (1874) in the heart of Portsmouth, after many near disasters, has been called “the beating heart” of seacoast arts and culture. A bonus page features two local authors who created the “bad boy” literature made famous by Mark Twain.
20TH CENTURY (page 23-30)
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The city continues to celebrate the successful Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the bloody Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Delegates from both nations stayed at what is now the re-imagined Wentworth by the Sea Hotel in New Castle In 1923 a five-year old Eileen Dondero opened the Memorial Bridge to Kittery as the city put on a huge Pageant of Portsmouth, marked by parades and welcoming arches that stretched over city streets.
Largely a blue-color maritime city, Portsmouth made headlines during the first and only successful rescue of crewmen from a sunken USS Squalus. The tragic death of all aboard the USS Thresher was in 1965. From the 1600s until World War II, Portsmouth Harbor was defended against enemy attack by a series of forts. For half a century the city was also known for its air force base, now adapted into Pease International Tradeport, but occasionally still visited by Air Force One.
The “Portsmouth Renaissance” began in the 1960s with a brilliant professional company called Theatre by the Sea and a tiny gourmet restaurant known as the Blue Strawbery. The old port on the North End evolved into a trendy waterside site. Meanwhile, the South End changed from a gritty commercial dock to a gentrified tourist destination featuring Strawbery Banke Museum and Prescott Park, known for its free outdoor summer Arts Festival. A bonus section features notable women from city history, all great topics for student research.
21ST CENTURY
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What does the future hold? Portsmouth faces challenges from global warming and rampant downtown growth to a lack of affordable housing.
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