1823 Portsmouth partygoers signed their names with pride
As Portsmouth’s 400th celebration winds down, the faded signatures of partygoers from the city’s 200th anniversary remain a cherished part of the Athenaeum’s collection. ● The bash was described in the 1825 book “Annals of Portsmouth” by Athenaeum president Nathaniel Adams (1756-1829). ● Since no one was sure of the exact date of colonial settlement — it was believed to be in the spring — Adams wrote that those “desirous of celebrating the second centennial anniversary ... fixed upon the 21st of May for that purpose.”
Portsmouth celebrated that day in 1823 with a procession of military companies as well as Masons, members of the clergy, schoolmasters and students. Citizens of the town brought up the rear.
In a paper written by Athenaeum Proprietor Richard Candee, a professor emeritus of American and New England Studies at Boston University, the antics of the youngest marchers were recalled 50 years later by a Portsmouth man who took part in the parade.
“A great deal of marching and countermarching was done by the boys in the public school playgrounds for a week or two previous, in preparation for the position they were to fill in the procession of the 21st, and much trouble had the juvenile marshals in keeping in line the smaller urchins who had never been drilled in the ranks before,” he wrote.
About 200 gentlemen dined at Jefferson Hall on Market Square, “and closed the day with hilarity and sentiments of universal benevolence,” Adams wrote. “The day was remarkably fine, and everything was conducted with the greatest regularity and decorum.”
Candee, who also served as a president of the Athenaeum as well as the Portsmouth Historical Society, said the bicentennial organizers recast the merchant-adventurers who arrived on the banks of the Piscataqua River in 1623 as “northern versions
of the Plymouth pilgrims.”
It is not a surprise that among the songs written for the 200th celebration was “The Landing of the Fathers,” sung to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The evening of the 21st, Adams recounted that “a splendid ball was given at Franklin Hall. The sides of the room were entirely covered with portraits of eminent persons, who flourished here before the revolution. It is supposed that nearly four hundred ladies and gentlemen graced the hall on this occasion.”
Of those attendees, the signatures of 254 are recorded on a document that hangs on the wall of a stairwell at the Athenaeum.
Franklin Hall was at the corner of Congress and Fleet streets, and the following year would host an event honoring the Marquis de Lafayette when the Revolutionary War hero made a triumphal tour of the United States.
Franklin Hall burned in 1879, and was replaced by the Franklin Block, which still stands.
Adams, a lawyer, clearly loved his hometown, though in his book he didn’t mince words about its appearance.
“The streets are generally very narrow and irregular,” he wrote. “They seem to have been laid out by the owners of the land for their own accommodation, without any regard to public convenience or ornament. There are thirty-seven streets and fifty-three lanes.”
He also had plenty of positive things to say. “The air of Portsmouth is salubrious; the inhabitants are generally healthy, and it is not uncommon to find persons between eighty and ninety years of age; there is one woman living upwards of one hundred and four years of age, in the full enjoyment of her mental faculties, and who was able to walk the last summer between eight and ten miles in a day.”
In the preface to “Annals of Portsmouth,” Adams writes: “The preservation of such facts, as will be useful to the future historian, is of public importance. Those which depend on memory, or have been long handed down by tradition, are liable either to be forgotten or misrepresented. They should, therefore, be carefully collected from time to time and deposited in such archives, as are prepared for.”
He took care to base his book on “the most authentic documents,” including “ancient records and papers,” periodicals, church, court and town records, and information from “many aged and intelligent persons.”
Adams also managed to get in a plug in for his beloved Athenaeum, where his portrait has hung over the door of the first-floor Reading Room since his death in 1829.
“This institution is very flourishing,” he wrote in the book’s final paragraph.
He went on to describe the membership library’s Reading Room as “furnished with the best newspapers published in the principal cities of the United States” and praised the second-floor library’s 2,000 volumes (there are currently more than 40,000).
“The institution is esteemed a great ornament and advantage to the town,” he concluded.
The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a nonprofit membership library and museum founded in 1817. The research library and Randall Gallery are open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 603-431-2538 or visit portsmouthathenaeum.org.