Tag Archives: Seacoast history
When a silent enemy traveled undetected: the Seacoast “throat distemper” epidemic of the 1730s
“It was this readiness to adopt a theological explanation for the epidemic which was chiefly responsible for the hasty abandonment of a scientific one.” –Ernest Caulfield By July 26, 1736, when Portsmouth’s Reverend Jabez Fitch speculated that the “throat distemper” … Continue reading
The Maniacal Traveler plays with maps: my local history posts, via Google Maps
This summer I am playing with mapping tools, which I eventually plan to teach my students at York County Community College to use in telling stories digitally. Displayed here are my local history posts via Google Maps, many of which blend … Continue reading
Posted in Hiking, Seacoast (mostly) History
Tagged Kittery history, Seacoast hiking, Seacoast history
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Monuments, politics, and the cycle of forgetting: Remembering Bashka Paeff’s “Horrors of War”
In Kittery, Maine, beneath the shade of an oak tree on a peaceful green common stands a monument that once stood in the cross-hairs of a politician who didn’t like its focus on the horrors of war. Today, many pass … Continue reading
Posted in Maine places, Seacoast (mostly) History
Tagged Art, Kittery history, Seacoast history
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The tragedy of the waitresses: A 1902 boating accident claims 14 lives at the Isles of Shoals
Fourteen people died in Kittery, Maine on July 17, 1902. I came across a list of the dead by accident, while browsing through some old Town Reports. All who died were young, including three pairs of sisters. How had these … Continue reading
Fragments of history: When the KKK marched in Kittery, Maine
Why and how did Kittery-ites join the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s? The Foreside parade in this undated J. Frank Walker photo likely took place on either June 30, 1924, or August 17, 1925, when Portsmouth Herald articles document these … Continue reading
Posted in Seacoast (mostly) History
Tagged J. Frank Walker, Kittery history, Maine history, Seacoast history
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Lives lived, and lost, at the Kittery Town Forest
Sometimes when I walk in Kittery’s 72-acre Town Forest, I wonder what became of Ella Hill and her girl Annie. From 1891 to about 1897, Ella and Annie lived here at the Town Farm, or Poor Farm. In 1891, the … Continue reading
Skulls of history in a forgotten tomb
Where was he, the most noteworthy man who ever called my town home? Back and forth I wandered, searching. Where was the life-sized portrait of Sir William Pepperrell? At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, nobody seemed to know, … Continue reading
Globalization, circa 1807, curses the Lady Pepperrell House
Lady Mary Hirst Pepperrell had impeccable taste. So say many sources, but the best indicator is the home she built in 1760 on Route 103 in Kittery Point. The Lady Pepperrell House is one of Maine’s outstanding examples of 18th … Continue reading
The Ghost of a Pepperrell Lady
Elizabeth Royall was a royal – a member of New England’s informal royalty. When she was a tween girl, she and her older sister Mary sat for a young John Singleton Copley when he came to their Medford, Massachusetts house … Continue reading
Governor John Wentworth and the Tea Party that wasn’t
What would happen when the tea landed in Portsmouth? Would a mob gather at the wharf? Would violence erupt? New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth pondered these questions when he learned, on June 25, 1774, that the mast-ship Grosvenor was sailing … Continue reading
