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The Portsmouth Fires That Turned the City to Brick

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Three Portsmouth fires, all at Christmas, destroyed 500 buildings within a decade in the early 19th century. Miraculously, no one died in the blazes.

Portsmouth, N.H., was then a gracious seacoast town, home to wealthy merchants and the first federal shipyard. It had served as the colony’s seat of government before the Revolution, and remained so until 1808.

The fires would spare the wooden mansions of the wealthy, separated by wide lawns. But the poor and middle class who lived in crowded quarters would find themselves out on the street, again and again.

1st Portsmouth Fire

The first of the Portsmouth fires started early in the morning of Dec. 26, 1802. It began in an old wooden building downtown, swept through the city and destroyed 100 homes.

Firefighting then amounted to ‘engines’ – water pumps on wheels – which fed the bucket brigades. Homeowners hung leather fire buckets (now highly collectible) near their doors for use in the bucket brigades. ‘Rescue’ involved fire societies, who salvaged items from burning homes. Members carried bags to rescue household valuables and bed keys to quickly dismantle beds and remove them.

Women and men fought the fire in bucket brigades until they dropped, relieved by volunteers from neighboring towns. When it was all over, only the North Church and the Old State House still stood. “The whole beauty of the town is gone! is gone!!!” wailed The New Hampshire Gazette.

statehouse

Artists’ conception of the old New Hampshire Statehouse in Portsmouth (after the fire of 1813).

Most of the building owners had no insurance, and they had to rely on private charity to recover. Donations came in from near and far, amounting to f $45,410.43.

Congress stepped in – for the first disaster relief ever. In January 1803, Congress passed a law to temporarily suspend “the collection of bonds due by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town.”

Historic North Church in downtown Portsmouth.

New Hampshire businessmen also responded by incorporating the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co.

2nd of the Portsmouth Fires

Four years later, the second of the Portsmouth fires broke out on Bow Street, raced up Market Street and gobbled up a row of wooden commercial buildings along the Piscataqua River.

The blaze wiped out Market Square, which had barely recovered from the previous fire, as well as St. John’s Episcopal Church, built in 1732. The damage was estimated at $130,000, about $2.7 million in today’s dollars.

portsmouth

Portsmouth’s Market Square in 1853.

The disastrous fire preceded two more blows to the city: the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812. Both events sent Portsmouth, heavily dependent on shipping and trade, on a long downward slide. The industrial revolution bypassed Portsmouth, spurring growth in nearby mill towns like Dover and Rochester.

john-langdon-house

Gov. John Langdon’s house in Portsmouth, N.H., spared by the fires.

Last of the Portsmouth Fires

Then almost exactly seven years after the second fire, on Dec. 22, 1813, the worst of the Portsmouth fires caused more devastation.  The blaze started in Mrs. Woodward’s barn at the corner of Court and Church streets, allegedly set on purpose by an angry servant.

The fire then marched down to the river, burning everything in its path.  The conflagration wiped out 300 buildings, reducing 15 acres to smoking rubble and, as one resident put it, ‘a forest of naked chimneys.’

The huge fire could be seen as far away as Salem, Mass. Volunteers from that town traveled 48 miles in six hours to help put out the blaze. Help also came from Newburyport, Mass., and the New Hampshire towns of Dover, Exeter and Durham.

Market Square, well after the Portsmouth fires

The fire sent the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co. into bankruptcy. It destroyed many businesses that had relocated after the first fire of 1802.

After the Fires

Portsmouth had been growing at a good clip before the fires. Its population increased 13.1 percent from 1790 to 1800, and then at a spectacular 29.9 percent from 1800 to 1810. After the fire of 1813, the city’s growth slowed to only 5.7 percent from 1810-1820. to 7,327. Some people, including a young lawyer named Daniel Webster, packed up and left.

In 1814, the New Hampshire General Court passed the Brick Act, requiring every building over 12 feet high to be built of brick with a slate roof. Portsmouth rebuilt its downtown in brick, and tried to enjoy the holidays.

Jefferson Street in Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Museum.

You can still get a feel for what Portsmouth was like before it went brick at the Strawbery Banke collection of house museums, right in the middle of the city.


With thanks to Dennis Robinson, The Three Fires of Christmas, SeacoastNH.com, 2005. Images: North Church By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34161214. Gov. John Langdon House By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5643711. Jefferson Street By Ken Gallager (Ken Gallager from en.wikipedia) – Author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15734947. This story about the Portsmouth Fires was updated in 2023.

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A Vermont Moose Visits Paris in 1787

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In 1784, a Vermont moose went to Paris to settle an argument between a French natural historian and Thomas Jefferson.

The historian, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count Buffon, attacked the character of the new American nation. He believed in the theory of degeneration, and he boosted it in Histoire Naturelle, a 44-volume exploration of the natural world.

Scientific Racism

Degeneration held that all natural elements began in one location (presumably Europe), where they existed in their purest form. As people, plants and animals spread out to other parts of the world, they degenerated into inferior versions of their species.

The theory, of course, provides one of many examples of scientific racism throughout history.

It held that Europeans were superior to their counterparts in other parts of the world. As humans moved farther from their European roots, living conditions and traditions, they degenerated. The same held true for animals.

moose

Inset: Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale in 1800.

Leclerc’s theory played well with the European aristocracy since it described Americans, with democratic ideals, as inferior beings. And he didn’t stop there. He castigated American Indians as physically weak people with small genitals and a limited drive to procreate.

Jefferson Pushes Back

Thomas Jefferson, American minister to France and himself an avid student of natural history, confronted LeClerc over his theories.

Indians, Jefferson noted, were as fertile as any people when afforded healthy surroundings.

LeClerc also held the lack of facial hair on many Indians was a sign of inferiority. Jefferson retorted that it was actually a product of Indian grooming traditions, which held that hair was unmanly. They plucked it. LeClerc agreed to correct his research in future editions.

Next Jefferson tried to challenge LeClerc on his assertions that European deer were much larger than their American counterparts. He told LeClerc of deer and elk with large antlers, to say nothing of the moose. Jefferson claimed the American moose were so tall a a European reindeer could walk underneath one without touching the moose’s stomach.

To prove his point, Jefferson shipped from his home an enormous set of deer antlers. And LeClerc said he would stand corrected if Jefferson could prove his point about the moose.

The Vermont Moose

To defend the moose’s honor, Jefferson badgered New Hampshire Gov. John Sullivan, as he knew moose abounded in Northern New England. He asked Sullivan to procure the bones and hide of a moose and ship them to France.

In 1786, Jefferson continued pressing Sullivan on the matter. In a letter he wrote:

“The readiness with which you undertook to endeavor to get for me the skin, the skeleton, and the horns of the Moose, the Caribou, . . . and the Elk, emboldens me to renew my application to you for those objects, which would be an acquisition here, more precious than you can imagine.

“Whatever expense you incur in procuring or sending these things, I will immediately repay either here or in Boston as you please.”

After years of Jefferson’s pestering, Sullivan finally rounded up a team of hunters who went moose chasing. They got their specimen, most likely in the town of Brookfield, Vt. The dead moose then began a long journey to France, via Durham and Portsmouth, N.H., where it was packed, along with an assortment of other animal specimens, and shipped to France.

An Expensive Trip

Sullivan didn’t show his dismay with the request, but he did note the trouble to get the moose. When submitting his bill to Jefferson, he said, “from motives of friendship for you I only Charge for the expenses I have paid in Cash without any thing for my own Trouble which has been very considerable.”

All in all, shipping the moose cost over 46 pounds. The bill included:

  • Paid to Capt. Robert Colburn for the Skeleton of a moose and Transporting to Durham.
  • moose horns and expence of procuring them.
  • a pair of Elks horns & expence of procuring.
  • a pair of Deers horns & expence of procuring.
  • pair of Caribous Horns & expense of procuring.
  • expense of cleansing the Skeleton from flesh and salting and tending the same to prevent putrefaction.
  • Expense of Dressing the Skins to preserve it with the hair on, free from worms & with expense of Alum brick Dust & Tobacco.
  • a Tanner for fleshing the Skins.
  • Expense of a Box and putting up the skeleton.
  • expense of sending the Box to Portsmouth.
  • horns of the Spike horned Buck.
  • Expense of 3 times sending to Effingham Connecticut River and the province of Main, to procure the skeleton
  • Truckage and Storage paid at Durham and Portsmouth

Though the moose skin and skeleton arrived somewhat worse for wear, they did persuade LeClerc he was incorrect in his assessment of the size of American moose. He promised to correct the error in a future edition of his work. He died, however, before he could publish.


Thanks to Jefferson, Buffon and the Moose by Keith Stewart Thomson in American Scientist; Antlers for Jefferson, New England Quarterly. This story about the Vermont moose that went to Paris was updated in 2022. 

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Wentworth Cheswell, the Black Man Who Rode With Revere

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In the middle of December 1774, messengers on horseback carried news to the people of New Hampshire’s seacoast. Two British warships were headed to New Castle to reinforce Fort William and Mary. The messengers, or dispatch riders, helped organize the resistance. One messenger was Paul Revere. And one was Wentworth Cheswell.

Revere made quite a few rides before war broke out, and so did dozens of dispatch riders before and during the American Revolution. As part of the secret patriot network, the riders shared intelligence about the enemy and communications between the colonial provisional governments.

Wentworth Cheswell took a number of rides like Revere. He volunteered to serve in the military and fought at Saratoga.  He is also considered New Hampshire’s first archaeologist — and the first African-American elected to public office in the United States.

Wentworth Cheswell

He was born on April 11, 1746, to a biracial father, Hopestill Cheswell (sometimes spelled Cheswill), and Katherine Keniston,  who was white. Hopestill was the son of a white woman and an enslaved black man, Richard Cheswell. Under the laws of the day, Hopestill’s status followed his mother, making him free.

Eventually Hopestill’s father bought his freedom. and in 1717 purchased 20 acres of land in Newmarket, N.H. Richard’s land purchase is considered the first by an African-American in New Hampshire.

John Paul Jones House

John Paul Jones House

Hopestill, a housewright and carpenter, built the John Paul Jones House in Portsmouth, N.H., as well as the Samuel Langdon House (now in Sturbridge Village). He also built the Bell Tavern (since burned in the Portsmouth fire of 1867).

Hopestill earned enough money to send Wentworth to Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Mass. Wentworth took advantage of his unusual educational privilege and worked as a schoolmaster in Newmarket. By the time he reached 21 he owned more than 30 acres and a pew in the meetinghouse.

At 21 he married 17-year-old Mary Davis of Durham, N.H. They then had 13 children. Their descendants identified as white, and the census listed Cheswell as white. Records of comments by his contemporaries suggest they viewed him as biracial.

Public Office

In 1768, 22-year-old Wentworth Cheswell won election as town constable. George Mason University determined that made him the first African-American elected to public office. Cheswell beat out Vermont’s Alexander Twilight for the honor. For all but one year of his life, Cheswell held public office including town selectman, assessor, scrivener, justice of the peace and auditor.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood

His civic involvement included founding the Newmarket Social Library with several other men and bequeathing his books to it.

He also won election as town messenger for the Committee of Safety, which meant he had to carry news to and from the patriot Committee of Correspondence in Exeter.

Riding With Revere

For several years, New England colonists had risen up in sporadic violence to protest Parliament’s taxation and restrictions. Boston had its Tea Party, Providence its Gaspee Affair and New Hampshire its Pine Tree Riot — to name a few. In the fall of 1774, the British government grew concerned about the rebellion then developing. And so it secretly banned the export of munitions to the American colonies. Redcoats also seized gunpowder in Charlestown, Mass., in September.

Boston’s patriot leadership knew that only a few soldiers guarded Fort William and Mary. They believed British troops and ships would sail to New Hampshire to secure the fort. And they thought the gunpowder and weapons at the fort would serve a more useful purpose in patriot hands.

On Dec. 13, 1774, Paul Revere rode the 66 miles to Portsmouth with a letter from Boston’s Committee of Correspondence to its counterparts in Portsmouth and Exeter. The letter advised them to seize the weapons and gunpowder at the fort before the British warships arrived.

Portsmouth mustered volunteers for an assault the next day on the British soldiers who guarded the fort. The men of Newmarket, a strongly patriotic town, wanted to take part in the attack as well. But where and how?

Wentworth Cheswell then rode to Exeter to find out from the Committee of Correspondence where the Newmarket volunteers should go. The next day, 400 New Hampshire men marched on the fort and forced it to surrender. They took 100 barrels of gunpowder, light cannon and small arms.

The ships never arrived, but the patriots used the gunpowder and weapons in the Siege of Boston.

Wentworth Cheswell, Town Father

Some people claim Cheswell rode north from Boston on April 18, 1775, alerting the countryside to the British attack even as Revere did the same riding west.  Local historian Rich Alperin, however, said there’s no evidence Cheswell ever made that ride.

Cheswell did enlist in Col. John Langdon’s Company of Light Horse Volunteers and fought at the Battle of Saratoga. When he finished his military service he returned to Newmarket, where he ran a store next to his schoolhouse. As a prosperous, well-educated citizen, he continued his leadership of the town.

When he realized that Newmarket’s town records might disappear, he copied them all by hand in a journal. The Newmarket Historical Society now holds them.

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds another document written by Cheswell — a letter sent to the Rev.  Jeremy Belknap. The letter contains descriptions of artifacts left by indigenous people that Cheswell recovered around Newmarket. Belknap included the information in his history of New Hampshire, and Cheswell earned the distinction as New Hampshire’s first archaeologist.

Wentworth Cheswell died at age 70 of typhus on March 8, 1817. He and his descendants were buried on his farm.

Missouri Compromise

Three years later, Wentworth Cheswell’s name surfaced on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Sen. David Morril of New Hampshire rose to speak against the Missouri Compromise, which forbade biracial people from obtaining citizenship in Missouri.

“In New Hampshire there was a man by the name of Cheswell, who, with his family, were respectable in point of abilities, property and character,” Morril said. “He held some of the first offices in the town in which he resided, was appointed justice of the peace for the county, and was perfectly competent to perform with ability all the duties of his various offices in the most prompt, accurate and acceptable manner. But this family are forbidden to enter and live in Missouri.”

This story about Wentworth Cheswell was updated in 2022.

Image: Historic marker By Slulek – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68100118. To read more about Paul Revere’s ride to New Hampshire, click here. 

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Professor Marvin Hewitt Takes a Twisting Journey from Dropout to Imposter to Rocket Scientist

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In 1954, University of New Hampshire president Robert Chandler had a problem faculty member, Professor Kenneth Yates. He was “undoubtedly a brilliant physicist,” Chandler would recall. He had taught at various schools and colleges for nearly 10 years, making him polished, capable and comfortable in the classroom. His students liked him because he clearly communicated complicated mathematical concepts. To his colleagues in Durham, he seemed like another academic with a wife and young children. The problem?  He had another name, Marvin Hewitt.

Marvin Hewitt, Busted

Marvin Hewitt

Marvin Hewitt

But a struggling undergraduate student of Yates’ decided to look up his professor’s credentials in the reference book, American Men of Science. He found that Yates did indeed have a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. But more importantly, the book listed Yates as currently employed at an oil company in Chicago.

The professor who claimed he was Yates would later say he thought the young student was investigating him. Nevertheless, he gave the young man a failing grade – which he deserved. In retaliation, the student notified the faculty that he suspected Professor Kenneth Yates was a phony.

Summoned by the university administration to explain himself, Yates confessed. He was not Kenneth Yates at all. Nor did he have a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, nor anywhere else for that matter. He was Marvin Hewitt, a high school dropout from Philadelphia.

Nonetheless, Marvin Hewitt was a brilliant physicist. He told a remarkable story of a decade of deceit and no fewer than eight teaching posts in physics and electrical engineering.

A Nerdy Child

Marvin Hewitt had been a bookish child, bored at school and viewed as a poor student. His police officer father urged him to take an interest in sports. But instead he buried himself in advanced mathematics, an undiscovered, self-taught child prodigy.

Once when called upon to speak at school, he delivered a lecture on the theory of relativity that astounded the teachers and students. Marvin Hewitt suspected, perhaps rightly, that they didn’t understand a thing he said.

After a stint in the Signal Corps during World War II, Hewitt took up a series of factory jobs. Bored to tears, he answered an advertisement seeking a math teacher at a military school. The school quickly hired him to teach eighth graders.

Marvin Hewitt didn’t find the teaching academically challenging, but an idea started to grow in his mind. He clearly had a gift for teaching. Why not do it at a higher level?

Professorships

Using forged letters of recommendation, Marvin Hewitt fashioned himself a new career as Julius Ashkin, physics professor. He found work at Minnesota, St. Louis and Utah. Each step gave Hewitt a raise in pay and prestige.

The real Ashkin was at the University of Rochester, and Marvin Hewitt cringed every time Ashkin published a scientific paper.

The real Julius Ashkin.

But he tap-danced his way around the questions. Once, while walking down the street with his future father-in-law, he nearly fainted when a student approached him and called out his name: “Hello Dr. Ashkin.”

But his act fooled everybody — almost. When asked about him, a professor at Columbia University once explained there were two Dr. Ashkins, the physicist from Rochester and another ‘some place in the west.’

Of course, there was only one. And the real Dr. Ashkin wrote to his doppelganger in Utah with a remarkably generous offer. He said he would find a place for Hewitt in an actual physics program where he could quickly earn an actual Ph.D. and relieve himself of the stress of being an imposter. Hewitt declined and the university quietly dismissed him.

Back to Philly

Marvin Hewitt returned to Philadelphia, bringing his wife to live with his mother. By now Hewitt’s father had died, gunned down by a car thief. Hewitt tried to get an honest job in industry, but he was thwarted by his lack of a security clearance and formal education.

Finally he decided to adopt a new identity. This time he was George Hewitt, director of technology at RCA, and he applied to the University of Arkansas explaining that he missed teaching. Even though the salary of a professor was not equal to industry, he longed to return to the classroom, he said.

university-arkansas

Agriculture Building at the University of Arkansas

At Arkansas, Marvin Hewitt taught electrical engineering. As a professor prolific with his research, he published in numerous journals. He planned to make a name for himself over three years and seek a tenured position.

His plans unraveled when a recruiter from RCA came to the campus. Did he know, a senior faculty member asked, that RCA’s former technology director was currently teaching there?

Quietly drummed out of Arkansas, Marvin Hewitt returned to Philadelphia, now father to twins. He knew the lies he would have to tell to obtain a security clearance would get him thrown in jail. So once again he found another name to adopt: Kenneth Yates. Off to the University of New Hampshire he went for one more year of teaching.

Marvin Hewitt Makes National News

When exposed at New Hampshire, the university let him slip quietly away – as the others had. But a month later newspapers got hold of the story and he made nationwide news.

thompson-hall

Thompson Hall at UNH

In the aftermath of his exposure, Hewitt was treated kindly. The city of Philadelphia offered him work. As the son of a slain police officer, the city felt it could do no less.

Government agencies gearing up for a space race reached out to him. Ultimately, though, Marvin Hewitt, at age 34, wound up designing satellites for a Maryland technology company and publishing papers on his discoveries.

“If they’d only let me be a professor, I’d never want anything else,” he told Life magazine. “You know, I lied only to get those jobs. I was a good teacher. I’ve never hurt anyone.”

But he did, he admit, feel good about his final exposure:

“It was a relief. I felt glad about it. Once the thing broke in the newspapers I knew that it was finished for keeps . . . or don’t you think so?”

This story about Marvin Hewitt was updated in 2023.

Images: Thompson Hall by By AcrossTheAtlantic – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63031225.

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Peyton Place – A Town, Its Scandals and the Woman Who Told the World

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The dirty novel Peyton Place landed like a bombshell in 1956, a surprise hit by an unknown author. The critics panned it, the public loved it, the town it pictured resented it – and for the next 13 years it was a staple of American entertainment.

Grace Metalious

Grace Metalious

Peyton Place became shorthand for secret scandals, mostly involving sex. Its author, Grace Metalious, was a New Hampshire schoolteacher’s wife whose own scandals were anything but secret. She was a mother of three and, by all accounts, a lousy housewife who drank, swore, wore baggy jeans and cheated on her husband.

She based some of Peyton Place on the town she lived in with her family, Gilmanton, N.H.

“To a tourist these towns look as peaceful as a postcard picture,” Metalious once said.  “But if you go beneath that picture, it’s like turning over a rock with your foot — all kinds of strange things crawl out.”

The people of Gilmanton felt victimized by Peyton Place, but it was Grace Metalious who was the book’s real victim.

Grace Metalious

Metalious was born Grace de Repentigny on Sept. 8, 1924, to poor Franco-American parents in Manchester, N.H. Her father, a merchant seaman, left the family when she was 10.

She graduated from Central High School, married George Metalious at 19, and gave birth to three children. Since her childhood she dreamed of being a writer. She began writing Peyton Place at 30, while George taught school in Gilmanton.

new-england-films-peyton-place

Scene from Peyton Place, the film

The fictional town of Peyton Place has shady streets, white church steeples, traditional New England houses and brick mills along the Connecticut River. But beneath the bucolic surface lurk ugly secrets.

In the book, Rodney Harrington, a rich kid, dies in a car crash while ogling a topless women driving with him, and Constance MacKenzie lives in fear that the illegitimacy of her daughter will be discovered.  Metalious based the character of Selena Cross on a woman from Alton, N.H., who killed her father after he raped her. The story was uncovered by crusading reporters including a young Ben Bradlee.

She insisted Peyton Place was based on several places in New Hampshire – including Durham, where her husband attended the University of New Hampshire; Gilmanton, where he taught school; and Laconia, where her favorite bar was located.

Peyton Place, The Book

The book Peyton Place, published in 1956, was a smash hit, selling 100,000 copies in the first month. The average first novel sold 3,000 copies — if the author was lucky enough to get it published.

peyton-place-promo

Promo for the film Peyton Place.

Critics trashed the book. Manchester Union-Leader publisher William Loeb called it ‘filthy sewage.’ Grace Metalious responded,  “Even Tom Sawyer had a girlfriend, and to talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass.”

Peyton Place was one of the most widely read novels in American history. One in 29 Americans read it (mostly in secret), according to one estimate.

“If I’m a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste,” Metalious said.

Fame

Peyton Place was followed in 1957 by a hit movie of the same name starring Lana Turner and set in Camden, Maine. As many as 500 locals appeared as extras.

Lana Turner and betty Field in Peyton Place.

At first Peyton Place didn’t attract many moviegoers, but then Lana Turner’s daughter stabbed Turner’s boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, and the film took off. It received nine Academy Award nominations.

The book and the movie made Grace Metalious rich — and reckless. She carried on a stormy affair with a Laconia DJ, divorced her husband and burned through millions of dollars. She took a floor at the Plaza hotel, ordered champagne by the case and flew chartered flights to the Caribbean.

Downward Spiral

Grace Metalious wrote three more books, none of which sold as well as Peyton Place. For the last five years of her life, she drank a fifth of liquor every day.

Grace Metalious in 1957

She dumped her Laconia DJ, reunited with George Metalious and parted again. Then she had an affair with a married British journalist. On a trip to Boston, she collapsed and ended up in Beth Israel Hospital. Grace Metalious died days later on Feb. 25, 1964, of cirrhosis of the liver.

Hours before she died, she changed her will to leave her entire estate to her British lover, who promised to take care of her children. Her family successfully contested the will, but it turned out she had $41,174 in the bank and debts of more than $200,000. Years of high living, gifts to friends and an embezzling agent left her insolvent.

peyton-place-cast

Promotional photo showing the cast of Peyton Place in 1968.

In 1964, seven months after Grace Metalious died, ABC aired a prime-time soap opera based on the novel. (The producer refused to call it a soap opera, instead calling it a ‘high-class anthology drama.’) It launched the careers of Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal, among others. Peyton Place ran until 1969.

This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed this story about Grace Metalious, you may also want to read about other Franco-American writers here. If you’re interested in towns with hidden scandals, you may want to read Bar Harbor Babylon by the authors of this post. 

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When Paul Revere Rode to New Hampshire

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On Dec. 13, 1774, Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth, N.H., to warn the redcoats were coming. It was a much less famous ride than the one he made four months later, but it did have consequences.

Hundreds of New Hampshire patriots would respond to Revere’s message by storming the colony’s only fort, William and Mary in New Castle. The conflict had elements of farce, since only six of the King’s men defended the fort. But the patriots crossed the bright line of treason when they took what belonged to the King.

Would phone spying have identified Paul Revere?

Paul Revere, 6 years before he rode to Portsmouth. Photo courtesy Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Rebellion Looms

In December 1774, the Revolutionary War approached. Because King George feared an armed rebellion, in October  he issued a confidential Order in Council forbidding the export of arms and ammunition to the American colonies.

Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth followed up the order with a letter to all the royal governors. It ordered them to seal every port against the import of munitions that could aid a rebellion.

The American patriots feared the British would seize their gunpowder and munitions – again. On Sept. 1, 1774, British troops had removed gunpowder from the powder house in Charlestown, Mass. (now Powder House Square in Somerville).

As a result, the patriots moved arms inland from Newport, R.I., Providence and New London, Conn. Then a rumor spread in Boston that redcoats were on their way to seize powder from Fort William and Mary.

The stone fort stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River guarding access to the Portsmouth harbor and to Kittery, Maine, then part of Massachusetts. The  six men who would try to hold the fort reported to the royal governor, John Wentworth.

Paul Revere Rode to NH

Fort William and Mary

Paul Revere and his network of patriots caught wind of the new policy. They knew the lightly guarded fort in New Castle was vulnerable to attack. So Boston’s Committee of Correspondence told him to warn the people of New Hampshire about the British plans for Fort William and Mary.

Early on the morning of Dec. 13, Paul Revere rode the 66 miles to Portsmouth. Frozen slush filled the rutted roads and a stiff west wind pierced his clothing. As he neared Portsmouth, dusk turned to dark. He headed for Market Square looking for someone he knew. He recognized William Torrey, and asked him where he could find Samuel Cutts, a patriot merchant. Torrey found Cutts for Revere.

Samuel Cutts

Cutts quickly convened the town’s committee of correspondence so Revere could report the news: British troops were on their way to Fort William and Mary. The patriots sort of got it right. British naval vessels had headed from Boston, but to make sure no one brought guns and powder into the northern ports.

A Loyalist townsman — it isn’t clear who — told Wentworth of Revere’s arrival. Wentworth sent a rider to Boston to ask for help from Gov. Thomas Gage. Gage ordered a small vessel to sail to Portsmouth with a detachment of marines and a 20-gun frigate to follow. They arrived too late.

The Raid

Early the next morning, a fife and drummer marched through the streets of Portsmouth summoning men to raid the fort. Four hundred men mustered by noon, and a fleet of small boats formed.

As a snowstorm began at 3 pm, some of the men paddled down the Piscataqua River while some marched overland.

The raiders approached the fort and demanded the six soldiers inside surrender. Capt. John Cochran told them ‘on their peril not to enter.’

The New Hampshire men then rushed the fort as Cochran and his five men tried to fend them off with cannon fire, shot and hand-to-hand fighting. Finally Cochran offered to surrender his sword, but the raiders let him keep it.

Then Alexander Scammell, a Harvard-trained lawyer from Durham, pulled down the British flag flying over the fort. Cochran drew his sword and the raiders pinioned his arms. Another soldier tried to stop them and a raider knocked him down with the butt of his pistol. The raiders confined Cochran and his soldiers.

The patriots then broke open the powder house. They took 100 barrels of gunpowder subsequently used in the Siege of Boston.

Start Spreading the News

Couriers fanned out across the countryside spreading the news. John Giddinge, an Exeter doctor who participated in the raid, wrote to Josiah Bartlett, then serving on the committee of correspondence from Kingston.

Giddinge wrote that Exeter was ‘happily furnished’ with 72 barrels of gunpowder. He suggested storing some with the Sons of Liberty in Kingstown. Giddinge also thought it would be ‘necessary and pleasant’ if some of the Sons came to Exeter as well.

john-adams-slept-john-sullivan

John Sullivan by A. Tenney

Bartlett in turn wrote a letter to the citizens of Sandown, N.H. — one of the many that circulated after the raid.

Bartlett wrote that an express rider brought him a letter late the night before. It told him the British would try to seize the powder and that men from Exeter were ready to go to help Portsmouth. Kingstown citizens were also meeting to ‘consult upon the occasion,’ and Bartlett advised Sandown to do the same.

The Second Raid

Bartlett’s letter arrived too late. At daybreak on Dec. 15, a thousand armed men from across New Hampshire and Maine began to appear in Portsmouth.

John Sullivan led them to the parade in front of the colonial State House, where Wentworth and the General Court were meeting in emergency session. The patriots stood outside and demanded to know whether Royal troops were on the way to protect the fort. Wentworth said they weren’t.

Sullivan and the men gathered at Jacob Tilton’s tavern, the Marquis of Rockingham, to await nightfall. Wentworth ordered another tavern keeper, James Stoodley, to round up 30 men to guard the fort.

Stoodley and a drummer walked the Portsmouth streets trying to enlist supporters. Unlike the patriots’ experience the day before, not one person volunteered.

john-wentworth

New Hampshire Gov John Wentworth by John Singleton Copley.

After dark, Sullivan led his men on a second assault of the fort. Without being fired upon they took the rest of the powder, muskets, bayonets, cartouche boxes and 16 cannon.

The patriots shipped the gunpowder to Durham by boat and then carted it inland so they could hide it. Some was stored in the homes of patriots. The militiamen released the prisoners and returned home unpunished. For the most part, they remained anonymous.

Aftermath

less famous ride of paul revere statehouse

New Hampshire Statehouse

Furious British authorities knew who provoked the people of New Hampshire. Wentworth wrote the trouble started when Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth with a dispatch.

Before then, wrote Wentworth, all was perfectly quiet and peaceable in the place.

The raid was deemed high treason. It was also the first — and last  — Revolutionary War battle in New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire Fort William and Mary, now Fort Constitution, is part of a state park on the National Register of Historic Places. The public may visit.


With thanks to On the Road North of Boston: New Hampshire Taverns and Turnpikes 1700-1900 by Donna-Belle Garvin and James L. Garvin and Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer. This story about the time Paul Revere rode to New Hampshire was updated in 2021. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about Isaac Bissell, Connecticut’s Paul Revere, here. 

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