What better way to “keep Portsmouth Portsmouth” than to measure our progress against the city’s official seal? Oops. Looks like what was familiar to residents in the 19th century, is all but forgotten today.
I scanned this sketch from an 1873 report on the “Return of the Sons and Daughters” celebration. There’s a large painted version hanging on the wall at City Hall on Hospital Hill downtown. I noticed when I was in there paying my giant property taxes.
At first glance, this could be any port city. Look again and there’s nothing familiar today, We do have brick buildings, too many, some say, but none are belching smoke. Portsmouth was never a big manufacturing city. We made buttons and hosiery and beer, but lacked the waterpower of river towns like Dover, Rollinsford, Newmarket, and more.
Long gone is the high-speed public-access railroad, also belching smoke here. Our passenger service died out decades ago, although the whistle of a slow freight train can still be heard.
Sail Portsmouth continues to bring tall ships annually at great expense, but beyond that single week, there’s little evidence that Portsmouth Harbor was once a shipbuilding hub. Locals have tried to raise funds to build a replica of THE RANGER, captained by John Paul Jones, but without success. Our once thriving city in the Age of Sail is represented today only by the reproduction gundalow PISCATAQUA–not pictured on the town seal.
And while Portsmouth residents love to brag that the city was founded in 1623–a stretch of the facts–the city seal displays the 1848 incorporation date, more than two centuries later. Bummer. The Old Town by the Sea still channels its historic industrial past, but we are better known these days for trendy shops, fine dining, luxury condos, concerts, festivals, and bars.
Copyright 2025 by J. Dennis Robinson. SeacoastHistoiry.com
Copyright 2025 by J. Dennis Robinson. SeacoastHistory.com
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