I’m no genealogist, but this online auction portrait was impossible to ignore. It came from the LV Newell studio in Portsmouth, NH, and shows a young woman in a military-styled outfit. The name Josie Stark is penciled on the back.
Could she be a descendant of Gen. John Stark (1728-1822), a Granite State hero of the American Revolution from Bunker Hill to the Battle of Bennington? His statue stands in front of the State House in Concord.
We’ll probably never know. But the circumstantial evidence is promising. A 17-year-old Josie A. Stark is listed in an 1880 Manchester family. That matches the likely age of this figure, who would have been in her late teens around the time this photo was taken. That reference comes from a Stark family genealogy website.
It’s far from definitive, but General and Molly Stark had 11 children and were from the Derryfield (Manchester) area. Visiting Portsmouth from Manchester by train was a popular Victorian day trip.
I may be overreacting to the military-style collar and buttons. Josie appears to be wearing a fashionable outfit with a handmade fitted bodice rather than an actual uniform. Women’s style in this and the following WWI era often included male or military elements, such as the “middy” blouses adapted from Navy midshipmen. Was Josie purposely honoring her proud family legacy around the time of the young nation’s centennial?
Was Josie the general’s granddaughter? Let’s see if any more details float in from the Internet. For the record, the Stark siblings were, in order: Caleb, Archibauld, John Jr., Eleanor, Eleanor Jr., Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary, Charles, Benjamin, and Sophia. Molly Stark lived to age 77, while John Stark died at age 93 or 94.
© 2026 by J. Dennis Robinson,
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