Memorial Day is not set aside for hot dogs and hibachis, but a day to reflect on Americans in the military who made the “ultimate sacrifice” to defend the nation. Since the late 1800s, the dedicated spot for such observations in Portsmouth has been the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Goodwin Park on Islington Street. Saved from collapsing in on itself, the beautifully restored park is the ideal place to visit in May.
Technically, the bronze man on the bronze horse in Haven Park on Pleasant Street doesn’t qualify for Memorial Day. Born in Portsmouth in 1822, Fitz-John Porter served as a Union Army general in the Civil War, but was later court martialed in a trial instigated by his political opponents. It took Porter 25 years to clear his name, so he did not die in the service of his country.
Memorial Bridge
We do have a Memorial Bridge connecting Portsmouth with Kittery, Maine. Opened in 1923, the original lift-bridge was dedicated to the sailors and soldiers lost in World War I from 1917 to 1919. The new bridge, opened in 2013, bears the same plaque, making it an ideal Memorial Day site. The Portsmouth Veterans Memorial nearby, added in 2013, is dedicated to “the strength of the heroic souls of the men and women who have courageously served our country and bravely risked their lives to preserve our way of life.”
Prescott Park Fountain
I could be wrong, but the only memorial to a single local soul survives, in part, in Prescott Park. It may be the most often seen and least understood of our small city’s statues. The Memorial Fountain is just inside the upper entrance to the park on Marcy Street. It is marked by a bronze statue of a nearly nude male. He’s holding a fish spouting water into a circular pool where visitors toss coins. In his other hand, the bronze figure is holding a metal rod that used to be a trident.
The maritime motif is a tribute to U.S. Navy Ensign Charles Emerson Hovey (1885-1911), who was killed in the Philippines. You can see a bronze portrait of Hovey, created in 1918 by Frederick Warren Allen, a sculptor of the Boston School, affixed to the front of the brick fountain.
A second plaque tells how Hovey was ambushed, according to the text, while “commanding a detachment of men from the USS Pampanga in pursuit of outlaw Moros in the island of Basilan.” Hovey was the son of Rev. Henry Emerson Hovey, who was rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church on the waterfront nearby. He was also the uncle of the late Muriel Gurdon Seabury Howells of Kittery Point. Although she was only a year old when her uncle died in 1911, Muriel later became a key founder and financial supporter of Strawbery Banke Museum across the street from Prescott Park.
Hovey was born in Portsmouth, NH, in 1855 and is buried in St. John’s churchyard. The destroyer USS Hovey was named in his honor. But the fountain was not always here. This postcard shows the original and much more ornate Hovey Memorial Drinking Fountain in its original location. It was dedicated in 1912 at the corner of Pleasant and State streets, outside the Old Post Office Building. Notice the columns of the Universalist Unitarian South Church on State Street in the background of the postcard.
Fountain in peril
A 1967 newspaper article noted that the Hovey Fountain was “in peril” since the Post Office building was being sold and might be demolished. According to a headline, the foundation “might be moved.” At the time there was a proposal to relocate the entire memorial to the front of the McIntyre Building on Daniel Street. Others suggested creating a “grassy spot” closer to the center of Market Square and centering the fountain there. By 1974, Portsmouth Herald editors were still wondering why the fountain had not been moved, as proposed, to Prescott Park.
The delicate memorial, with its imported Italian marble fountain cracked, finally left its risky location. Muriel Howells of Kittery Point had campaigned to find a “dignified and beautiful place” to protect the memorial to her ancestor. Thanks to support from the colorful City Councilor Bill Keefe, by 1976 the renovated memorial was dedicated in Prescott Park. The tall pedestal and marble drinking fountain had been removed. The statue of Neptune, also imported from Italy, now stood in the center of a brick-lined cement pool. Today, the new location offers a dramatic tree-lined view of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine. A number of Neptune’s tridents, legend says, have gone missing over the years.
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson
The Painted Woman in the Window