Portsmouth: The Life of a Town

PORTSMOUTH: THE LIFE OF A TOWN
By Ola Elizabeth Winslow
The MacMillan Company, NY, 1966

This is by far the best history of our little city for children published in the 20th century. The dust jacket of my copy, bought at an online auction, is tattered and worn. Driven, typically, from a patriotic colonial point of view, the author still managed to create an accurate overview beginning with the first commercial explorer, Martin Pring in 1603 through the American Revolution. Ola Elizabeth Winslow (1885-1977) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian with a PhD working with a major publisher. Born in Missouri, educated at Stanford, a professor at Wellesley College, she was a Boston Athenaeum proprietor until her death in Maine.