On Sunday evening, August 19, 1900, Sarah Haven Foster was crossing the intersection of Middle Street and Richards Avenue. Elderly and with poor hearing and weak eyesight, Foster was struck by the unscheduled arrival of one of the city’s new electric cars. Despite the enormous force of the collision that threw her across the street, one of the city’s most talented writers and artists clung to life until about midnight. “Miss Sarah H. Foster Meets a Violent Death,” the newspaper announced the following day. The city’s first electric vehicle death hit the record book.
“It was a thrilling episode and those who saw it held their breath,” the Portsmouth Herald reported. “The news of this accident traveled so swiftly that within five minutes a crowd of several hundred people had congregated on the spot.”
I once dubbed Ms. Foster “the grandmother of Portsmouth tourism.” What Portsmouth’s flagging economy needed in the Victorian era, she said, was a guide to its many historic houses. Sarah knew a lot about Portsmouth. She was a good writer. She was also a skilled traveler, having toured Europe when she was only 16. Best of all, her father was a prominent local printer, bookbinder and bookseller.
She was 50 years old before “A Portsmouth Guidebook” was finally completed. Following the Civil War, tourism was booming along the Atlantic coast. Visitors arrived in droves aboard a new network of trains and ferries and, eventually, electric trolleys. Sarah’s portable European-style booklet included nine self-guided walking tours through New Hampshire’s only seaport.
Borrowing heavily from Charles Brewster’s “Rambles About Portsmouth,” Sarah’s low-cost, cloth-bound guide also included advertisements, most directed toward women readers. Her brother Joseph Foster became her publisher. Surviving copies are rare and fragile, but you can download a free digital version from Google Books.
Sarah’s guidebook first appeared in 1876 bearing only her initials “SHF.” It was reprinted in 1884 and 1893 before slick guides with photographs took over. But she remains Portsmouth’s original tour guide.
Never married, Sarah Haven Foster devoted her life to her writing, her art, and to travel. Sadly, we have no portrait of her. Happily, we have a great many of her watercolors. Almost 1,000 of her images are housed in the Special Collections Room at the Portsmouth Public Library. Sarah Foster painted scores of historic buildings in the Seacoast region, often from many angles, returning time and again until she got the picture right. Currently 171 of her miniature watercolors of local scenes can be viewed in the library’s online collection.
The Portsmouth Herald headline in 1900 read “KILLED BY AN ELECTRIC” in capital letters. According to the account, Sarah stepped onto the trolley track after one car passed, unaware a second car coming from Rye was right behind. Running late, the car was driven by motorman John Hutchins, who was “going at a good rate, though not a reckless one.” Witnesses agreed the motorman was blameless, but Mr. Hutchins was “greatly cut up over the sad affair.”
Miss Foster, aged 73, was from a well-respected family, the reporter noted. She was not “run over” by the car, as rumored, since “the wheels did not strike her.” She was taken to her home nearby. Four doctors arrived “within a short time.” Foster was reportedly suffering from shock, but had no broken bones or internal injuries.
“For a time it was hoped, with apparently good reason,” the newspaper concluded, “that she might rally and recover. Her advanced age, however, made this impossible, and before a great while it was evident that she could not survive.”
Article copyright 2021 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Christening USS Billfish in 1942