As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, a museum exhibit in Portsmouth is looking back to the early days of the Revolution — through the eyes of everyday people.
Before Portsmouth was a hotbed of patriotism, it was the colonial capital of New Hampshire. And loyalties in the city were evolving, says Emma Stratton, executive director of the Portsmouth Historical Society.
That was the inspiration for the society's exhibit, Revolutionary Portsmouth, at the John Paul Jones House, a historic home where the Revolutionary War hero once stayed.
The exhibit highlights the sometimes clashing viewpoints that co-existed in Portsmouth in the run-up to 1776, notably the emerging sides of patriot vs. loyalist.
“What that looks like is understanding the multiple perspectives that existed in Portsmouth during that time: Patriot, loyalist, the experience of people of color, of women, of all different groups that were living here and trying to understand what life was like in very divisive times 250 years ago, which has a lot of parallels to the divisive times we live in today,” Stratton said.
Divided loyalties
Stratton says research indicates one third of the public at the time had patriotic sympathies, one third were loyalists, and one third were neutral in the conflict.
John Paul Jones was decidedly not neutral: He hated the British. It’s his legacy that led to the house on State Street being saved by the Portsmouth Historical Society, which has run it as a museum since 1920.
The house was built in 1758 for Capt. Gregory Purcell. Jones stayed there in 1777, when it was operating as a boarding house. At that time, his ship the USS Ranger was being worked on at the Portsmouth shipyard.
Jones is known as the father of the American Navy. He is celebrated for his cry in a 1779 battle: “I have not yet begun to fight!”
That quote is featured on artwork at the house, and Jones appears on some collectibles on display from the bicentennial — from an Old Spice cologne bottle to a ceramic jug.
Besides the pursuit of liberty in 1776, the exhibit explores how the Revolution was remembered at the centennial in 1876 and again during the bicentennial in 1976. During each of those anniversaries, Stratton says there was a surge in interest in Jones.
Tori Simpson Tucker, who worked the front desk at the John Paul Jones House during a recent visit, pointed out the exhibit showcases items owned by people of the Revolutionary War era who had different viewpoints.
Items in the collection include part of a wedding china set, a surveyor’s compass, wallets, a small sword, watch and pendant, and tea cups and saucers associated with loyalty to the crown, and a punch bowl more fitting for a gathering of the Sons of Liberty.
“We’re really focusing on the perspectives of the people that lived through that history,” Simpson Tucker said. “And it was a very fraught time politically then, and I think mirrors a very fraught political environment now.”
