The celebration of Fathers’ Day in New Hampshire is over 100 years old, unofficially that is. The anniversary date hinges really on which year you consider as the advent of Fathers’ Day in our state. A newspaper article acknowledged the day as early as 1910.
Newspaper Article from: Portsmouth Herald, August 5, 1910, page 4
Eldress Bertha Lindsay, and Gertrude Soule were not the last of New Hampshire’s Shaker Colony–Ethel Hudson was the last when she died in 1992. At Christmas-time in 1978 when the radiant faces of Bertha and Gertrude were captured for this newspaper photograph they were two of nine Shaker members still remaining. Their village in Canterbury once had 400 men, women and children. Continue reading
On the 15th day of July, 1605, the French navigators sailed smoothly on from Cape Porpoise twelve leagues toward the south; they coasted
Likeness of Samuel de Champlain from “The Isles of Shoals. An historical sketch,” (1901), by John Scribner Jenness, Boston, NY, Houghton, Mifflin and Company; page 16
along the beaches of Maine and New Hampshire, passing the Piscataqua River without notice, and by nightfall, had reached Great Boar’s Head in Hampton. Finding no harbor there, they again put to sea, a couple of leagues, and looked about them in twilight. What they saw shall be better given in the language of Champlain, for his words are the first written description, howeve brief, of the Isles of Shoals.
“Nous apperceusmes un cap a la grande terre au su quart du suest de nous, ou il pourioit avoir quelque six lieues; a l’est deux lieus, apperceusmes trois ou quatre isles asses hautes, et a l’ouest, un grand cul de sac.”
“We saw a cape, bearing south, a quarter southeast from us, distant some eighteen miles; on the east, two leagues distant, we saw three or four rather prominent islands, and on the west Ipswitch Bay.”
The three or four “isles asses hautes,” spoken of by Champlain, were our present Isles of Shoals.” [Hist. de la Nouv. France, Vol. II, p. 562]
Photograph: Miss Sallie W. Hovey, Chairman, New Hampshire National Woman’s Party. Just returned from Washington where she has been lobbying recalcitrant Senators from the New England States; ca 1917; Records of the National Woman’s Party, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington DC; Digital ID: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mnwp.152009
Sallie W. Hovey was the daughter of a prominent New Hampshire minister, and the sister of a navy Ensign who lost his life in the Philippines. In her own right she worked tirelessly to make sure that the poor and unfortunate of Portsmouth were not forgotten. One of her passions was to improve the the status of women. Both her father and brother have monuments to commemorate their actions. Let this story serve as hers. Continue reading
It was a chance encounter with the Silver family. If you research genealogy you are familiar with how it happens. I was researching an entirely different family, gleaning tidbits from old newspapers. And then this story leaped out from the page.
Awful Casualty.–We learn from Briggs’ Bulletin that on the evening of the 24th instant while a Mrs. Silver was sitting on the hearth in her house, near Concord, N.H., teaching three of her 
children to read, the whole chimney, from some defect in the foundation, suddenly gave way, and was precipitated into the cellar, carrying with it Mrs. S. and her children. One of the children, a boy about six years of age, was killed; another, a girl, was burnt by the hot bricks and bruised in so shocking a manner, that though alive on Saturday morning, it is very doubtful whether she recovers. Mrs. S. and the eldest boy, it is believed will do well, though badly bruised.”–Boston Cour., as printed 2 May 1835 in the Alexandra Gazette (Alexandria VA), page 2 Continue reading
