Portsmouth, NH may be a small city with a population around 22,000, but the local historical society hits above its weight. The organization has two museum buildings: the historical John Paul Jones House (pictured above) and the modern Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center. While I did know John Paul Jones from his (likely apocryphal) line, “I have not yet begun to fight” when asked to surrender during a sea battle, I did not know much else about his life prior to my visit. I found the details were less glamorous than many 18th and 19th century biographies made it out to be. Later, I enjoyed the work of local artists in the welcome center galleries.
At the Georgian style house, I learned that John Paul Jones was briefly a military ship captain in the American Revolutionary War. His stay at the house bearing his name was equally brief, as he was said to have rented a room in 1781 from Mrs. Purcell, whose deceased sea captain husband had built the house in 1758. The house was later owned by prominent families in the Portsmouth area. As for the backstory of the war hero, John Paul was born in Scotland in 1747 and later added “Jones” to his name. While referred to as a “Father of the American Navy” by President Theodore Roosevelt, John Paul Jones began his career in the British Merchant Navy and ended it in the Russian Imperial Navy under Catherine the Great. He spent much of the time privateering rather than in formal military service and died alone in 1792 at age 45.
Items of note in the John Paul Jones gallery included a model of his famous ship, the Bonhomme Richard, along with two busts and a portrait. A neighboring room on the second floor was dedicated to the Russo-Japanese War, a conflict forgotten in the United States except for Portsmouth. Ambassadors from Russia and Japan came to the little New Hampshire city at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, as he wanted to prevent war over the colonial territories of Manchuria and Korea. A dense exhibit with a textbook worth of words and pictures would fascinate hardcore Russo-Japanese War fans, but a short documentary might attract a wider audience. Since the John Paul Jones House holds the historical collections of the Portsmouth Historical Society, much of its contents are similar to other, albeit smaller, historical societies. Mini exhibits include artifacts from the 1976 bicentennial celebration, antique furniture, delft dishes, walking canes, needlepoint samplers, a single plaque about women’s history, and John Paul Jones themed soap on sale at the giftshop. A mannequin dressed as a revolutionary war soldier was a great opportunity for a selfie.
John Paul Jones is open from the last weekend in May through the second Monday in October from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., plus Veterans Day from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Like most houses of its era, the John Paul Jones House has no elevator. If short on time, visitors might take an exterior picture of the John Paul Jones House rather than going inside, and instead go down the street to the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center.
This welcoming stop has a gift shop and museum gallery spaces. I visited on the first Friday of the month to take advantage of the Art ’Round Town event, where for-profit galleries in Portsmouth stay open late and admission to the museums are free for all. The main gallery holds rotating exhibits featuring artists from New England. A second gallery called the Seacoast African American Cultural Center featured modern African art. The galleries were family-friendly, and the elevator in the building allowed everyone to see all the floors. The center is open April through December, seven days a week, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with extra hours on the first Friday.
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Abigail Epplett leads a dual life as a freelance digital marketing consultant for small humanities-focused organizations and as a customer experience design creative specialist at lab equipment manufacturer Waters Corporation. She holds an MA in Museum Education from Tufts University, where she researched the history of New England from Plymouth to the Civil War. To learn more about her adventures with museums, visit her current blog at abbyeppletthistorian.blogspot.com.
Abigail is Historian-In-Residence at the National Museum of Mental Health Project: https://www.nmmhproject.org/