Boston never lets go of its past. It preserves its history with such icons as the redbrick Freedom Trail, the Charlestown Navy Shipyard and Faneuil Hall, to name a few. Over 16 million visitors annually flock to the Greater Boston area to retrace the footsteps of early colonists and young revolutionaries.
But how many visitors jaunt northward to admire NH’s historical landmarks? In a state known for its mountains, lakes and ski trails, road trippers are more likely to explore NH’s back story as a postscript to its recreation and natural beauty.
That isn’t to say the history is not here to be explored. Hidden gems include the former residence of famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, the state’s only national park. Saint-Gaudens is best known for a 12-foot-tall monument of Abraham Lincoln, now in Chicago, and a bronze relief of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of Boston, who led the first all-black regiment in 1863.
Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, NH’s only national park. Courtesy of the NH Division of Historical Resources.
Travel about a half hour south along the banks of the Connecticut River, and visitors arrive at another rural hamlet, the Fort at Number 4 in Charlestown, a reconstructed settlement from the 1740s.
The Fort at Number 4 in Charlestown. Photo by Storm /Flickr Creative Commons.
Those who like to plan their cultural itineraries can find ideas on visitnh.gov, the website for the NH Division of Travel and Tourism Development. For example, not far from the national park is the country’s longest covered wooden bridge connecting Cornish to Windsor, Vt. And a “Route 3 Retro Tour” pays homage to American institutions from bygone eras, like the Littleton Diner in the North Country or the oldest candy maker shop in NH, the Kellerhaus in Weirs Beach. In Derry, poetry fans can explore the place where Robert Frost lived for 11 years and that inspired many of his famous works.
Above: The country’s longest covered wooden bridge connecting Cornish to Vermont. Photo by CMN2351fl/Flickr Creative Commons.
Then there are the state’s many historic main streets. Many towns now offer downloadable maps for self-guided walking tours, including Concord, Littleton, Dover, Manchester, Ossipee and Plymouth. In
Peterborough, where Thornton Wilder based his fictional play, “Our Town,” officials created their own mobile app.
History and Architecture
On any given Saturday or Sunday in the summer, passers-by may spot about 60 pedestrians in Pied Piper formation following Alan Manoian, an urban heritage guide, down Main Street in Nashua.
When the group pauses at the top of the hill, Manoian points to the First Congregation Church’s 118-foot bell tower, a stunning figure that resembles a stone-faced belfry of a medieval castle. Every Sunday morning, the five chimes punctuate the air much in the same way they did in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair. That’s when a Nashua woman, Mary P. Nutt, first heard them and purchased them for the church.
Manoian says he leads these walk-and-talks both for a love of Nashua and because he wants to change NH’s perception as a second-tier player in New England historical tours. Manoian was Nashua’s first downtown development director in the late 1990s. During his 10-year stint, he spent long hours in the city’s public library scouring microfilm archives from The Telegraph dating back to the 1800s.
That’s when he discovered the chronicled tales behind many of the buildings he passed every day.
The roots of Nashua, a township of Dunstable, Mass. until 1746, run deep, says Manoian, who has conducted Gate City tours for the last 20 years.
Left: Alan Manoian leads a lantern evening walking tour of Nashua. Courtesy Photo.
Across the street from the stone church is another ecclesiastic-style building, the Hunt Memorial Library, which NH native and renowned architect Ralph Adams Cram designed in 1903. Embellished with carved limestone, a wooden ceiling and handcrafted iron lights, Cram employed some of these features in his more notable gothic creations, such as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan and the chapel at West Point.
Most of the visitors on Manoian’s tours either reside in or are familiar with the area. But when they learn about the historical context of these architectures, says Manoian, a shift in thinking occurs: The downtown no longer serves a strictly utilitarian purpose; it is now “a destination, a place where you can spend time.”
Activities like walking tours translate into dollars for local shops and restaurants, says Paul Shea, director of Great American Downtown in Nashua. Shea promotes festivals, the Nashua Farmer’s Market and other events in collaboration with the city and the chamber of commerce. “There is an economic value in illuminating the rich history of our New Hampshire communities,” he says.
Research from the Travel Industry Association (TIA) confirms that heritage trip planners spend more time at their destinations and contribute more to the local economy than other types of travelers. And a 2013 report on “The Cultural and Heritage Traveler” from Mandala Research finds that more than 75 percent of vacationers let a city’s culture and heritage influence where they stay. Exactly how much revenue heritage sightseeing alone hauls into the state is difficult to track. Tourism is the state’s second largest industry, snaring more than $5 billion annually.
But tourism isn’t the only reason to showcase a city’s heritage. John Clayton of the Manchester Historic Association (MHA) says he especially likes showing off the city’s renovated mills to those who currently work in them. Clayton says employees get a “sense they’re part of something bigger than floor space.”
A tour group listen to guide Robert Perreault as he leads the Mile of Mills walking tour in Manchester. Courtesy of the Manchester Historic Association.
When guides from MHA walk through the rambling hallways of what was once a bustling textile behemoth, they explain how the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company built one of the first planned industrial cities in America. Visitors are asked to imagine the mid-1800s, when most of Manchester was farmland, and a corporation had the power to invent a city. Amoskeag purchased 15,000 acres, reserved 700 for the water-powered textile mills and asked an 19-year-old engineer to lay out a street grid with the remaining parcel to create homes, parks and schools for its workers. “We want them [the Millyard employees] to understand the heritage they’ve become a part of,” Clayton says.
To enhance the dark but enthralling side of that past, the MHA and the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce are evaluating whether to introduce ghost walks. These otherworldly tours have been a big draw in other markets and not just at Halloween, says Chamber CEO Michael Skelton. “We also have a robust dining and entertainment scene in Manchester that is a natural complement to this type of programming,” he says.
Last summer, Manoian introduced his lantern evening walking tours in Nashua. He spins frightful yarns—like the remains of a murdered woman’s skeleton found in a wall of a commercial building—from facts, not fables, thanks to The Telegraph’s centuries-old archives.
It quickly became a popular tour, Manoian says. “I was blown away. I couldn’t keep up with it,” he says of the response.
A Port of History
Portsmouth, a city where Federal and Georgian-style homes sit alongside an eclectic mix of edgy shops and aromatic coffee shops, beckons tourists with a culture that’s trendy, yet authentic.
It’s also a city where preservation and commercial tourism are symbiotic partners under the guise of Discover Portsmouth, a nonprofit that operates a welcome center on the corner of Islington and Middle Streets.
“What’s unique about Portsmouth,” says Discover Portsmouth’s Volunteer Manager Erika Beer, is that it’s a community where history is brought to the forefront and celebrated. “People come here looking for a lobster roll, but once they get here, they find so much more to do.”
Most tourists know Portsmouth for Strawbery Banke, a settlement of preserved homes dating from the 1600s through the 1950s. But Portsmouth has more stories to tell beyond this waterfront neighborhood. Sightseers can follow the history of the harbor’s slave trade, the birth of the mercantile industry, the fortunes of shipbuilders or the governor’s home where an escaped slave from GeorgeWashington’s plantation found safety.
One of the more popular tours is the Black Heritage Trail with 24 markers on private properties, an endeavor that required community buy-in. People are surprised, notes the trail’s director JerriAnne Boggis, that from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s, Portsmouth was a major seaport in the north for the slave trade. Angela Matthews, one of the volunteer trail guides, meets her groups at the wharf at Prescott Park, where in the 17th century merchants unloaded their island goods such as molasses and rum, and auctioned off slaves to work in households or at the docks, which included many young children. As she walks down the narrow lanes to the Moffatt-Ladd House on Market Street, she tells the mid-1700s saga of a young African boy, Prince, who adopted the surname of his wealthy owner, General William Whipple, one of the signators of the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolutionary War, Prince fought alongside Whipple, who promised him freedom.
The Moffatt-Ladd House, a stop on the Black Heritage Trail tour in Portsmouth. Photo by Ralph Morang.
Historians hazard a guess that Prince, who could read, write and hear the revolutionary parlance the general engaged in on their trips to Philadelphia, was one of the 20 slaves who, in 1779, petitioned the NH government for freedom. Unfortunately, lawmakers didn’t take the petition seriously, says Matthews. In fact, they ignored it.
Prince Whipple went on to marry and have a family. He and his wife, Dinah, a freed black woman, settled in a cottage next door to the Moffatt-Ladd House. Dinah ran the Ladies Charitable African Society, teaching former slaves and their children to read.
Matthews ends the outing at the African Burial Ground Memorial, which was first confirmed on a public map in 1859. Coffins at the site were discovered in 2003 when bulldozers dug up seven of them on Chestnut Street. Using DNA analysis, city officials confirmed the site was a segregated cemetery for Africans and their descendants that had been forgotten. It is one of the few known African burial grounds in New England from the 1700s.
Boggis says the Black Heritage Trail draws more than local or national crowds. It’s an international story, she adds, that attracts African American organizations and history buffs around the world.
So many people are interested in Portsmouth’s history that Roxie Zwicker, president and founder of New England Curiosities in Portsmouth, expanded her business giving historical walking and trolley tours of the Port City and neighboring New Castle to full time. Zwicker founded the company 15 years ago offering one tour a week. It began when she started organizing haunted history walks as a fundraiser for the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse where she served on the board.
New England Curiosities offers tours a few times a week to a few times a day depending on the season. She offers seven types of tours, including the Haunted Pubs of Portsmouth Walk, Historic Portsmouth Legends and Ghosts tour, a waterfront tour, lighthouse tour and cemetery tour.
Zwicker estimates between 2,000 to 3,000 visitors book tours with her company annually. Tours run April through November, and she says revenue has doubled annually for the past four years. “I hear from people all the time, ‘I did not realize there was so much here,’” she says, whether it’s discovering Point of Graves, one of the oldest graveyards in the state with headstones dating back to the 1600s, or learning Portsmouth was home to the largest brewing company in America in the 1800s.
New England Curiosities owner Roxie Zwicker, center, and her costumed guides lead guests on tours. Courtesy Photo.
New England Curiosities introduced trolley tours in November after partnering with Pickwick’s Mercantile, a local shop that combines modern goods with a historic flair. The store bought the trolley and asked Zwicker to design and operate historic trolley tours in the city. Zwicker says it has quickly become one of the most popular tours. It offers a combination of history, folklore and ghost stories. What makes it unique is there are two large video screens installed so visitors can view pictures of what different sites in Portsmouth looked like in the past.
“I will show you what a street corner looked like 150 years ago. You’re able to go through a time machine of the Seacoast. You can see and hear how it evolved into the city of today,” Zwicker says.
Highway Markers
Since 1958, the NH Division of Historical Resources and NH Department of Transportation have collaborated to install more than 200 highway markers around the state, honoring the stories behind certain locations. Tourists can find maps of the markers on the state website (www.nh.gov/nhdhr/markers/documents/markers_bytown.pdf).
New Hampshire’s first marker was in the northernmost part of the state at the site of the Republic of Indian Stream in Pittsburg. That is where in 1832, Canadian and U.S. settlers stopped fighting over borders and created their own Independent Republic of Indian Stream. Four years later, Indian Stream became part of Pittsburg, and by 1842, a U.S. territory.
The Capitol
There’s one landmark in NH that’s easy to find from the highway: the shiny gold dome of the Statehouse. For political junkies or capitol collectors, Concord’s white granite edifice is a must-see. It is also the oldest Statehouse where both houses of the Legislature meet in their original chambers, housing the largest state Legislature in the United States.
After the location for the state’s capitol moved from Portsmouth and then to Exeter, the Statehouse was built in Concord and embellished during the Civil War years with Greek revival-style columns supporting a projected portico to “demonstrate the government would carry on at a time when confidence was an all-time low,” explains Virginia Drew, director of the Statehouse Visitor Center.
The Senate chamber in the Statehouse. Courtesy Photo.
State House visitors can browse the 88 original Civil War flags in their mahogany cases, along with ensigns from the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and Vietnam. A tribute to NH native Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space, is on display with his portrait and moon rocks. The 207 oil paintings are a beacon for art connoisseurs, says Drew, who’s been guiding tours and operating the gift shop for 16 years. She’s proud of the portraits of state and national legislators—although only seven are women. “We had a hundred years of just men around here,” she quips.
Tours are free, but are only available during the week. As of this writing, the Concord Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring legislation and raising funds to open the Statehouse on Saturdays in the summer and fall when tourists are more likely to visit.
Tracing the Steps of History
While NH is a small state, its history is expansive. It’s one of the 13 original colonies, and its past reflects the struggles of immigrants and the oppressed, the innovation behind industrialized communities, and the inspiration behind many famous works of art.
New Hampshire has more than 200 historical societies, many of which collaborate with cities and towns to promote awareness of the state’s heritage. And most agree that its recognition of its past spurs its economic future, too.
“New Hampshire is a beautiful place but it has a great rooted history that people are trying to get out there in their own unique ways,” Zwicker says. “We see people all the time who are passing through and take a tour and want to come back because they didn’t realize how much was here.”
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