Tangible Histories of the Puddle Dock Neighborhood
Alix Martin, Strawbery Banke Archaeology

What can historical archaeology tell us about people who worked on the waterfront of the Piscataqua River? From Abenaki fishers, to colonial merchants, to immigrants who made the Puddle Dock neighborhood their home base for work at the nearby shipyard, material culture helps connect us to people of the past. See examples of historic belongings and hear stories of Indigenous people, enslaved Africans, and 20th century matriarchs.

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Stories of Portsmouth's Past make our favorite little city come alive - We can imagine the hometown heroes as they step up  - performing acts of community generosity  and we can imagine the regular folks who no  one remembers going about their days caught up in what being human means…family,  friends, hard work, loss and love.

Four artist friends have come together to present an exhibition of their paintings that explore these stories.

Barbara Adams, a current Portsmouth resident, has delved into the lives of  Portsmouth women who stepped forward to help their family and their neighbors during difficult times.  Tom Glover paints images of our working waterfront, the yellow clad dock workers unloading the seas harvest as they have been doing since Portsmouth was founded.  Peter Cady takes a close look at the folks who built Portsmouth - literally.  His series of workers' hands each come with a story.  Dustan Knight’s mixed media pieces recreate an imagined Puddledock, her painted figures interacting with imaginary stories of love and hope.

The intention of this exhibition is that it encourages residents and visitors alike to think about Portsmouth’s past and imagine what it would be like for those folks who called it home.

Part of this exhibition is a program of speakers who will read from their own published stories of Portsmouth, the stories of our early Black fellow citizens, of the bad boys causing trouble in Market Square and lost loves gone to sea.