Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

368 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH. galoches-India rubber shoes had not then been discovered. The Methodist Society then occupied the building in the avenue on Vaughan street, now used as a stable. The Freewill Baptists occupied what is now called the Temple. The germs of what after became the Middle-street Baptist Church, were gathered in the church of the Independents on Court street, on the site of the present Unitarian Chapel. The Sandemanian Society worshipped in the chamber of the brick school house on State street. The Society is now extinct. These were all the religious societies in Portsmouth fifty years ago. 7'he Brick School house readily designated a locality, for all the other school houses were old wooden buildings, better fit for pigs than for children. Now we have seven brick school houses-one of which cost more than all the school houses in Portsmouth fifty years ago. Not one of the public school houses of 1818, except that on State street, now remain. The only organ then, was that in St. John's Church. There were no Sunday Schools, no Temperance meetings, no Lyceum lectures. There was no Hearse in Portsmouth. The bier might be seen in the entries of the churches, and the friends or neighbors of the deceased bore them to their graves. There were no carriages used for funerals thennor was there an Auburn street or Harmony-Grove Cem. etery. Fifty years ago the present lower room of the Atheneum was an insurance o-fice, and the chamber over it was St. John's Masonic Eall. The Atheneum was just incorporated, and its five hundred volumes were on shelves in the room over John I-. Bailey's store on Congress street. There were then no bridges to connect Portsmouth with Maine, or with Newcastle, or with Rye over Sagamore creek. Lafayette road was not then opened, and Rye Beach was less thought of as a place of resort than Newington-Piscataqua Bridge being then the great place of

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Title
Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.
Author
Brewster, Charles Warren, 1802-1868.
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Page 368
Publication
Portsmouth, N.H.,: C.W. Brewster & son,
1859-69.
Subject terms
Portsmouth (N.H.) -- History.
Portsmouth (N.H.) -- Description and travel.

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"Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster." In the digital collection Making of America Books. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/afj7267.0002.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 22, 2025.
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