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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

NORTH SIDE OF BUCK STREET. 229
making business, which soon afterwards became unprofitable by the introduction of shoe strings, Mr. Davenport
then opened his premises as a public house, with the sign
of Noah's Ark, and denominated his house the " Ark Tavern," exhibiting in front a fanciful sign of the picture of the
Ark.
Mr. Davenport's wife died in this house while the Superior Court was sitting in Portsmouth, in the month of February, and as his house was crowded with boarders, which
made her burial very inconvenient, she was kept until the
court closed its business about three weeks after.
The artist who painted Mr. Davenport's sign, went by
the name of James Still. His proper name was James
Ford. Under his real name he had been guilty of an offence which cost him a part of his ears. Although he
dropped the Ford as he did the long hair over his ears, yet as
his baptismal name was not changed, it remained, he said,.
James still. Thus in the exercise of his good talent as a
delineator and painter he continued till the time of hia
death under the name of James Still.
RAMBLE CXXV.
Central Portsmouth before the Fire of 1813. - James
Sheafe's Residence - Aibraham Isaac, the Jew- Jonathanl MVi. Se-well, the Poet.
NEXT west of Davenport's hotel on State street, were the
premises of Hon. James Sheafe, who occupied the family
mansion of his father. The house was large, of two stories