A Quest to Thrive: Economics of Slavery & Portsmouth’s Early Black Community

Sankofa Tour Guide: Valerie Fagin Can you imagine the hustle and bustle of a prosperous colonial seaport town? This tour invites you to discover the world of early Portsmouth from the perspective of African American women. In spite of enslavement and hardship, these women fought for freedom, defied a sitting president, and educated generations of children to follow. Hear their stories about love and faith and struggle, as you walk past the homes of the families who enslaved them.

Sankofa Tour Guide: Daniel Comly Despite a horde of obstacles, Black men and women, both enslaved and free, met, established relationships, married, and built families. Learn about these obstacles and how they were overcome. True stories about these families will describe how members of the African community claimed their place as Americans.

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Angela Matthews Institutionalized slavery in Colonial America provided immense wealth and material culture to many European immigrants and their descendants in the Americas, as Portsmouth’s house museums bear witness. This tour brings into focus an economic system dependent upon the international slave trade with its constant supply of kidnapped unpaid African workers and their descendants, who, against the odds, created one of this country’s oldest Black communities.

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Sonya Martino During the Spring of 1796, George Washington’s final months in office, Ona Judge, an enslaved woman owned by the First Family, escaped the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia with the aid of that city’s free Black community and made her way to Portsmouth, NH. On this tour, you will hear the true story of Ona’s quest for freedom and the President’s relentless efforts to get her back. See the waterfront where she lands and…

Amos Fortune (c.1710-1801) was a prominent tanner, bookbinder, and philanthropist who bought his freedom in colonial New England as an African-American man. In 1781, Amos and his family relocated to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where Amos established a prosperous tannery. Upon his death in 1801, he bequeathed $233 to the town of Jaffrey for educational programs, and $100 to the church to purchase “a handsome gift,” making him the town’s first benefactor. His contribution to the town for educational purposes established…

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Nur Shoop Colonial Portsmouth newspapers would testify to the local slave trade, runaways, abolitionists, and anti-abolitionist activities, followed by conflicting opinions of the Civil War. In the 20th century, the legacy of that early history was reflected in the news about de facto segregation in housing and public places. This tour includes many of those historic landmarks from the early nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.

You might remember that ten years ago the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire honored some local friends who had participated in the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his most famous speech. This year will be the 60th anniversary of that historic event, so the Black Heritage Trail has planned another very special program to honor those who came before us and those among us who continue to march for justice. The event includes a silent community…

Sankofa Tour Guide: Erika Varga, Lillian Buckley, Wanda Dorlean, or Meghan Dunn This tour describes how African residents of a northern port town used their own traditions of resilience and mutual aid to establish one of Maine's earliest African American communities. You will hear stories of Black people living here during colonial slavery times through the modern era, a history often ignored and rarely identified with the heritage of northern New England. Meeting place: Wallingford Square downtown Kittery.

Sankofa Tour Guide: Lyonel Loveless, Stanford Cross This tour will provide visitors with a closer look at Prince Whipple and the men who joined him in signing the Petition of Freedom as well as Prince Whipple’s first-hand knowledge of the debates for Independence and in the NH militia. The tour highlights sites of significance to his life after he regained his freedom including the sites of the house where he and his wife Dinah lived and where Dinah established the…