New Hampshire Black Heritage Trail
Portsmouth Hancock Warner Milford Exeter Kittery, ME
Tours offered by the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire (BHTNH) explore our rich and often forgotten African-American history. The stories our Sankofa Scholars have uncovered and share with visitors illustrate how the earliest Africans in America were committed to self-determination, service, and building community. This nuanced and shared history continues to shape our collective present and future.
The BHTNH series of themed guided tours offer visitors an opportunity to visualize and share a truer more inclusive history of New Hampshire. Learn this history, connect to ancestors and ancestral roots, or simply explore and see for yourself the intricately woven cultural cloth that is New Hampshire.
Important Tour Information
Unless otherwise stated, all guided tours start at 2:00 PM at 222 Court Street unless otherwise noted.
Please plan to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to departure time. If you do not arrive by 5 minutes before departure time, your spot may be given to another participant. Tours typically take 90 minutes.
Registration is required prior to taking tours. If you have not pre-registered, and if there is space available, we will register you onsite to join the tour.
There is a maximum of 20 participants per tour.
Cost:
$20 per person
$15 (with ID) for Seniors & Military
$10 Students
BHTNH Covid-19 Tour Information
Current local COVID protocols apply.
For your health and the safety of our guests, if you have any of the following symptoms, we ask that you refrain from joining a guided tour: Cough, Difficulty Breathing, Shortness of Breath, Fever, Chills
BHTNH 2022 Sankofa Guided-Tour Schedule
"Go back and get it"
Lives Bound Together: The Washingtons & Ona Marie Judge in NH
May 21 (Special Ona Judge Day Tour) Jun 25
Jul 16, Jul 24
Aug 27 (FULL)
Sep 17
Oct 15
Nov 5
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. 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 visit the properties of some of America’s most famous families; the Langdons, Whipples, and Lears, whose stories were also bound to her.
Thirst for Freedom: From NH’s Slave Trade to its Civil Rights Movement
May 28
Jun 11
Jul 30
Aug 20
Sep 10
Oct 8
Nov 6
Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Nur Shoop
Colonial Portsmouth newspapers 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 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.
Meet Jack Stains, a “Black Jack” in Old Portsmouth: A Living History Tour
May 29
June 12 (11am)
Jul 2
Aug 21
Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Kevin Wade Mitchel as Jack Staines
Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free Black men between 1740 and 1865. Black seamen sailed on whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were enslaved and forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most seamen were free to seek adventure and economic opportunity aboard ship. On this tour, you will meet Jack Staines, husband to Ona Judge Staines, the President, and Martha Washington’s escaped slave, and experience Portsmouth through the life of one of its Black seamen.
Port of Entry: Boys and Girls for Sale
June 4 ( cancelled)
July 9, Jul 23
Aug 6
Tour Guides: Rekha Mahadevan or Laramie Wilson
Local newspapers carried merchants’ ads for ships returning to the port of Portsmouth laden with cargo from trade ports on the West Coast of Africa, the West Indies, and the middle Atlantic coastal cities of Colonial America. Visit local wharves and auction sites related to the Atlantic Slave Trade, where a captive could be exchanged for “cash or good lumber” to serve in the master’s house or work on the docks or aboard a ship. See how slavery in the North compared to the South.
The Lies We Were Taught: The Black Family
Jun 5
Jul 3
Aug 13
Sep 4
Oct 2
Sankofa Tour Guide: Daniel Comly
At the turn of the 19th century, Black abolitionists are changing public attitudes about slavery and challenging racial bias in the courts. In Portsmouth, never enslaved and newly freed Black adults share households with still enslaved children and elders. It is a time of possibilities, hope, and tension. True stories about these families will describe how a community of African refugees were claiming their place as Americans.
A Quest to Thrive: Economics of Slavery & Portsmouth’s Early Black Community
Jun 12
Aug 14
Oct 9
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.
Ain’t She A Woman: Let Me Tell You Her Story
Jun 26
Jul 31
Aug 28
Sep 25
Oct 30
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.
NEW!! Black Soldiers and the American Revolution
July 10 and Sep 11
Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Angela Matthews
Enslaved Africans fought for freedom from tyranny alongside the Western European Patriots of Portsmouth - the Sons of Liberty, as they call themselves. It was a fight that did not necessarily guarantee an African his own liberty. Called to arms by their enslavers, some Africans used their war bounty to buy their freedom, while others self-emancipated to fight with the British for the promise of independence.
This tour of 18th century Portsmouth is experienced from the perspective of African veterans who served NH in the Revolutionary War, some of whom lived in Portsmouth and surrounding towns. Experience how Portsmouth African men and women provided the kind of support that helped their neighbors and fellow veterans in this tight knit community to survive well into the 19th century.
NEW!! Prince Whipple and the 1779 Petition
Jul 17
Aug 7
Sep 3
Oct 1
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 First Ladies African Charitable School. You will also hear about Prince Whipple trade as an influential event manager.
Portsmouth Green Book Tour
Sep 24
Oct 29
Sankofa Tour Guide: Nur Shoop
This Sankofa Tour describes some of the local people and places that would help African American travelers find safety and avoid the humiliation often experienced in the North where less formal systems of discrimination could, without warning, prohibit black people from entering the same spaces as whites. There were many variations of “Negro” travel and vacation guidebooks. All are evidence of the resilience that black communities had to survive the 20th century’s age of segregation. The book was used as a tool by African Americans who went places to enjoy themselves without concerns of experiencing racism. Civil rights activists used the travelers’ guides as part of their work, finding black guest houses and church people’s parlors as meeting spots. When the Civil Rights Act gets rid of this de jour legal segregation is when small independent businesses begin to disappear. The Green Books are a valuable resource, but what is not written on those pages is where the real stories and histories are. This is our story.
BHTNH Expanded Walking Tours
Kittery, ME
Kittery's Black Yankees
Jun 5
Jul 10, Jul 16
Aug 27 | 11:00 am
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.
Hancock, NH
Asserting Freedom: A Tour of Cellar Holes & Sites in Hancock, NH
September 10 | 10:00am | Tour Guide: Eric Aldrich
Hancock, a quintessential New England village, defies the march of time. At first glance, this little village seems to be slumbering away quite peacefully. However, buried just beneath the colonial veneer of this seemingly all-white town is a vibrant history of early Black settlers who worked, bought land, built homes, challenged the church, and struggled for freedom.
Tour meets in front of the Hancock Town Offices, 50 Main Street, Hancock.
Warner, NH
A Small New Hampshire Town Remembers Its Black History
October 2 | 2:00 PM |Cost $20
Tour Guides: Rebecca Courser & Lynn Clark
Historians Rebecca Courser & Lynn Clark will take us on a journey in Warner, NH that will commemorate and make visible the town’s Black community that dates back to the 1700’s.
(More information coming soon)
Milford, NH
Not a Slave, yet not Free: Harriet E. Wilson and the Abolition Movement
Jun 12
July 24
Sep 25
Oct 30
2pm | meet at the Oval in Milford
Tour Guide: David Nelson
Harriet E. Wilson was the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published in 1859.
Born a free person of color in New Hampshire, Wilson was orphaned when young and bound until the age of 18 as an indentured servant. She struggled to make a living after that, marrying twice; her only son George died at the age of seven in the poor house, where she had placed him while trying to survive as a widow. She wrote one novel. Wilson later was associated with the Spiritualist church, was paid on the public lecture circuit for her lectures about her life
Exeter, NH
A Walking Tour of Exeter’s Racial History
June 26 & Sept 11 | 2:00 PM | Tour Meets at | Cost $20
Tour Guide: Barbara Rimkunas
Walk in the footsteps of Exeter’s earlier generations and explore the racial history of the town—the conflicts, concessions, and changes that have taken place over time. This tour will explore how racial identity has shaped Exeter’s history and will serve to open a dialogue that will help shape its future.
Meeting place: Exeter Town Hall, Front Street
