A BRIEF HISTORY OF NORTH CHURCH
The Iconic Heart of Portsmouth, NH
A 350th Anniversary Souvenir
The city's oldest organization and steward of the iconic Market Square steeple, the North Church of Portsmouth celebrates its 350th anniversary with a deeply-researched highly-readable illustrated history by the author of popular books about Strawbery Banke Museum, the Music Hall, and Wentworth by the Sea. This sturdy (40-pages, 8x10 inches) booklet traces the evolution of the 1712 "schism" that split the town's Congregational church through its founding pastors to the present day. This is the story of a little church with a big heart and a rich history.
Signed copies of this limited souvenir edition, the only history of this landmark church currently in print, are available exclusively from the Portsmouth Historical Society for $14.95, plus shipping and handling. For more information contact the author or North Church of Portsmouth, NH.
The city's oldest organization and steward of the iconic Market Square steeple, the North Church of Portsmouth celebrates its 350th anniversary with a deeply-researched highly-readable illustrated history by the author of popular books about Strawbery Banke Museum, the Music Hall, and Wentworth by the Sea. This sturdy (40-pages, 8x10 inches) booklet traces the evolution of the 1712 "schism" that split the town's Congregational church through its founding pastors to the present day. This is the story of a little church with a big heart and a rich history.
Signed copies of this limited souvenir edition, the only history of this landmark church currently in print, are available exclusively from the Portsmouth Historical Society for $14.95, plus shipping and handling. For more information contact the author or North Church of Portsmouth, NH.
AUTHOR NOTES
Being asked to condense the incredible story of this landmark church was both an honor and a challenge. Except for published sermons by North Church pastors, no 350-year history existed. The church archives fill 12.5 linear feet of shelf space in the vault of the Portsmouth atheaneum across Market Square. On top of that, within a three-month timeline, my job was to also deliver a big screen slideshow tracing church history back to the origins of the Congregational Church from the arrival of Puritan movement in New England.
It was a full-on immersion that I fully enjoyed. The journey began with questions like -- Why is Portsmouth's south Church located just a block away from the city's North Church today? Why does North Church date its origin to the year 1671 when the first document in its archive dates to 1640? How did the beheading of Charles I, the accession of Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell, the the return of the English monarchy under Charles II impact the founding of a tiny congregation in Portsmouth, NH? And why did a schism in 1712 break the city's dominant religious institution in half?
And that was just the beginning.
I quickly dug into the early pastor who led this little congregation through the trauma of earthquakes, fires, war, disease, and the birth of a new nation. The text zooms in on the explosive rise of the Unitarian Church, cultural battles over temperance and abolition, and the building of a new brick church in 1854 with its iconic steeple. We follow the congregation through the construction of three parish houses, the service of more than two dozen pastors, struggles with shifting moral and spiritual beliefs, to the crises of a $1.5 million repair to the deteriorating steeple that rises 200 feet over Portsmouth's Market Square.
Only 600 copies of the booklet that Grace Peirce and I co-designed are currently in print. My plan is to adapt the text into an ebook version for 2022 and, in time, to create a narrated digital version of the accompanying slideshow. Special thanks to Douglas Woodward and the 350th Anniversary Committee for making this possible. Understanding the evolution of North Church is critical to following the history of New Hampshire's only seaport..
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