Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Everything Portsmouth is known for

1 song mention this city 3 artists from here

Music in Portsmouth

Songs About Portsmouth

summertime's close
zach bryan
10%

Artists From Portsmouth

R
Ronnie James Dio
metal Pop: 70
T
Tom Rush
folk Pop: 55
L
Lady Lamb
indie Pop: 43

Rivers & Roads in Song near Portsmouth

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Portsmouth.

Interstate 95 13 songs

History of Portsmouth

The State That Seceded from Massachusetts RoadyGoat

1820

Maine was part of Massachusetts for nearly two hundred years, governed as a remote district separated from the rest of the state by New Hampshire. Maine residents grumbled about this for decades. Boston was distant, their interests were ignored, and they had little representation. The catalyst was the War of 1812. The British invaded and occupied Maine's entire eastern coast from Eastport to Castine. Massachusetts sent no meaningful defense. Maine was left to fend for itself. The humiliation galvanized the independence movement. In 1819, Maine voters ratified statehood with seventy percent in favor. A constitutional convention produced a new state constitution, approved unanimously by 210 delegates. But Maine's admission got tangled in the national slavery crisis. Pro-slavery congressmen refused to admit Maine as a free state unless Missouri was simultaneously admitted as a slave state, preserving the Senate's balance. This political horse trade became the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Maine entered the Union as the 23rd state on March 15, 1820, paired with Missouri. A state that wanted nothing more than to govern itself became a pawn in the fight over slavery a continent away. The border you are crossing between New Hampshire and Maine exists because Massachusetts could not be bothered to defend its own territory.

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

1800

One of the oldest continuously operating shipyards in the U.S., established in 1800, and the site where the Russo-Japanese War peace treaty was signed in 1905.

John Paul Jones House - Portsmouth

1758

The father of the American Navy boarded at this 1758 Georgian house while overseeing construction of the warship America at the Portsmouth shipyard.

Strawbery Banke Museum

1630

A ten-acre outdoor museum preserving over 30 historic buildings spanning 300 years of Portsmouth's history, from the 1630 settlement to the mid-twentieth century.

Isles of Shoals

1614

A cluster of nine small islands six miles off the coast, home to one of New England's earliest fishing settlements and the site of the infamous 1873 Smuttynose murders.

9.3 mi away

Appledore Island - Celia Thaxter's Garden

1848

Celia Thaxter's garden on Appledore Island drew Impressionist painter Childe Hassam and made the Isles of Shoals one of America's most celebrated artists' colonies in the 1890s.

9.4 mi away

Boon Island Light - Cannibalism Wreck

1710

Maine's tallest lighthouse stands on a barren rock 6 miles offshore where survivors of a 1710 shipwreck resorted to cannibalism to survive the winter.

14.5 mi away

Things to Do in Portsmouth

food 1.2 mi away
Bob's Clam Hut

Fried clams that make people weep in Kittery Maine. Cash only. Worth the detour.

Everything Near Portsmouth

73 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Portsmouth on the Map
All music from New Hampshire → · Browse more cities