Since coming on three years ago as a volunteer, Raymond’s Ron Locke has quietly donated more than $60,000 and nearly 60,000 lbs. of food to the NH Food Bank. (Photo: David Lazar)

For Raymond’s Ron Locke, perhaps the only challenge more confounding than world peace, he laughs, is finding a Christmas gift for his beloved Mary Ann. “My wife doesn’t wear jewelry, doesn’t really do perfume. Neither of us is extravagant,” says the 65-year-old electronics entrepreneur and grandpa of six. “We’re the kind of people where, if we need it, we’ll just get it right then and there and not wait for the holiday.” So when Locke, a longtime supporter of local charities, set off to find his wife’s stocking stuffer three years ago, he pursued a different path. What began as a quest for the “Ultimate Christmas Gift” became the ultimate act of kindness for thousands of families in need across the Granite State – one that continues to this day.

Locke still wells up recalling his wife’s tears opening her gift that year. In a box beneath their tree was a homemade DVD chronicling his quest – a choreographed search which brought him to several local establishments before concluding in the back of a Hannaford supermarket. There, a smiling representative from the NH Food Bank, the state’s largest provider of nourishment to those in need, greeted Locke, rolling out pallet after pallet of food, enough to supply some 40,000 meals. “I just remember waking up one night around 3 or 3:30 in the morning and having this ‘aha’ moment,” Locke says. “Everyone was getting laid off in the news – this is when the recession was at its worst. I wanted to do something to help these people.”

In the NH Food Bank, Locke, no stranger himself at times to struggle, discovered a cause near and dear to his heart. Founded in 1984, the Catholic Charities of New England-run organization each year distributes more than 6.5 million pounds of donated, surplus food to local pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, daycares and senior homes. Since the economic downturn of 2008, the charity has seen the roster of residents it feeds annually jump from 95,000 to roughly 130,000, and today integrates a host of programs designed to meet new demand, from salvaging and freezing supermarkets’ soon-to-expire meat and growing its own produce through local gardens to offering courses for aspiring chefs and those cooking on a budget.

In Locke, meantime, the NH Food Bank has found one of its most committed – and kind-hearted – ambassadors. Since coming on three years ago, Locke has quietly donated more than $60,000 and 59,314 pounds of food to the Manchester-based nonprofit, studiously avoiding the spotlight and instead volunteering hundreds of hours to give tours, speak to the community and serve as a megaphone for a mission whose importance, he says, cannot be understated. “Hunger doesn’t know holidays or vacations,” he says. “These are our neighbors and they’re hurting. My wife and I have what we need in our lives. If it’s a small thing we can do to help, then that’s it.” For more information, visit www.nhfoodbank.org.

It has been nearly four years since I saw my first vintage copy of The NH Troubadou. It was love at first sight. Pocket-sized and brimming with poetry, vivid photos and touching portraits of neighbors and communities from Portsmouth to Pittsburg, it was a reminder of what has always made our state the best place in the world to call home: its people.

When we first decided in 2008 to re-launch this publication as a gift to the state, free of ads and free of charge, there was no shortage of people who thought perhaps we’d lost a marble or two. In an age of digital media and declining literacy, at a time when our state and our nation were badly hurting, the questions kept recurring: Will anyone read it? How will it possibly survive? Will a magazine that is, at its core, about celebrating history and tradition, trumpeting the good works of our neighbors, and inspiring others to step forward and assist their communities really resonate?

Over the last three years, you have answered these questions loud and clear. You have answered them through your poetry, photos and artistry; by inviting us into your homes and communities to witness firsthand the people and places that continue to make our New Hampshire so remarkable; and through your nominations of genuinely good folks, like the amazing Ron Locke on the opposing page, who are quietly contributing and helping others, not for recognition, but because it’s the right thing to do. In this little magazine, you have helped to give all of us something very special to hold in our hands.

This is a bittersweet moment for my wife Karin and me. Following the production of this issue, the Troubadour will be going into hibernation, as we focus the energy and efforts of our charitable foundation with the children and families across New Hampshire who are struggling and need help the most.

This is not goodbye. There are many more stories to write, poems to publish and people to champion, and it is our hope, sooner rather than later, that our economy rights itself and we are able to return to this extraordinary project. What it is, in the meantime, is thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being so giving of yourselves, for your continued kind words, for reminding all of us the true meaning of wealth.

THE SILENCE OF THE SURFACE IS BROKEN
BY THE TINKLING WAKE OF THE STERN
DRIFTING ACROSS THE STILL WATERS
SCATTERING FLOCKS OF WATER BEETLES SKIM AND DANCE
IN A ZIGZAG OF WAKES LIKE FIREWORKS ON THE WATER
MORNING MIST RISES FROM THE WARM WATER CONTRASTS OF BEAUTY
IT’S DAWN THAT STIRS THE PRIMAL AWAKENINGS OF MAN
SILENCE OF GLIDERS AS THEY DIP AND CLIMB
CLICKS THE BILLS OF THE WHITE BREASTED SWALLOWS AS THE DINE
THAT BLUE GREY SKY THAT TRANSCENDS TIME
WITH THE IRIDESCENT BLUE OF THE TIPPED WINGS THAT SPARKLE
MIRRORED WE ALL REFLECT WHO’S WATCHING

Colleen Swain, holder of the Boston Post Cane, demonstrated rug hooking. Her husband, Calvin Swain, counts ten generations in the ground in Barrington. The Swains stayed put.

I told stories under a tent beside the Pine Grove Cemetery, which reminded me of the old saying, “It was not the cough that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in.” Which raised the specter of my favorite morbid story. Seems Mother was a little hard to get along with, so when she died the family had mixed feelings. They laid her out in the coffin and the boys loaded it onto the sledge for transport to the bone yard. Unfortunately, the sledge got away from them, slid fast down the hill and banged into a big pine tree. The coffin popped open and Mother sat up, alive and sputtering.

She lived another fifteen years, even harder to get along with than before. Well, death comes to us all, and once again it came for Mother. They loaded her into the coffin, loaded the coffin onto the sledge, and started out for the cemetery. At the top of the hill, Father cautioned: “Hold tight, boys, and mind that big pine tree.”

Since this is the Troubadour’s last ride down the hill, I offer this story of Mrs. Brown’s going-away party. Mrs. Brown had moved to the village 45 years earlier, raised her children, and now was leaving to live closer to them and her grandchildren. Ruth said to Esther, “I’ll see you at Mrs. Brown’s going-away party.”

Esther said, “No, you won’t.”

Ruth said, “She was your next door neighbor for 45 years, course you’ll go and say goodbye to Mrs. Brown.”

Esther replied, “I never said hello to her.”

NH Troubadour July 1946

NEW HAMPSHIRE NOON
by Frances Frost

Above the heat-blue hills the high
Hawks drift lazily down the sky.

Cloudy galleons cross the day
To guard the tides of Portsmouth Bay.

Rivers with Indian names dream through
White towns that feathered warriors knew.

On tall, red barns gold weathervanes
Veer lightly toward the hint of rains.

Farmers and boys in dungarees
Wade through flowers to their knees.

Indian-colored, back and breast,
The mow the red-top to its rest.

I keep New Hampshire green and fine
Inside my heart’s own boundary line.

( NH Troubadour, July 1946)

NH Troubadour July 1950

Woodland Lake
by Ruth M. Hill

A mirror lake, within an emerald grove,
Reflecting dark, tall trees with branches low;
The shadows cool and deep, to where below
In quiet back-curve of a little cove,
As in that strange behind-a-mirror place,
The stems of lilies, with a flowering grace
Find root and to the lucid surface grow.
A roving cloud and bird reflected are;
Nor can a storm this mirror break or mar.
Each storm must pass. And all the tempest tossed
Upon these liquid depths is quickly lost;
The surface scarless, now reflects a star.
A mirror mingling fantasy and scene,
Beneath blue skies a woodland lake serene.

(NH Troubadour, July 1950)

NH Troubadour August 1941

Idyl Thought
by L. E. W.

You of the cities—did you ever stop to think of the days before the city was? The days before the streams were harnessed to furnish power to drive the wheels of industry so essential to the well-being of more and more people as they began to crowd the earth? The days before those many people had to live closer and closer together in order to provide for the needs which grew even as their numbers multiplied? The days when the sun reached down to the grass and man fished in the streams and hunted in the woods, supplementing a little farming in his efforts to sustain a simple sort of life?
This was nature and man—at their best: and even today this is all yours for the seeking—in New Hampshire. Winter or summer, spring or fall, we in New Hampshire can offer you mountains and valleys, fields and streams, woods and lakes, to feast the eye and satisfy the soul. Rest and quiet there without the pressure of the crowd, brings new strength for the task ahead.
It is just a vacation thought—why not give it a try?

(NH Troubadour, August 1941)

NH Troubadour August 1944

Never mind where, but this actually happened recently “somewhere in New Hampshire.” A lady telephoned the police station that a strange man had followed her home and was prowling around outside. Two policemen rushed over but failed to locate the prowler and left, telling her to call them if the stranger showed up again and adding the comforting information that he was probably miles away by that time anyway. The woman’s two children were putting a Ouija board where the prowler was, and it replied that he was right there in the back yard. She looked out of her window and to her horror, there he was. Again the police were summoned, and again their search was without avail. Repressing an eager desire to seek further information from the Ouija board, the baffled cops returned to the police station and started a subscription to buy two Ouija boards to aid in the future detection of crime in the city.

(NH Troubadour, August, 1944)

Speaking With the Wind

Speaking With the Wind
by Robert Manchester

This is a witches day.
Haze dancing just above ground,
silent sentry crow.

(Robert Manchester is a Troubadour reader from Bedford, NH)

Evening Song

Evening Song
by Michael Copeland

I remember the evening bird singing,
as I sat quiet alone ‘neath her tree,
all of the beautiful melodies
that she had once sung to me.
I remember the evening bird flying,
and soaring with rhythmic grace,
high over treetops and grain fields
to alight in her usual place.
I remember the evening bird courting,
while I watched and was awed at the sight,
of simplicity in nature around me,
and her meaningful nuptial flight.
I remember the evening bird mothering,
with a gentleness all mother’s possess,
Fussing and feeding and scolding
and protecting her brood in the nest.
I remember the evening bird aging,
and hopping from fence post to tree,
slower but wiser in her old age,
It seems she’d been following me.

(Michael Copeland is a Troubadour reader from Derry, NH)

Hound’s Paradise

Hound’s Paradise
by Charles Bria

On one summers dog day late
Hotter than a sun baked slate
Thirsty trees lined up straight
Water sprinkler rainbows hydrate
Effortlessly through rows she bounds
The playful hound’s paradise found!
Following along her masters steps
Off to hunt the orchard depths.

(Charles Bria is a Troubadour reader from Sanbornville, NH)

VIOLETS AMONG STONES

VIOLETS AMONG STONES
by Jessie Salisbury

Field stones and weathered bricks
Shore up the wall between porch and garage –
An untidy heap of unrelated objects.
Violets grow there uninvited,
Purple and white in bright profusion,
Finding nearly invisible soil among the rocks,
To put down roots and thrive from spring to spring.
A bright yellow celandine,
Early this year, blooms among them,
Another uninvited guest;
A sun-bright spot against the clapboard wall.
A stem of two of dame rocket,
Whether pink or white as yet unknown,
Will soon replace the violets,
And other showy natives
Will come in time.
Opportunists, my son says.
Perhaps, but they sometimes thrive in apparent nothing
As we all, at times, must.

(Jessie Salisbury is a Troubadour reader from Lyndeborough, NH)

LAKESIDE

LAKESIDE
by Cora Chapman Arthur

Ripples propelled south
by invisible fingers
shore-bound trees, sighing.

Dawn joins me
clad in her grey dress
blending with distant lavender peaks,
a pastel still-life.

Across the channel
a flag waves at me
in a flurry of stars and stripes.

Down the lane
a chipmunk dozes atop a “no trespassing” sign
he neglected to read.

A mother duck and her small charges
glide along
murmuring to each other.

A lone gully, flying low,
decides fresh water is for sissies
and moves on East.

Lakeside heaven
where solitude
restores balance.

(Cora Chapman Arthur is a Troubadour reader from Concord, NH)

THE HOT SUMMER SUN

THE HOT SUMMER SUN
by Robert Wisniewski

Gotta get my cleaning done
Before the red hot summer sun
Heats up my day and drives me away
That hot summer sun

To the river we will run
Just a dog and her chum
To splash and have fun
In that hot summer sun

We’ll romp and we’ll play
All the long day
Just a dog and her chum
In that hot summer sun.

(Robert Wisniewski is a Troubadour reader from Milford, NH)

THE SWING

THE SWING
by F. Patrick Grady

There are celestial heights to ponder
That young adventurers first know,
When they pilot a wingless chariot,
And ascend from the world below.
Small fists securely gripping,
They pump their legs to fly,
Arms outstretched in eager response,
To a beckoning, cerulean sky.
Back and forth they trace the arc,
Aloft in an hypnotic swoon,
Dreaming of angels and aliens,
And of astronauts on the moon.
Each upswing promises transcendence,
‘Til that final descent from the crown,
To be reminded of earthbound limits,
When, at last, they touch the ground.

(F. Patrick Grady is a Troubadour reader from Peterborough, NH)

It has been nearly two centuries since the American author Washington Irving, while lodging in the riverside retreat of Orford, remarked, “In all my travels in this country and in Europe, I have seen no village more beautiful than this. It is a charming place – Nature has done her utmost here.” Today, with its peaceful, tree-shaded drives, its famed ridge of mansions and promenades laced in purple lilacs, and its sprawling expanses of green along the Connecticut River, there is little wonder why.

Named for England’s first Prime Minister, the Earl of Orford, Orford was settled in 1765 by Connecticut farming families who’d migrated north and saw possibility in the rich soil and the rushing waters of the river and local streams. By the early 19^th century, Orford had emerged as an agricultural and manufacturing mecca for western New Hampshire, the local waters irrigating farms and powering more than 50 mills and factories, producing everything from furniture and musical instruments to wheels, doors, shoes and shingles. Orford’s population would swell to nearly 2,000 and the town’s location, unique road system, and bridge across the Connecticut into neighboring Vermont made it a regional hub for transporting goods and livestock to market. It was also a haven for innovation as the home of Samuel Morey, a son of one of the town’s founders, whose tireless tinkering produced the earliest prototypes of what we now know as the steamship and internal combustion engine.

Morey’s name today graces the bridge that spans the Connecticut from Fairlee, VT, into Orford. While the whirring of machinery and clip-clop of workhorses have long since faded from earshot, to cross the bridge is to walk back in time to a place where folks still wave as you drive past; the general store, open since 1804, still serves soda with a smile; and camps with names like Moosilauke and Pemigewassett after more than a century still commune hundreds of splashing youngsters each summer with nature.

No visit is complete without a stroll through Orford Village, a National Historic District, with its seven stunning mansions, side-by-side in wedding-cake white, considered perhaps America’s finest examples of Federal-style construction. While there, you’ll want to say hello to Julia Fifield, who at 105 is the proud holder of Orford’s Boston Post Cane and still tends some of its loveliest gardens. Follow the mooing and clanging of cowbells just up the road, meantime, and you’ll arrive at the Bunten Family Farm, where Christine and Bruce Balch turn out some of the region’s finest farm fare in their shop and reservations-only restaurant, from pot roast, produce, and fresh cheeses to ice cream that’ll never make that trip to the supermarket freezer case the same again. With special thanks to Eva Daniels and Carl Schmidt.

• Population of 1237 (2010 census)
• Located in Grafton County, Orford is a small rural community set about 18 miles north of Hanover and Dartmouth College, along the scenic Connecticut River Valley, and a short drive from some of NH’s most scenic areas of the White Mountains, Franconia Notch State Park, the Kancamagus Highway, and Lake Winnipesauke.
• The main village of Orford, located along the banks of the Connecticut River includes the town’s schools and post office. The town hall, which served as the Orfordville Schoolhouse until 1990, is located in the smaller village of Orfordville, several miles east of the river.
• In 1998, the Rivendell Interstate School District was established, linking Orford to three Vermont towns with the first K-12 inter-state school district in the United States.
• Notable residents of Orford have included: U.S. Senator and Congressman Gilman Marston; U.S. Congressman Jeduthun Wilcox; Jeduthun’s son, U.S. Senator Leonard Wilcox; Noted economist Milton Friedman, a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; Novelist and hiking enthusiast Daniel Doan; NH Governor Meldrim Thompson Jr.; Actor Jameson Parker.

Over the past three years, we have been proud to showcase the individuals and towns that make New Hampshire so special. When we re-launched the Troubadour in 2008 after more than a 50-year hiatus, we did so in an effort to share uplifting, positive and genuinely good stories about life and the lives of those in New Hampshire. We explored the history and heritage of our state, uncovering untold tales, visiting charming one-of-a-kind towns and meeting some of the nicest people around.

We embarked on a journey together, sharing photography, poetry and prose. We offered images, ideas, anecdotes and words that brightened our days as we viewed them and, we hope, helped to brighten yours. We introduced you to individuals and organizations dedicated to improving the lives of others by assisting those in need. And, throughout it all, you stood alongside us. Traveling our interstates, the signs near our borders are unmistakable. “Bienvenue Au New Hampshire.” A welcome extended to new friends. We have been fortunate to make many new friends as you have welcomed us into your homes and hearts, and we are eternally grateful for the outpouring of support you have shown us. Grazie.

One regular contributor of ours submitted the note below that we pass along to you.

“I hope you will consider this little poem for your last issue…It is my heartfelt way of thanking you for all you’ve given me.”-Rose Kowaliw

My Troubadour

I lost a friend today,

one I’ve grown to love.

I’ll miss the poetry

and prose you’ve shared

and all the photographs

But most of all, I’ll miss

your generosity.

Though it is time for us to put this “wonderful little magazine to bed for now, this is, by no means, goodbye. The spirit of The Troubadour lives on in you, the greatest troubadours of all, and in the knowledge that the unmistakable collection of good things that make life in our state so delightful will always endure and make us proud to call New Hampshire home.

PETERBOROUGH – For Sophia Scott and Katie Cummings, the journey into the relentless swelter of the southern summer was to be one of reconciliation with their husbands – a show of support and, they hoped, a morale booster in difficult times.

It was July 1862, and as the nation plunged ever deeper into intractable conflict, Scott and Cummings, the wives of two decorated Union officers with the 6^th NH Volunteers, sought little more than to provide comfort at a time when they felt their husbands needed them most.

Scott, 32, was already tending to her husband, Lt. Col. Charles Scott, deeply ill with fever at a Newport News, VA, military hospital, when Cummings arrived from Peterborough in search of her husband, John, who’d just made Captain within his division. Only 19 years old and newly married the previous December, Cummings missed her husband greatly and worried about him even more. She would write a letter to her John during her trip south telling of a premonition she’d had that something bad would happen. Cummings’ search for her husband, away with his regiment, was to sadly be in vain; her premonition, however, was another matter, and for both ladies, the visit to Virginia was to be their last.

Closely inspect the Civil War memorial in front of Peterborough’s old Grand Army of the Republic hall, and you’ll see the names of the nearly 50 local volunteers who gave their lives during the darkest chapter of our national story. At the very bottom of that bronze engraving, weather-beaten and tarnished over time, you’ll see the unlikely names of Sophia Scott and Katie Cummings – victims of a tragedy that demonstrated the depth and indiscriminate nature of the war’s grip on communities across the country.

With Lt. Colonel Scott’s health improved by early August and orders to oversee the transport of sick soldiers to a Washington, DC, hospital out of the war zone, Scott, his wife and Cummings – as well as the wife and 5-year-old son of a Nashua soldier, Maj. Obed Dort – boarded the steamer West Point and headed north up the Potomac. On the evening of August 13, the West Point, carrying 279 passengers, was accidentally struck by another steamer headed south, the George Peabody. Mortally wounded, the West Point reached the river bottom in less than 10 minutes, the three women, the boy and 70 others meeting their fate in the dark, rushing water.

Lt. Colonel Scott was found the following morning clinging to the West Point’s smokestack, the only part remaining above water. As he arrived in Washington to recuperate and testify in the investigation into the tragedy, he immediately requested permission from Secretary of War Stanton to return to Aquia Creek, VA, to find his wife’s remains. When Stanton turned him down, citing the ongoing war effort, Scott took it a step higher, visiting President Lincoln at Soldier’s Home to make a personal plea. A deeply fatigued Lincoln initially turned Scott down, as well, but the following morning had a change of heart. A few days later, Scott arrived back in Peterborough to properly lay his wife’s body to rest; Katie Cummings’ father, James, would return with his daughter’s remains a couple of weeks later – both drawing thronged funerals in the town’s old Village Cemetery on Concord Street. Both evidence of a conflict which spared no one.

“This event really crystallized the reach of this war,” says Mike Pride, former editor of The Concord Monitor and a Civil War historian and author. “It was not just about battles, but about the ubiquity of death and the various ways people died. The Civil War was an all-absorbing event for New Hampshire. Every family, every town was deeply affected by it. Every bit as much as WWII, it dominated society, with entire towns coming together to support families who’d lost loved ones.”

As the nation this year somberly marks a century-and-a-half since the opening salvos on Fort Sumter, SC, Granite State communities and historical societies are telling stories, unearthing artifacts, and hosting commemoratives of their own to remind residents that, in a war not often associated with New Hampshire, their state was indeed a pivotal player.

An estimated 34,000 New Hampshire volunteers enlisted for the conflict. Of those, about 5,000 never made it home. Shown here are the 3rd NH Volunteer Infantry and the 306 3rd NH Band (above), both in South Carolina. (Photos courtesy of the NH Historical Society)

New Hampshire’s Civil War landscape, to be sure, is not one of smoke-filled sunsets over battlefields, or villages rebuilt after the ravages of combat. There are no remnants of forts or swords handed over in surrender. The stops on the Underground Railroad are relatively few, and New Hampshire’s entry into the war wasn’t as cut-and-dry a matter as perhaps with other states. “I think it is safe to say that there were mixed feelings in this region about the war,” says Peterborough Historical Society Director Michelle Stahl. “There was a sort of ambivalence about fighting the South up here, because all of the textile mills, certainly throughout this [Monadnock] region, were relying on Southern cotton.”

But in the end, Stahl says, the importance of preserving the Union overrode those concerns. Today, it shows in the hundreds of memorials dotting town commons across the state – all paying homage to the volunteers who, as with every other conflict in our nation’s narrative, were among the first to step forward and give their lives in defense of American ideals and interests. Of the 34,000 men who served in NH regiments during the Civil War – in the cases of some small towns, all but the entire young adult male population – an estimated 5,000 didn’t make it back, either killed in action or succumbing to illness. Vast numbers more returned badly damaged for the remainder of their lives, chronically sick from exposure, trauma and harsh conditions, unable to work or keep a job.

Strawbery Banke’s Stephanie Seacoard, pictured in front of former Gov. Ichabod Goodwin’s mansion in Portsmouth, is among many NH historians putting together special Civil War exhibitions this year. (Photo: David Lazar)

The war had exacted a toll well beyond the battlefield. But just as it produced countless stories of loss and heartache, so too, it offered moments of unqualified heroism, victory, and redemption for Granite Staters. Chalk it up to the state’s tradition of service or its hallmark rugged resourcefulness in times of adversity, New Hampshire’s outsize impact on the conflict is difficult to ignore. As communities from the Seacoast to the Monadnocks and the North Country tell their own unique stories, there will always be certain names that come into focus:

Lancaster’s Col. Edward E. Cross, the fiery career newspaperman who after losing the paper he was editing in the Arizona Territory to a colleague in a duel, returned to the Granite State at the outset of war to command the 5^th NH Volunteer Infantry – a unit long since known as the Fighting Fifth and whose story is chronicled by Pride in the book, “Our Brave Boys.” Known for his trademark red bandanna (in place of an officer’s hat so his soldiers could easily spot him), sharp tongue and uncompromising toughness, Cross earned distinction leading his regiment to unlikely success at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, before ultimately falling alongside dozens of his men at Gettysburg. “If ever anyone was ready to lead a Civil War regiment, it was Cross,” says Pride. “He had a strong personality, and was very much conditioned for this conflict when he returned to New Hampshire. He would write in his diary that he lived through much of the war not knowing whether he was going to live or die at the end of each day. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’d better arm myself and be ready for whatever comes.’”

The epic battle between the U.S.S. Kearsarge and the C.S.S. Alabama was captured by several noted artists, from New York’s famed Currier & Ives to the French impressionist Edouard Manet. Depictions arrived stateside within days and their publication in major newspapers is credited with boosting Union morale and shifting the momentum of the conflict. (Images courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Center).

Concord’s Harriet Patience Dame, a nurse for the 2^nd NH Volunteer Infantry regiment, who became the state’s Florence Nightingale, marching with “her boys” throughout the entirety of the conflict (from 1861-1865) over 6,000 miles and providing vital care and comfort on the front lines to thousands of soldiers through more than 20 pitched battles including Bull Run. Dame repeatedly declined higher government office to stay with her unit. Following the war, she used a $500 gift the state had given her in appreciation for service to build a summer cottage for veterans of the Second at the Weirs on Lake Winnipesaukee.

Peterborough’s Sgt. Osgood Hadley, a member of the 6^th NH Volunteer Infantry’s color guard who saw his entire unit of fellow flag-bearers wiped out at the Battle of Poplar Springs Church (VA) in September 1864. Despite being wounded himself seven times in the head, leg and arm, Hadley fought to keep the regimental colors flying so that Union commanders could determine where their own soldiers were on the field. One of 200 Peterborough men who enlisted, Hadley was among the first recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor and later presented the colors in person to the Governor of New Hampshire.

Portsmouth’s Gen. Fitz John Porter, whose fateful decision as a division commander for Maj. Gen. George McLellan’s Army of the Potomac ignited one of the war’s biggest controversies. Facing a Confederate contingent led by Stonewall Jackson that was six times the size of his own corps, Porter in August 1862 disobeyed his own commander and held his flank, refusing to order an immediate attack on the larger opponent.  When the unit did attack several days later and suffered a defeat at Manassas, Porter was made the scapegoat, resulting in his dismissal and court martial for insubordination. It was a quarter century later that Porter’s decision was determined not to have been cowardice but to have actually saved lives, and in 1886 – all but broken – he received a full pardon.

“One of the reasons people don’t necessarily think of New Hampshire when they think of the Civil War is because it hasn’t been well understood,” says Portsmouth’s Richard Adams, a historian and curator of a Portsmouth Athenaeum exhibition on the city’s immense naval contribution to the Civil War. “There tends to be an emphasis on the Revolutionary War here and on heroes like John Stark, John Langdon and John Paul Jones. But New Hampshire’s and specifically Portsmouth’s role in the Civil War was quite significant.”

Recruitment flyer for the 8th NH Volunteer Regiment (Photo courtesy of the NH Historical Society)

Indeed, Portsmouth alone, with a population of roughly 10,000 in the 1861, sent more than 3,000 of its sons into battle with the full backing and commitment to the cause of then-governor Ichabod Goodwin. But it was the city’s maritime tradition and the construction of one very special boat that was to deal perhaps its greatest impact.

There are many historians who believe the U.S.S. Kearsarge, built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1861, may well have turned the tide of the conflict. Commissioned by the U.S. Navy and christened for the famed New Hampshire peak, the Kearsarge launched in 1862 with one purpose: to take out the Confederacy’s most notorious commerce raider, the British-built C.S.S. Alabama, which over the duration of the war had knocked 65 Union trading ships out of commission, sending 55 to the bottom of the ocean. At just 201 feet long, what the Kearsarge may have lacked in size it made up in stealth and in the moxie of its crew. Over the course of three weeks in the spring of 1864, the Kearsarge, helmed by Capt. John A. Winslow, stalked the Alabama off the coast of France. “1864 was not a good year for the North,” Adams says. “Even though there had been victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, people were getting very tired of the war and the price it was exacting on families and communities.”

The events of June 19 would mark a dramatic shift. As the Alabama docked in the waters near Cherbourg – a presence that greatly displeased the French, who’d been backing the Union effort – the Kearsarge made her approach. Virtually every war story has its share of ironies and odd coincidences.  In case of this battle, the captain of the Alabama, Raphael Semmes, had actually been Winslow’s cabin mate aboard the U.S.S. Cumberland during the Mexican War several years earlier, and the two had developed a friendship. On this particular afternoon, that friendship was shelved as the Kearsarge and Alabama engaged in one of the fiercest naval battles in U.S. history. Over the course of 90 minutes, as onlookers lined the seaside cliffs of Cherbourg to view history, the Kearsarge all but obliterated the Alabama, firing mortar after mortar and ramming its sides – while protecting itself by lining its own sides with chains – until the Confederate ship could float no longer. Images of the battle would be captured by renowned artists, from Currier & Ives to Edouard Manet, and published in Harper’s and major stateside newspapers within days. Adm. David Glasgow “Damn the Torpedoes” Farragut, the Civil War hero of Mobile Bay, later declared, “I had sooner have fought that fight than any ever fought upon the ocean!”

After weeks spent on the battlefield in the immediate aftermath of Gettysburg interviewing Union and Confederate soldiers, Gilmanton’s John Badger Bachelder spent the following 30 years chronicling every aspect of the battle through literature and art, becoming the nation’s official Gettysburg historian and a designer of the national park. (Images courtesy of the NH Historical Society).

“I don’t think there’s any question that the Kearsarge victory was a huge morale booster for the North’s war effort,” Adams says. Or perhaps a finer example of the Granite State’s recurring and often unlikely role helping to shape our national story. It is a story New Hampshire residents can see told in countless ways over the coming year, from the Portsmouth Athenaeum’s Kearsarge exhibition and the work of Strawbery Banke nearby to chronicle the Seacoast’s war effort, to the painstaking work and portraiture of Gilmanton’s John Badger Bachelder, America’s official historian of Gettysburg, credited with designing the national park and its breathtaking cyclorama more than a century ago – many of his efforts now on display at the NH Historical Society in Concord. There is the Peterborough Historical Society’s vivid portrayal of soldiers’ valor and the cruel sacrifice faced by families and communities throughout the Monadnock region. And there is, of course, the Civil War storyline as told through bronze and plaster at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, home to one of the 19^th century’s foremost artists and the era’s official sculptor of our national memory.

“I think there’s something in our bloodlines here,” says historian and Strawbery Banke spokeswoman Stephanie Seacord. “Because New Hampshire is the state that made us a nation as the 9^th colony to vote, in 1861 it was again the state that volunteered to keep us a nation… We tend to get engaged up here in these conflicts. It’s an old New England thing.” Something not likely to change anytime soon.

Special thanks to Mike Pride, the Peterborough Historical Society, the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Strawbery Banke, the NH Historical Society, and the NH State Library for their assistance and generosity with this story.

Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

by Charlene Mary-Cath Smith

Of her evergreen heyday only
a shriveled brown carcass remains

‘Welcome vernal equinox!’ she
cackles in arthritic protest

Her desiccated bones dragged
to curb’s recycle heap…

From eaves the sun disembodies
last remnants of olde

Father Frost’s phalanges, folks
may now give undivided attention

to the new glory
of the rerun lies ahead

(Charlene Mary-Cath Smith is a Troubadour reader from Manchester, NH)

My Hummers

My Hummers

by Esther Fifield

Quietly they come, unnoticed
By the average passerby, and
Softly land upon my feeder
Placing their tiny bills
Into the sweet sugar nectar
Taking only a few seconds, to
Replenish the energy it takes to
Spin those tiny wings again
For their angel-like flight
Back to their nest.

(Esther Fifield is a Troubadour reader from Peterborough, NH)

Anew

Anew

by Charles Bria

The sun and the moonlight
In your eyes
Shall gently fade in mine
Like pearly curtains glistening
In the waking light
And the stars
Whose peppered gleam
Gives way to mornings glow
Kissed by heavens tears
As a new day begins…

(Charles Bria is a Troubadour reader from Sanbornville, NH)

Tree of Life

Tree of Life

by Paul F. Lenzi

Slipped free of a cumbering, cold, gray sleep,
The looming stout woodiness finds its own
Earthy browns, dark and light mottled, with rough
Etched torso, channeled by grooves deep with pride
In outlasting ages, in history
Witnessed, in scarred-over wounds bare survived,
Vanquishing gravity, capillary
Forces draw nectar up, up, to the points
Tipping outermost fingers of branches
From this dense, rigid cellular structure
Spring new sprigs, shot tender, turgid and tined
With supple buds, tightly flanged in new green,
Ready to loose on the succulent air
That sweet scent of life-giving oxygen,
Wood and flesh, sap and blood, joined with each breath

(Paul F. Lenzi is a Troubadour reader from Henniker, NH)

The Performance

The Performance

by Cora Chapman Arthur
Horizontal snow rushes past my window
Hitching a ride on a wayward wind,
Winter’s last hurrah? Not quite.
A few more stormy interludes
While Spring, stomping her feet in
the wings
Awaits winter’s performance; another
encore, one more bow.
Weather enters, introducing Spring,
at last.

(Cora Chapman Arthur is a Troubadour reader from Concord, NH)

by Michael Copeland

Some call it art
others call it poetry
it’s not death
but dying will solve its power.
And, as my aging hands
snap a last desperate photo,
in some tawdry room,
the believers will find me there
and never know my name
my meaning
nor the treasure of my escape.

(Michael Copeland is a Troubadour reader from Derry, NH)

by Rose Kowaliw
The ballet begins
with the song
of the winds
through silver green leaves
dancing and twirling…
Thunder-clapping, encore!

(Rose Kowaliw is a Troubadour reader from Swanzey, NH)

Can you see me from heaven?

Can you see me from heaven? (for Robert Frost)
by Susanna Hargreaves

I’m still here
Surrounded by white birches
and the aging granite rock walls
covered in creeping soft ivy and damp moss
I’m listening to the wind in the branches
and to the waves of the high grass whistling
watching busy chipmunks run and chatter
with the robins
who never seem to regret having to try again
Here, the world comes back to life
By some miracle, it all returns
to a time of simple moments
to the bliss of fresh air and bare feet on soft earth
I love the smell of burning wood after the rainfall
while flower petals sweetly shower me like confetti
Nature sighs softly
She understands the magnitude of our loss,
yet is always so patiently waiting for us to join her
The swing on our tree
sways lonely in the wind
Sometimes I take my seat
and eavesdrop on all their secret dialogues and songs
about the wonderful love story of life
filled with happiness, loss and forgiveness
Then their timeless whispers seem to fade,
for there is nothing left to say
During this moment,
thanks to the lingering golden rays of the sun
I remember happiness
And with the helpful caress of the southward wind
I touch the sky and welcome life
And remember such goodness
Can you see me from heaven?
Surrounded by white birches
I’m still here

(Susanna Hargreaves is a Troubadour reader from Hooksett, NH)