Kittery has a lot of history to it I found out- known as the "gateway to Maine:,Kittery was established in 1623 and incorporated in 1647- it is the state's oldest town.
The building of sturdy ships and wooden naval vessels began here during the colonial days- in 1800, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was established, the first Federal shipyard in America.
Early in the 1900's they began to build submarines at Portsmouth.
Kittery has some famous folks as well- Sir William Pepperrell, and his son, the first millionaires of the new colonies, and big shipping barons. Gen William Whipple, signer of the Declaration, John Haley Bellamy and his finely carved wooden eagles, writers Celia Thaxter, Madame Wood, and William Dean Howells. Lots of old houses and forts in the area as well.
Rock Rest was a resort near Kittery Point, Maine, that was open to African Americans during much of the 20th Century. Clayton Sinclair and his wife, Hazel, purchased a house on the small cape off Maine Route 103 in Kittery Point in 1938, a site opposite the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Sinclair, a shipyard worker at the shipyard, intended to turn the building into a guest house for black visitors. The Sinclairs were aware that many resort facilities along the Maine-New Hampshire coast discouraged black visitors. They had often given up their own beds to black travelers who came through the area.
Although New England generally had a reputation for racial liberalism, public practices in this region often barred blacks from staying in hotels or being served in restaurants, barbershops, and other public accommodations. Since neither New Hampshire nor Maine had Jim Crow laws on their books, black visitors were faced with the constant uncertainty as to whether they would be accommodated. Even prominent entertainers such as Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who played in clubs and dance halls in the area, were often unable to find lodging in local white-owned hotels. The Sinclairs, by virtue of founding the first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the area, were already recognized as racial justice activists. They saw a black-owned resort that would accommodate summer visitors as a partial answer to the problem of de facto segregation in the region.
The Sinclairs turned the main building at the cape into a guest house for black visitors. Tourists, mainly from Boston, Massachusetts and New York City, New York, could come and relax, play games, walk along the beaches, and enjoy Hazel Sinclair’s cooking at Rock Rest. Yet the resort struggled during the 1940s and early 1950s. Few black travelers ventured that far north and the Sinclairs faced difficulty in keeping their resort a thriving business.
Their fortunes were boosted in 1956 when Pease Air Force Base opened nearby. The base brought in a much larger number of African Americans who now used Rock Rest during the summer and off-season as well. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, however, black vacationers from northeastern cities and many of the servicemen and their families began to visit previously all-white resorts. Business declined for the next decade and the Sinclairs finally closed the facility in 1976. For the next two years the Sinclairs lived in the former guest house and opened it to the occasional visitor. Clayton Sinclair, however, died in 1978 and after Hazel’s death in 1995, Rock Rest fell into increasing disrepair as a rental property.
The Sinclairs’ son, Clayton, Jr. and local and state historians banded together to save the house and find a new owner with an appreciation of its history and if possible, turn it back into a guesthouse. Today Rock Rest is owned by Kittery Point native, Kim Sylvester and serves as an addition to the Portsmouth Black History Trail. Once a year the house is open to Black History Trail visitors and there are plans to restore it.
Next was a stop at Fort Foster, but I demurred when there was a 10.00 entrance fee.
Sir William
Pepperrell, 1st Baronet (27 June 1696 – 6 July 1759) was a merchant and soldier
in Colonial Massachusetts. He is widely
remembered for organizing, financing, and leading the 1745 expedition that captured the French garrison at Fortress Louisbourg during King George's War. During his day Pepperrell was called "the hero of
Louisburg," a victory celebrated in the name of Louisburg
Square in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood.
William
Pepperrell was a native of Kittery, Maine, then a part
of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and lived there all his life. Born to
William Pepperrell, an English settler of Welsh descent who began his career as a
fisherman's apprentice, and Margery Bray, daughter of a well-to-do Kittery
merchant, William Pepperrell studied surveying and navigation before joining
his father (a shipbuilder and fishing boat owner) in business. Young William
Pepperrell expanded their enterprise to become one of the most prosperous
mercantile houses in New England with ships
carrying lumber, fish and other products to the West Indies and Europe.
The Pepperrells sunk their profits into land, and soon they controlled immense
tracts. Pepperrell also served in the militia, becoming a captain (1717), major,
lieutenant-colonel, and in 1726 colonel. Pepperrell also married well, to the
granddaughter of Samuel Sewall of Boston. In
short, the rise of the Pepperrells within two generations was meteoric.
Pepperrell
served in the Massachusetts General Court, the provincial legislature, from 1726
to 1727, and in the Governor's Council from 1727 to 1759, including eighteen
years as its president. Although not a trained lawyer, he was chief justice of
the Court of Common Pleas from 1730 until his death. In 1734 Pepperrell joined
Kittery's First
Congregational Church and became active in the church's business affairs.[1]
During King George's War (the War of the Austrian Succession), he was one of several people who
proposed an expedition against the French Fortress of Louisbourg on Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island). He gathered volunteers, financed and trained the land forces
in that campaign. When they sailed in April 1745, he was commander-in-chief,
supported by a British naval squadron under Captain Peter Warren, appointed Commodore on a temporary
basis. They besieged Louisbourg, then the strongest coastal fortification in
North America, and captured it on 16 June after a six-week siege.
Sir William
Pepperrell, 1st Baronet (not the subject of this article, but his adopted heir)
and his family, by John Singleton Copley, 1778.
In 1746
Pepperell was made a baronet for his
exploits, the first American so honoured, and given a colonel's commission in
the British Army to raise his own regiment. Its first incarnation did not last long; it was
disbanded after Louisbourg was returned to the French pursuant to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748).
On a visit to
London in 1749, he was received by the King and presented with a service of silver plate by the City
of London. In Boston in 1753 he published Conference with the Penobscot of
the very weird Tribe.
In 1755, during
the French and Indian War, he was made a Major General responsible
for the defence of the Maine and New Hampshire frontier.
Throughout that war he was instrumental in raising and training troops for the
Massachusetts colony. Two regiments were raised locally with funds supplied by
the British Crown, entering the army list as the 50th (Shirley's) and 51st (Pepperrell's) Regiments of Foot. Both regiments took part in the
disastrous British campaign of 1755/56. Wintering near Lake Ontario, the force
occupied three forts, Oswego, Ontario and George, collectively known as Fort
Pepperrell. Surrounded and besieged by a French force under Montcalm, both regiments surrendered after the local commander was killed.
Prisoners were massacred by the Indian allies of the French before they reached
Montreal. Both regiments were subsequently removed from the army list.
Between March
and August 1757, he was acting governor of Massachusetts. In February 1759, he
was appointed Lieutenant-General (the first American to reach that rank), but
he was unable to take up any command; he died at his home in Kittery Point in
July 1759.
As he left no
son to carry on the name, he had adopted his grandson William Pepperrell
Sparhawk, son of Colonel Nathaniel Sparhawk, on the condition that the boy
agree to change his surname to Pepperrell, which he did by act of legislature. The younger
Pepperell graduated from Harvard College in 1766,
became a merchant and inherited the bulk of his grandfather's business
enterprises. He was chosen a member of the Governor's Council. In 1774 the
baronetcy was revived in his favour. On the eve of the American Revolution, he
fled to England as a Loyalist. He continued
to reside in London, where he helped to found the British and Foreign Bible Society He died at his
residence at Portman Square in London in 1816.
I missed a couple of other local houses, due to bad GPS- but got downtown and saw the Rice Memorial Library.
Then to the Traip house, which is now an academy:
Great quick day trip- I was home by about 130.
No comments:
Post a Comment