Date: April 23, 2018
Time: 8 P.M.
Location:
Stone School Museum Granite Street Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
The Great Bay estuary’s unique ecosystem supports a rich diversity of habitat, including eelgrass meadows, salt marshes, oyster beds, mudflats and rocky intertidal zones. These places provide food and shelter for many fish species – striped bass, Atlantic salmon, and Atlantic herring are just a few – as well as birds, including a variety of raptors, wading birds, and shorebirds.
The estuary also offers tremendous recreational opportunities. Whether sailing, kayaking, fishing for stripers, or hiking through the Great Bay National Estuarine Reserve, locals and tourists alike are drawn to this unique and special place.
(courtesy photo of Timberland volunteers, Sept 2017 who paddled out from Newmarket for a “Great Bay Cleanup Day”)
But today, the Great Bay estuary is nearing a tipping point. Nitrogen pollution from sewage treatment plants is degrading water quality and habitat. Eelgrass, the cornerstone of the bay’s ecosystem, is disappearing. Oyster populations, which are important to the bay’s health as well as recreational harvesting, have dipped to unsustainable levels. And sprawl is leading to more and more pavement and, with it, more and more water pollution.
Our Speaker, Melisa Paly, is provided by the Conservation Law Foundation
MELISA PALY — since May, 2017 when she was chosen as The Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, Melissa has advocated, informed and inspired people to protect the rivers, bays, and our seacoast that makes this area of the state such a spectacular place to live, work, and play
.
She has worked for US Environmental Protection Agency Region 1, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Resources Council. Melissa holds a B.A. in geology from Yale College and a Master of Forest Science from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. An avid telemark skier, sailor, sea kayaker, and gardener, Melissa was past President of the Kittery (ME) Land Trust. She currently serves as a trustee of the Maine Island Trail Association, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and Yale Forestry School Alumni Board.
Date: May 21, 2018
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Stone School Museum
3 Granite Street
Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
This program explores sport on and along the shores of the Bay as seen thru the many sports colums of “Joe Dixx” written between 1954 and 2004. Over five decades, the late Richard Schanda wrote a wealth of information about Great Bay & Newmarket/Rockingham/Strafford County fish & wildlife . HE WROTE ABOUT EVERYTHING —from crickets & spiders to sturgeons and big game. He detailed the early history of mammals, fish, shellfish, marsh and eel grass, nut trees and berry bushes, song birds, turkeys and flying predators. He listed the health of the Great Bay— the salinity, the eel grass 
decline, the state of smelt, fin fish, eel and shellfish population from the days of the Native American Indians to 2004.
For 50 years his newspaper column, under the name of “Joe Dixx”, shared his adventures and knowledge of nature. He wrote for the Newmarket Times, Hampton Union, The Exeter Newsletter and Hawk Eye to name a few. He was a licensed hunting & fishing guide in New Hampshire for 45 years. He was a member of the National Rifle Association, Salmon Unlimited, The National Wild Turkey Federation, Safari Club of America, The National Fisherman, and was a life member of the New England Outdoor Writers’ Association.
A community activist, he served as Newmarket’s Supervisor of the Checklist for 35 years, was a Little League coach, Boy Scout leader, and president of “Dollars For Scholars”. He was a member of Winnicut Grange of Stratham and the Robert G. Durgin American Legion Post #67 in Newmarket. Well versed in local history, he was a charter member of the New Market Historical Society, served as its president in 1974 and 1975, and continued to serve as a director as well as being one of the founders of the New Market Militia. He was a member of the Newmarket Conservation Committee and the Historic Sites Committee of New Hampshire.
Speakers are members of the “Joe Dixx” family:
His brother Joe Schanda, Richard’s wife Priscillia and their son Richard.
Joe and Richard grew up in the 1930’s and 40’s on the Grant Road family farm and spent their early years fishing, hunting and trapping. In one of his columns he refers to a real New Hampshire endangered species - as the farmboy. Joe has been active with the Newmarket Heritage Commission and acted as many years as tour guide up the Lamprey River to the mouth of the Bay.
Priscilla, also a past President of the New Market Historical Society, went on many a sporting and fishing trips, and learned the proper techniques of cooking wild game. She has prepared many a feast from the forest. Their son, Richard, learned to hunt and fish as a youngster and went on several deer and turkey hunts with his father and uncle.
Date: June 25, 2018
Time: 7 PM
Location:
Stone School Museum
3 Granite Street
Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
Monday, June 25th, 7 pm
In the early 1900s, Adams Point was THE destination for many a “City Folk” who would arrive at Rockingham Junction and either be taken by boat (depending on the tides) or be picked by carriage
(or later by motorcar) and journey through Newmarket to the four story boarding house jutting out into Great Bay.
Neither lack of electricity, nor inconvenience of no indoor plumbing kept the more well-to-do from sitting out on the large verdanda and inhaling the refreshing and “restorative” sea abreezes. Ladies would picnic and gather the wild strawberries, men would try their luck at clamming, fishing or oystering. 
Both sexes would go for excursions to the “quaint” cities of Dover or Portsmouth, or they would venture into the nearby forests.
(photos: New Market Historical Society photos: the abandoned Adams Homestead in 1966, after vandals damaged the property; and a Great Bay bathing party in the early 1900s.)
Michael Provost is a New Market Historical Society Board of Director and local historian. A longtime member of the Newmarket Heritage Festival, he has also chaired and served on many town committees and commisions.
Michael was instrumental in procuring for this summer’s open house several items from the vast “Capt. Edward H. Adams” collection; these items are on loan from the City of Portsmouth Public Library “Special Collections”, the Adams and Hatch paintings courtesy of the private collection of Robert S. Chase. The loan for this collection was funded in part by Michael & Shirley Provost, Heritage Consulting.
These items will be on view during our summer open house, Saturdays 10 am to 2 pm June, July & August.
Date:
Time: 10 a.m. til 2 p.m.
Location:
Stone School Museum
3 Granite Street
Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
On loan from the Portsmouth Public Library “Special Collections”
The Adams Collection which includes about 175 of his original models and carvings was previously housed at the Sheafe Warehouse, and is now cared for by the Special Collections staff at Portsmouth Public Library, on behalf of the City of Portsmouth Trustees of the Trust. The items we will display come to us through the generous loan of items from the Portsmouth Public Library, City of Portsmouth and the private collection of Robert S. Chase.
The Captain was born Edward Hamlin Adams to Joseph and Olive Adams on October 22, 1860. Influenced by his artist mother, he began carving as a child, and started modelling his first scale gundalow in 1882. He completed it in 1886 and spent decades hauling freight and navigating the Piscataqua earning himself the title of “Captain.”
Adams was a skilled builder and artist who completed his last gundalow, the Driftwood, in 1950 with his son and business partner Edward Cass Adams. Adams passed away on April 9, 1951 at the age of 91.
Between Adams’ earliest carvings and those completed by Cass after his death, more than ninety years of animal and fish carvings, ship models and other folk art are represented in this collections, each of which offer singularly unique interactions with the region’s environmental and maritime past.
(New Market Historical Society photo: The Driftwood, built by Capt. Adams & his son Cass docked on dryland at Adams Point)
Roughly built, the gundalows had plugged drain holes on the theory that it was cheaper to drain than to pump or caulk. It was not uncommon for a gundalow left draining on the bank at low tide to remain carelessly unplugged. In such cases, men asleep in the cuddy were likely to be soaked if not drowned as the tide rose through the drain hole.
Presented by Michael Provost, New Market Historical Society Board of Directors, and special arrangement of the Portsmouth Public Library
Date: July 29, 2018
Time: 2:00 to 4:00 PM
Location:
Newmarket Town Hall
Main Street
Newmarket, NH
Fee: $10 for Members, and $15 for Non-Members
Dr. Kimberly Alexander, UNH professor who serves as a Director for the New Market Historical Society, will present a program of Ladies’ shoes and styles through the ages. She will speak to the history of shoemakers and shoe factories located along the tributaries of Great Bay. Ladies are invited to step forward in their most fancy footwear for this tea.
THE TEA WILL BE HELD AT THE NEWMARKET TOWN HALL, MAIN STREET
Date: September 24, 2018
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Stone Church
Adjacent to the Stone School Museum
5 Granite Street, Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
This presentation focuses on the rich history of Alcohol, Temperance, and Prohibition as it affected the lives of working families in the seacoast. Ever since the early 1700s, Newmarket settlers (the pious as well as the rough hewn) partook of the fremented fruit. Apple orchards and stone walls bordered almost every property. Cider was a mainstay. Rum came down the Lamprey on gundalows from Portsmouth harbor, and liquor licenses were commonly granted to taverns and inns along the Great Bay tributaries.
(photo: from the plate of the book Ten Nights In A Bar Room, a novel published in 1854 by American author Timothy Shay Arthur)
In the 1850s, the Granite State, along with several others, adopted the so-called Maine Law, which was the temperance movement’s first legislative attempt at prohibiting alcohol except for “medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes.”
The events of the Civil War overshadowed prohibiton foes, and alcohol was once more openly available. New Hampshire decided to allow local municipalities to decide for themselves whether alcoholic beverages would be sold in their jurisdiction.
Temperance rallies and leagues were commonplace in Newmarket and throught the Seacoast. By 1885, the Rockingham County Temperance League, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance League held church and town hall lectures and called for pledges of abstinence. In 1883 the Christian Witness, published by the Rev. S.K. Kimbal in town, was a popular nation-wide newsletter which demonized drink of all kind and called for the complete prohibition of alcohol & tobacco.
Alcohol raids and jail sentences were common, and continued even after WWI when Prohibition was nationally adopted. Boats loaded with booze would meet out to sea and come up river one stroke ahead of the authorities. Rumrunners and bootleggers were hampered by, and sometimes aided by the civilian authories. 
Presenter:
John Carmichael, President of the New Market Historical Society, and member of the Newmarket Veterans’ Memorial Trust Committee, and former employee of Bayside Distributing.
Date: October 22, 2018
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
Stone School Museum
3 Granite Street, Newmarket, NH
Fee: None (Donations always appreciated!)
Long before the European settled along the shores of the Great Bay, established families and tribes had fished the waters, harvested the shell fish and hunted the well-maintained forests of the 
Piscataqua watershed.
This is their story, before the plagues of the white man destroyed most of the native population.
The Great Bay area had all the elements necessary for comfortable survival and prolonged life for the native peoples who lived here before contact with Europeans starting in the late 1400s and early 1500s. The Basque were secretly fishing here for about 200 years before Columbus appeared on the scene.
(photo: Capt. John Scott’s 1667 map of the Pascatway River)
When one reviews the literature on the native peoples of New England over the last hundred plus years we find various maps each to be different from the other as to the label being applied to the native people in the Piscataqua River watershed.
The name most frequently given to this subgroup was the Pennacook tribe. Through his steady research of literature, diaries, letters, deeds, and grants of land — Mr. David Miller discovered several family groups who thrived in this area.
He has created a detailed map of where the native villages were located and the Indian names for each village as well as the Indian names for surrounding physical features including the rivers, lakes and mountains. He will be sharing his map, illustrated handouts, and a detailed bibliography.
(photo: Indian handtool used in the scraping of animal hides found on the banks of the Piscassic River in Newmarket by Joe Schanda, and donated to the New Market Historical Society by his sister-in-law Priscilla Schanda.)
Our Presenter is local historian David Miller, a retired teacher, and past president of the Rochester Historical Society who spent years of research to locate the many local Native American 
villages along the Piscataqua River watershed.
A number of years ago he learned that during the great hurricane of 1938, pine trees were blown over in the Hansen Pines Forest Park in Rochester, and at the base of one large pine was a considerable dump of shells left by the native people. This led him to wondering who were these people? What do we know about this site?
When he went looking for an accurate detailed study of the Indians who lived in this area he found none existed. In his early research on the local native peoples, not much had been written. His research led to a partnership with the University of New Hampshire in the development of an internet interactive STORY MAP entitled “Indigenous Cultural Heritage in New Hampshire”.
(photo taken of David at his lecture in February, 2018 at the Rochester Historical Society)
Date: December 1, 2018
Time: 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Location:
Stone School Museum
3 Granite Street.
Newmarket, NH
Fee: None. Donations greatly appreciated!
Bring your friends and neighbors to the Stone School Museum and enjoy it all decked out in holiday finery. Learn about the history behind many of our holiday traditions, enjoy refreshments, readings from old diaries, a special display of old toys from our collection, and shop for Newmarket keepsake gifts. A Christmas Ornament, a hand written Newmarket historic map, or Chris Hyslop’s pictorial book. All proceeds from this sale go towards the preservation of our collection of Newmarket artifacts.
Look for the full day’s schedule of events on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Market-NH-Historical-Society/124908584297738
Board of Directors and members of the New Market Historical Society
Date: December 8, 2018
Time: 7 - 10:00 PM
Location:
Starts and ends at The Polish American Club on Central Street, Newmarket
Fee:
Historical Society Board of Directors
Date: November 11, 2018
Time: 11:00 AM
Location:
Main Street
Fee:
The public is invited and encouraged to join in our ESCORT DOWN MAIN STREET in the 100 year celebration of the end of the Great War
(Sketch of Armistice Day 1918 prepared by Annette Blake and her Newmarket High School Art Students, 2017)
