This wisteria plant drapes gracefully over a gate at the Goodwin House gardens.
Strawbery Banke Museum preserves the home of Gov. Ichabod Goodwin and his wife, Sarah Parker Rice Goodwin. He served as New Hampshire’s Governor during the Civil War.
Our travels today took us to the beautiful seaside community of Strawbery Banke, a collection of historic buildings in Portsmouth, NH that were saved from devastation during an “urban renewal” project of the 1950s. Each building is unique and was home to families who lived in the area that was once known as “Puddle Dock.” Today, we saw examples of wild strawberry plants, some already with fruit. These plants were so plentiful in earlier days, they were the source of the place’s name: “Strawbery Banke.”
Here are two period buildings situated at the Strawbery Banke Museum
An 8 minute video to introduce visitors to the history of the area and the “birth” of the museum is available in the Visitor Center. The area has always been a melting pot of ethnicity because Portsmouth is a seacoast town. This living history museum features a number of historic reenactors within buildings and outside of one building. There is an art gallery of paintings associated with Portsmouth – mostly seascapes, understandably.
The museum store has all kinds of lovely things such as greeting cards, books, Sampler kits, Sasparilla (an old time drink), collectible thimbles, and many other enticements.
The Goodwin House features a greenhouse with typical houseplants of centuries past, including Venus Flytrap, a carnivorous plant that eats insects. I recognized most of the varieties by name. Along the paths outside the home were flowering bushes and plants such as these Iris:
Beautiful Iris!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich who wrote, “The Story of A Bad Boy,” once lived in a home that is on the premises. Today, any home that was open had an American flag flying in front of it. I imagine that more homes are opened to the public on weekends, or later in the season, when there is more foot traffic.
We enjoyed seeing the cooking hearths or woodstoves in each kitchen and all of the tools and cooking gear. I really liked seeing the various bed treatments: from overshot coverlets, to chintz bedcoverings with dusters and an overhead canopy, to a calimanco, wholecloth, quilted quilt, and a pure white bedspread and white canopy.
After all that walking around, I wanted to sit on a bench and Jim snapped this photo.
The site is but a brief jaunt by foot to the wonderful display gardens nearby that the University of New Hampshire maintains. That area is in view of Kittery, Maine, across the bay, once the site of an active ship-building operation.
Portsmouth is a unique town and we always enjoy visiting, with one exception: we always get lost. The streets are not laid out in any particular fashion. Think of “cow paths,” winding along, up hill and down, and you’ll have a close approximation as to what I mean. We escaped via Rte. 95 and headed west on Rte. 4.
Below are two books associated with Strawbery Banke. First is a biography of Sarah Parker Rice Goodwin, Sarah: Her Story by Margaret Whyte Kelly, (Back Channel Press, 2006), and the other, The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications
Tags: Strawbery Banke Museum
