Long before the musket volleys at Lexington and Concord echoed across Massachusetts, the seeds of armed rebellion had already been sown ninety miles to the north, in the bustling seaport of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This prosperous colonial town—home to royal governors, ambitious merchants, skilled shipwrights, and restless patriots—became the site of one of the earliest overt acts of military aggression against the British Crown, a raid so audacious that it predated the more famous events of April 1775 by a full four months. Portsmouth's Revolutionary War story is not a footnote to Boston's or Philadelphia's. It is a story of first strikes, first ships, and first salutes—a narrative that belongs at the center of any honest accounting of how thirteen colonies became a nation.
PEOPLE
John Langdon
Continental Navy Agent, Continental Congress Delegate, Governor of New Hampshire
General John Sullivan
Continental Army General, Continental Congress Delegate, Fort William and Mary Raid Leader
Paul Revere
Patriot Messenger, Silversmith, Boston Committee of Correspondence Member
Woodbury Langdon
Continental Congress Delegate, Superior Court Justice, Portsmouth Merchant
KEY EVENTS
STORIES
HISTORICAL VOICE
Before Lexington: The First Strike
John Sullivan received Revere's warning on December 13, 1774, and had eighteen hours to decide what to do with it. The British were sending ships to reinforce the garrison at Fort William and Mary and...
MODERN VOICE
What Portsmouth Built
People come to Portsmouth for the houses — the Moffatt-Ladd House, the John Paul Jones House — and those are worth seeing. But what made Portsmouth matter in the Revolution was its shipyards. New Hamp...