Author Diane Taraz talks about her new book, Daughter of the Waves: The Victorian Life of Celia Laighton Thaxter.

In "Daughter of the Waves," we see all the people in Celia Thaxter's life, not just family and friends but servants and her neighbors, many of them recent immigrants. Their stories add a rich layer of history to the Isles of Shoals, where many echoes of the past still reverberate.

Have you ever wanted to tour the inside of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard? We see so much of it from Portsmouth and Kittery and from the Piscataqua River, but the only way to see inside as non-personnel is with a special tour.

Have you ever wanted to tour the inside of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard? We see so much of it from Portsmouth and Kittery and from the Piscataqua River, but the only way to see inside as non-personnel is with a special tour.

Hear the story of treasure — lost, then found — as William Mathers and Dr. Henry Parker take us on a journey of their recovery of a Spanish Galleon wrecked in 1638.

Join your friends for light snacks, conversation and a presentation by one of our board members, historian, and expert of historical maps and nautical charts, Jim Cerny. He will talk about one of the earliest maps of our region, the Atlantic Neptune chart.

This program is made possible by New Hampshire Humanities. Learn more at www.nhhumanities.org. The event is free and open to the public.

Presenter: Jeremy D'Entremont

Jeremy D'Entremont highlights the fascinating stories of the lighthouse keepers and their families who, beginning in 1771, maintained the lighthouses between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and York, Maine: Portsmouth Harbor Light, Whaleback Light, White Island (Isles of Shoals) Light, Boon Island Light, and Cape Neddick "Nubble" Light. The histories of these lighthouses and their keepers reveal rich human-interest stories and fascinating lore, from rescues and heroism to isolation and tragedy, and even ghost stories.  

Information about the present-day preservation efforts for these maritime sentinels is also discussed.

Please join us on a special tour of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard arranged for ISHRA folks and friends, Tuesday, May 14. 9:30 am - 12:30 pm. This is a repeat of the tour we offered last fall, which was a big hit!

Bring a friend! Dennis Robinson will turn back the clock to 1623 at the April ISHRA meeting. Thanks to the generous support of New Hampshire Humanities, our April 9 program will be open to the public, so please RSVP early to reserve space for you and your guests to hear historian J. Dennis Robinson present his talk entitled, “1623: The Untold Story of New Hampshire’s Founding Family.” You can join us in person at the Portsmouth Public Library’s Levenson Room (175 Parrott Avenue in Portsmouth) or online via Zoom.

Guest speaker TaMara Conde of Historic Gravestone Services will talk about — and show photos of — the three-day process during the June ISHRA Conference where she worked with ISHRA volunteers to restore the Beebe Monument, which long ago had cracked in two.

Dr. Mary Ann Cappiello, a Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the author of “Searching for Dinah Tuck,” an essay from Ten Piscataqua Writers 2022, will be our guest speaker.

In her presentation, Dr. Cappiello will share the story of a decade-long journey that began when she found Dinah, a young African American woman, included in a list of possessions owned by Reverend John Tuck, minister of Star Island. Gerald Duffy, her editor, had this to say about Dr. Cappiello’s research and unique writing style, "With only so much factual material available, the author wonders aloud how life must have been for this young woman. Mary Ann does so with curiosity, a fine writer's sensibility and enormous compassion...A fine accomplishment of research, faithful writing and fellow feeling."