Local History: The Adams Family, Tuesday December 11
November 21, 2018
Local History Talk
More Than Just Gundalows:
Adams Point and the Adams Family
Tuesday December 11 | 7 – 8:30 PM
The library’s Local History series features authors and experts on local history topics. The series continues with local historian Michael Provost, who will be discussing the Adams Family.
Captain Edwards H. Adams was born 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.
You can see the Portsmouth Public Library’s phenomenal collection of Adams’ work, representing over ninety years of animal and fish carvings, ship models and other folk art, at portsmouthexhibits.org/collections/show/5.
This talk was developed in conjunction with the recent Adams Family exhibit at the Newmarket Historical Society.
Michael Provost, BS, MS, UNH, is a long-time Seacoast resident and local historian who resides in Newmarket.. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New Market Historical Society for many years, worked as a guide at Historic New England, and for many years as a Director of Main Street Programs (a volunteer driven downtown revitalization program founded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation). With an extensive background in Heritage Tourism, he can often be found hosting Newmarket Manufacturing Company Mill Yard History Tours and the ever-popular "Murder, Mischief, Mishaps and Mayhem: Tales of Old New Market".
