City to start repainting of historic Liberty Pole on September 18th

City To Start Refinishing of Historic Liberty Pole on September 18th

PORTSMOUTH NH -- The City of Portsmouth begins work to repaint the historic Liberty Pole in Prescott Park at the Marcy Street entrance on Monday, September 16. The painstaking work of scraping and then painting the 110-foot wooden mast is expected to take four days. The work is being performed under the direction of Portsmouth DPW.

For the past two years, alumni of Haven and Farragut neighborhood Portsmouth schools have revived Flag Day ceremonies at the historic Liberty Pole on Marcy Street at the edge of Prescott Park. At the event, Mayor Blalock and Sherm Pridham, librarian emeritus of Portsmouth Public Library and former resident of Puddle Dock, have explained the significance of the event and looked forward to the refurbishing of the wooden flag pole.

As former City librarian and Haven School alumnus Sherm Pridham noted at this year’s Flag Day ceremony on the site in June, the Liberty Pole in Portsmouth is the oldest in America and is also a symbol of citizen engagement in times of war and peace, of local initiative and of the “grassroots” efforts for which Portsmouth is famous.

Portsmouth’s Sons of Liberty placed a flagpole on the spot where the current flagpole stands on January 9, 1766. Nine years before the beginning of the American Revolution, the Liberty Pole was a rallying point for opposition to the Stamp Act, signaled by the flag the Sons of Liberty raised there with the motto, “Liberty, Property, and No Stamp.” This was the first flag protesting the Stamp Act in the American Colonies. Subsequently the Liberty Pole was the focus of war and peace. On May 22, 1766, the town of Portsmouth celebrated Great Britain’s the repeal of the Stamp Act by placing a battery of twenty-one cannons, dedicated to the King, nearby. Thirteen of these guns were fired on April 28, 1783, to celebrate the end of the Revolutionary War.

The original Liberty Pole was replaced on the Fourth of July in 1824 (as an extension of the City’s 1823 200th anniversary celebration), again in 1872 and, by a taller pole on the Fourth of July in 1899. In 1824 a carved and gilded pine eagle was placed atop the Liberty Pole. When that was replaced in 1978 it was placed on display in the old Portsmouth Public Library and now stands at the foot of the central “Staircase to Enlightenment” at the library. The current mahogany and gold leaf eagle was carved by Ron Raiselis, master cooper and wood carver at Strawbery Banke and placed in 2002. The original carved and painted shield at the bottom of the Liberty Pole was added in 1857 and was placed on display in Sheafe Warehouse (along with the second eagle) when it was replaced in the 1970s. The current shield was carved and put in place in 2016. (Thank you, J. Dennis Robinson at SeacoastNH.com for the historical summary of the three Liberty Pole eagles and two shields.)