Preserving Puddle Dock History

Sherm Pridham was born and raised in Puddle Dock, once one of Portsmouth’s more economically challenged neighborhoods. While its residents were snubbed by the city and suffered at the hands of urban renewal in the 1950s, Pridham fondly recalls the tightly knit community that helped raise him. The one locals and tourists know now as Strawbery Banke.

Today, the 81-year-old spends his days working to collect and preserve the stories and history of those who lived in Puddle Dock for future generations. During interviews by phone and at Pridham’s child-hood home, Pridham reflected on why he’s chosen now to start collecting stories about Puddle Dock. 

“My wife and I have gone through quite a lot of hospitals as of late … I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and I was playing with the idea of an epitaph,” Pridham said. “Then, I thought about an epilogue, and
I thought, ‘It’s very close, but an epilogue is where you leave information that you think should be left in order for people to learn from it or something that could help people.’”

While walking around Strawbery Banke, Pridham enjoyed celebrity status. Every tour guide greeted him with a cheery “Hi, Sherm.” The museum’s curator, Elizabeth Farish, treated him with a VIP golf cart ride to the newly named Pridham House. 

Pridham pointed to the Liberty Pole across the street and proudly told a group of tourists that his great-great-great-grandfather constructed the pole. While watching workers set up the skating rink for the winter, he mentioned how he learned to skate on the inlet that used to flow through the Banke to South Mill Pond, and how his family had the first television in the neighborhood. 

Mostly, he recalled the community he grew up with — how his neighbors would go out of their way to help each other — and how the Portsmouth community of today is unrecognizable to the one he once knew.

New Hampshire Magazine: Where is Puddle Dock, and what happened there?

Sherm Pridham: Puddle Dock is the area that Strawbery Banke is today. It was the second place where goods were taken from the New Hampshire inland and were shipped out. It became a very lucrative
area with an awful lot going on with the rope-makers and people who took the timbers down and all that and, of course, the shipbuilders. 

The people who were the movers and the shakers, the richer people, lived right near Puddle Dock. And as things changed over time, they moved away from where they worked and where their wharves were. The other thing that was very common in Portsmouth, and everywhere really, is if you saw a body of water that was (as far as everyone was concerned) the toilet, so the refuse and the excrement would cycle down to the mill ponds, both of them including, of course, the Puddle Dock, and it was referred to as the nuisance. 

That went on for years, and it became more polluted, and eventually people started complaining about it. So, the city’s solution was to fill it in. That’s what they did around late 1890s and 1900s. The place became rundown, and the people who lived there were moving out — many of them, like my family for 300 years, stayed. I guess you’d say today that Puddle Dock was a rundown useless place, but it had a certain kind of mystique about it. 

Then, of course, you had the late 1900s where you had the bawdy houses and the bars and so forth, which, by the way, were all over the city, not just in dock, but Puddle Dock, maintained the reputation.

Sherm Pridham sits outside of his grandmother’s former home in Strawbery Banke.

NHM: How did urban renewal affect Puddle Dock? 

Pridham: Portsmouth was one of the first cities to try and grab the money from urban renewal in the mid to late ’50s. The cities in particular were disastrous, and Portsmouth was one of the first communities to get a planning board and director, and put all
of the necessary ingredients into the grant that they needed to get the money for urban renewal. 

They tried to get the urban renewal money; their plan was refused by the federal government. One of the reasons it was refused is because there you had to find housing for the people that you were evicting, and there wasn’t a market to do that there. 

This is the thing that sticks in my stomach. In 1959, they had a public meeting at the junior high school to find out what the public wanted to do about urban renewal. They changed the laws, so that you could have outside agencies buy the property, and they could develop it how they wished. And, of course, how they wished was you get a lot of free property and very cheap property. Guess what they wanted to do? Put in hotels, restaurants, all that sort of thing. And that’s what happened. 

The vote was at least 4 to 1 in favor; the city welcomed it. The city was selling out their neighbors. I think a lot of it was from the misconceptions, that all those places had were dumps. They said the people who lived there were a “lesser class of people.” 

That’s when Strawbery Banke raised money, and came in and bought the property. It was convenient for people to point to the worst of the houses and say they’re doing these folks a favor, so it’s a win-win situation, except nobody stopped to think that some of those people have lives. 

The people who lived there helped everybody. You knew everybody, and you took care of one another. That’s the reason I wanted people to tell their stories. You know, listen to the stories and then judge. Don’t come near with a judgment. 

NHM: What stories have you been able to collect so far? How is the preservation process going?

Pridham: It’s been a struggle. We formed a loosely formed committee a while ago with Elizabeth Farish (the curator for Strawbery Banke), Jim Smith (from the Atheneum) and Nicole Longo (from the Portsmouth Public Library). 

We’ve done it sort of ad hoc, but we all have different computerized systems, so it makes it hard to share that kind of stuff, and it’s hard to get the ball rolling to make one system. 

NHM: Your grandmother’s home was one of the homes preserved in Strawbery Banke, and your family name was added to the house this past year. How does it feel to have that legacy live on, and what was that process like?

Pridham: Only recently have I been part of that process. I think Strawbery Banke was pretty defensive about their whole connection with urban renewal. I’m really pleased with what Strawbery Banke has been doing, with what they’re trying to do. 

It felt wonderful that they added the family name to the Drisco house, and I’d like to see a lot more of that. It’s got to be done soon, because there’s not going to be too many memories left, you know. That whole era is going to be dead. 

NHM: Why is it important to preserve Puddle Dock history?

Pridham: Because without it, you’re not going to understand anything about Portsmouth’s history. You’re going to have some magical or fantastical image of what happened in Portsmouth. Like how in the 1950s, they dug up and found the African Burying Ground, and immediately covered it. But the next time it happened, they made the memorial, and rightfully so.

I’m afraid there’s a little too much love for the history of Portsmouth without understanding a darn thing about it and knowing what actually went on. The real history is of the people who lived there, who didn’t have a voice. They just did what they did and they worked, and they were able to build a community. 

Portsmouth has brushed a lot under the rug over time. It’s good to see that there are people out there that are kind of tired of that abbreviated, brushed history.