Walking in the Footsteps of a Patriot

By Sherry Wood

Soon after George Washington was named commander of the Continental Army in 1775, Portsmouth’s Jonathan Mitchel Sewall wrote the words to a song that would be sung in taverns and on battlegrounds during the Revolutionary War.

Sewall, the subject of an exhibit in the Athenaeum’s Randall Gallery, opened his paean to Washington:

“Vain Britons, boast no longer with proud indignity,
By land your conquering legions, your matchless strength at sea,
Since we, your braver sons incensed, our swords have girded on,
Huzza, huzza, huzza, huzza, for war and Washington”

Nancy Hammond, curator of the exhibit “Portsmouth In the Age of Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Poet, Lawyer, Patriot” starts with a description of the song in her book about Sewall (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2022). She recounts how a British prisoner of war in Delaware complained of listening to his captors sing endless rounds of “War and Washington.”

Sewall would have another chance to idolize his hero in 1789, writing three odes for President Washington’s visit to Portsmouth on Oct. 31. As the president stood on the balcony of the State House on what is now Market Square, Sewall and two friends performed the three works, accompanied by a band.

Eleven years later, Sewall delivered a funeral oration for Washington on Dec. 31, 1799 “at the request of the inhabitants” of Portsmouth at Queen’s Chapel (now St. John’s Episcopal).

The poet-lawyer was known for writing epitaphs for the city’s prominent citizens; many of those words can still be seen on stones in the North Cemetery.

Those citizens included Abraham Isaac, who owned The Golden Teapot shop at the corner of Penhallow and State streets, and Dr. Hall Jackson, whose Washington Street home was at the present site of a Temple Israel parking lot.

Hammond and her co-curators, Mike Dunbar and Ceal Anderson, have created a walking trail map that includes those sites and many others highlighting Portsmouth people whose lives Sewall touched.

The exhibit will also feature Sewall’s published writings — many located with the assistance of Librarian Robin Silva in the Athenaeum’s collections — as well as the works of local students.

“The children were asked to write poems honoring someone they believe deserves to be remembered,” Hammond said, noting that more than 100 poems were submitted by Little Harbour, New Franklin, and Dondero elementary schools.