114th Annual Meeting 

Annual Meeting July 28, 2018 
Elks Lodge, Portsmouth, NH

President Carla Mueller called the 114th annual meeting of the Piscataqua Pioneers to order at 10:01 a.m., on Saturday, July 28, 2018 at the Elks Lodge, 500 Jones Avenue, Portsmouth, NH. Approximately 50 members and their guests were in attendance. Twenty-six members were present and a quorum of more than 25 was established as defined in the Bylaws. Business meeting minutes can be found in the December 2018 newsletter. The Objects and Mission were read and the Officers gave their reports. Deceased members were remembered. It was pointed out that there was a new supply of T-shirts and Piscataqua Pioneers items for sale. Then, Barbara Carmone shared some entertaining stories about her ancestors, the Nathan Lord family. Finally, the new officers were installed (Pic from Newsletter) and everyone enjoyed the luncheon with talk and more sharing. 

After lunch, Patricia Q. Wall was our guest speaker. She is the author of Lives of Consequence: Blacks in Early Kittery & Berwick in the Massachusetts Province of Maine. This look at the lives of more than four hundred Black individuals who lived in Kittery and Berwick, Maine in the seventeenth century was published in November 2017 by the Portsmouth Historical Society’s Portsmouth Marine Society Press.

"In Lives of Consequence, Patricia Wall has forever destroyed the old myth that there were 'just a few' persons of color living in colonial Maine. In the towns of old Kittery and Berwick alone, her in-depth study finds nearly 500 Black, Indian, and mixed-race individuals–both enslaved and free--from 1645 to statehood in 1820. Despite many self-serving myths their lives were no less harsh and their neighbors no less racist than other parts of the country. This well researched book is a significant rewriting of local history and a major addition to the study of African and African-Americans in Maine. A much-needed corrective to antiquarian histories of Maine towns that virtually ignored this population altogether, it could be a model for similar local studies all over New England." — Description provided by publisher.