Puddle Dock's Sherm Pridham says, 'I never thought of myself as poor' as kid in Portsmouth

For Sherm Pridham, the Liberty Pole first erected in 1766 seems an apt symbol for Portsmouth and the South End neighborhood he grew up in, Puddle Dock.

"I remember a storm coming," the 80-year-old said in an interview at the Portsmouth Athenaeum. "I was at my grandmother's house, looking out the screen door toward Prescott Park, and didn't see lightning, but heard the explosion. It hit near the top of the flagpole, and went all the way down.

"You can still see the scar on the flagpole. And I thought, 'That's a wonderful symbol for Portsmouth — take a hit and keep standing.'"

It is certainly true of the spirit if not the buildings of Puddle Dock, torn down starting in the 1950s under the banner of urban renewal. Through the founding of Strawbery Banke Inc. in 1958, about 30 buildings were saved (including Pridham's grandmother's home, known as the Lowd House, and the home he grew up in, recently renamed the Shapley-Drisco-Pridham house).

But the families were still evicted, and Pridham remembers the tears of his grandmother, Etta Jones, who ended up in a nursing home.

Pridham, who directed Portsmouth Public Library for almost three decades, recalled a phrase he saw in a 1955 Portsmouth Housing Authority report on his neighborhood — "a lesser element of people live there."

He began channeling his anger and sadness into preserving Puddle Dock stories and photos and giving walking tours.

The project, which involves the Athenaeum, Strawbery Banke Museum and the public library, has been expanded to include Haven Elementary on South School Street, which Pridham attended. The school was closed in 1969 and converted to condos in 1978. It was replaced by Little Harbour School.

Athenaeum photographic collections manager James Smith said as Pridham's photos were being scanned, the Athenaeum happened to receive images from two other South End families. Then a third family reached out with its photos."Creating a South End Neighborhood photo collection makes perfect sense in 2023," Smith said. "Plus, it's the 400th anniversary of Portsmouth."

Over the last decade, Smith has overseen the vast expansion of a photo collection showcasing another Portsmouth neighborhood wiped out by urban renewal, the North End. In 2016, he curated an exhibit at the Athenaeum that chronicled its destruction between 1968 and 1972.

Though the initiative began with the federal government, which provided cities most of the money for the urban renewal process, Pridham said the decision to tear down neighborhoods was ultimately made at the local level.

"In 1959, Mayor (Andrew) Jarvis had a meeting to get the public pulse," Pridham said. "It was at the junior high; the place was crowded. And 80 percent of people said we should take Puddle Dock by eminent domain."

As he works on a timeline of how his neighborhood was allowed to deteriorate and why some houses and streets (such as Gates Street) were spared as the South End Urban Redevelopment Project moved forward, Pridham said he is struck "by how dehumanizing and judgmental the process was. If someone lived in a house needing repair, and the houses were in a neighborhood where municipal support for improvement of infrastructure was considered not worth the money, then the people were treated as also not worth the expense to keep."

Pridham is writing a book about Puddle Dock, and the loss of a way of life and community connection.

"My mission is to say, 'I'm carving my neighborhood's initials on that tree because you're going to know who we were,'" he said.

The Athenaeum archives describe Puddle Dock as a pre-colonial waterway that flowed from the Piscataqua River through present-day Prescott Park and Strawberry Banke Museum. The tidal inlet was mostly filled in by 1904. "By the 20th century, Puddle Dock was a densely populated, working-class neighborhood made up of African-American, Jewish, Irish, English, Canadian, Italian, Polish and Russian families," an archive entry states.

Pridham said he was fortunate to be an only child, and that both his parents always had jobs.

And two doors down on Charles Street (now Puddle Lane in Strawbery Banke), there was his grandmother's home. She had been widowed in the mid-1920s. Pridham's mother, Blanche (1921-2005), was the youngest of her three girls.

"All the celebrations would occur there because it was bigger," he said of Etta Jones' home. "She was a very, very kindhearted woman who always took in people who were down and out. You never knew who you were going to see there."

A member of the Lowd family, the house was sold to Jones for $1 when a member of the family died, Pridham said.

His grandmother's house had hot water, and it was there he would go for baths.

"I never thought of myself as poor," Pridham said. "But my grandmother said this all the time — 'Don't forget, you're as good as anybody.' I thought, 'Something's wrong here. If I'm as good as anybody, why does she have to keep saying this?'"

Getting on a bicycle was a way to explore beyond Puddle Dock. He remembers excursions with friends to Fort McClary in Kittery Point, Maine, and to the Wentworth by the Sea hotel in New Castle.

"We'd sit on the porch of the Wentworth hotel to see how long it would take for them to kick us off," Pridham said. "It wasn't very long, usually."

He remembers his grandmother, who never remarried, sending him to the store for snuff (now known as smokeless tobacco).

Her brand was Red Top.

"It was 19 cents," he said. "She'd give me a quarter. I got to keep the change."

And then there was Uncle Otis, who had his own room in the house.

When Pridham graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1961 and went off to the University of New Hampshire to earn a degree in literature, he asked his Aunt Mildred how Otis was related to the family.

She made it very clear that Otis was Grandma Etta's gentleman caller.

"Uncle Otis was my only grandfather figure, and I had never figured it out," he said.

Pridham's father, Sherman C. Pridham (1919-1983), worked at the Navy Yard. He also served in World War II.

"He was missing in action, and almost lost his arms," Pridham said. "His attitude was 'I'm living on borrowed time.' He'd come back from the shipyard, get in his pajamas, and have a beer. People just loved coming to my mother's and father's house."

Pridham went on to have two children of his own, Shelley (named for the English poet) and Stephen. He and his wife, Cathy, now work on local history research together.

When Pridham looks at Strawbery Banke Museum and sees kids on the ice skating rink, he remembers one of the happiest times of his childhood.

"We'd go to City Hall and ask if we could sled on Liberty Hill," he said. "Work crews would put wooden horses out so people couldn't take a car down Charles and Atkinson streets. They put smudge pots out so we could slide at night. I had a hell of a good time. It was wonderful."

He added, "Later, we saw we were poor, and we didn't give a damn."

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a membership library and museum founded in 1817. The research library and Randall Gallery are open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m. Masks are required. For more information, call 603-431-2538 or visit www.portsmouthathenaeum.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH: Puddle Dock's Sherm Pridham celebrates his childhood