VISIT THIS HOUSE: The Aldrich Memorial, also called “The Nutter House” is open daily in summer from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for self-guided tours. Be sure to see the newly restored interior and extraordinary house gardens. And don’t miss the special July 4th celebration. For information call 603 433-1114 or visit www.strawberybanke.org.
Historic Homes
Thomas Bailey Aldrich House (1797)
Circa - Historic homes you can visit

Tom Bailey Aldrich was a pretty bad boy. Growing up in Portsmouth before the Civil War, he courted trouble. Tom ran away from home, set a stagecoach on fire in Market Square, and accidentally shot a friend with an arrow. When Tom grew up, he turned those youthful adventures into a runaway bestseller. His breakthrough novel, The Story of a Bad Boy (1869), inspired his friend Mark Twain to invent two more boy heroes—Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I never pass this unassuming house on Court Street without imagining little Tom Bailey hiding in the garden with his cap pistol. That is especially true in July, since Tom was in love with fireworks. He almost blew himself to bits one summer, firing off a gunpowder salute. His house, ironically, served for years as Portsmouth’s first hospital.

When Aldrich died in 1907 his wife, Lilian, raised $10,000 to turn his boyhood home into a literary shrine. The city’s first historic house museum, now part of Strawbery Banke, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Inside and out, it remains exactly as Tom Bailey knew it.

On a sweltering July day in 1908 an elderly and cantankerous Mark Twain traveled to Portsmouth to dedicate the Aldrich Memorial. “When he speaks,” Twain once remarked of his longtime friend Aldrich, “the diamonds flash ... He was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant, he will be brilliant in hell—you will see.”