New Hampshire History I Trivia Quiz

Answer: Christa McAuliffe - first teacher in space

Personally, this was the "JFK assassination for schoolchildren" in the '80s. I can still remember being in the class room watching live footage Challenger lift-off carrying the woman who was to become the first teacher in space and then seeing the Challenger blow up.

McAuliffe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1948 and moved with her family to Concord, NH in 1978 because her husband had become the assistant to NH's attorney general. Prior to that the McAuliffes had been living in Washington DC where she had a job teaching at a local high school. Four years after moving to Concord McAuliffe became a social studies teacher at Concord High School.

In 1984 McAuliffe became one of the thousands of teachers to apply for Regan's Teacher in Space program, being selected as the first teacher in 1985. She trained for the STS-51-L shuttle mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger which was to have begun January 28, 1986. But rather than making history as the first teacher in space, she became part of the first shuttle crew to be lost and the second crew lost in NASA's history. Her backup, Barbra Morgan, would become the first teacher in space twelve years after the Challenger disaster.

McAuliffe is memorialized in NH with the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord and the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference held yearly in Nashua.

Answer: Raleigh

The USS Raleigh was built in Portsmouth, NH in 1776. She was authorized by the Second Continental Congress in December of 1775, one of thirteen warships to be authorized. Raleigh holds the distinction of being the first warship to fly the American flag. However, two years after she was built and launched she was captured by the British and finished the war as the HMS Raleigh.

Raleigh appeared on the seal at least as early as 1904, but controversy over elements of the seal prompted a change in its appearance leading to the 1931 seal that is still in use. Among other things that were held questionable was a dock filled with rum barrels in the foreground of the seal.

Answer: Strawbery Banke

Originally settled in 1630 by a group of Englishmen led by Captain Walter Neal, Strawbery Banke was named for the local wild berries which caused them to settle there. Neal and his men served as an advanced party for the Laconia Company, which was directed by on of Newfoundland's former governors, Captain John Mason. Unlike other New England groups such as the Pilgrims, the Laconia Company sought to establish a colony in New England for the purpose of economics.

In 1638 Strawbery Banke found itself free of the legal authority of the Laconia Company thanks to latter being forced to declare bankruptcy. This led to the settlers of Strawbery Banke creating a covenant under which to govern their colony. However, this covenant proved less effective than they hoped, and in 1641 Strawbery Banke welcomed the authority brought to it by the expanding Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1653 Strawbery Banke requested a formal name change to Portsmouth, which was granted by the Massachusetts General Court.

Strawbery Banke would be little more than a footnote in the history of New Hampshire if it had not been for the efforts of Strawbery Banke, Inc., a group formed in 1958 with the purpose of saving historic buildings from demolition during urban renewal. One of the group's first actions was to get the state to change the renewal law so as to allow restoration under to the urban renewal law. Prior to this the state law held that everything in an area to face urban renewal was to face demolition, which would have destroyed all the historic buildings. Once the law changed land was acquired and some of the late 19th century and 20th century buildings were demolished while the rest of the area was deeded to Strawbery Banke, Inc. The group worked on the neighborhood, reopening it as the Strawbery Banke Museum in 1965.

Answer: Leonard Wood

Although Roosevelt is known as the leader of the Rough Riders, he was not their original commander. Offered command of the then forming regiment by the secretary of war, Roosevelt felt he was too inexperienced, and command of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry regiment went to his friend, Colonel Leonard Wood. The future president became Wood's second-in-command, taking over command of the regiment after Wood was promoted Brigadier General and given command of the 2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, V Corps. Another name for the Rough Riders was Wood's Weary Walkers in honor of it's first commander.

Leonard Wood joined the army in 1885 as an assistant surgeon, after graduating from the Harvard Medical School two years before. In 1886 he took part in the final campaign against Geronimo and the Apache. It was during this time that he performed the actionsfor which he would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to him in 1898: he walked a hundred miles through hostile territory to deliver dispatches and taking command of an infantry regiment after all its officers had been killed. His skill as a surgeon became noted by those above him and he became the personal physician to Presidents Grover Cleveland and William McKinley. It was during his time as McKinley's physician that he met and became friends with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt.

Following the end of the Spanish-American War Wood was first made the military governor of Santiago and then the following year and became the military governor of all of Cuba. In 1903 he was promoted to the rank of Major General. Though he was still active in the military, he would not see service in Europe because he had come into contention with President Wilson as he pushed for preparedness in the army while Wilson sought isolationism for the nation.

Answer: Sarah Josepha Hale

Hale was born in Newport October 24, 1788 to Captain Gordon Buell and his wife Martha Whittlesey Buell. Buell had served under General Horatio Gates during the Revolution and his pride in his role in gaining independence appears to have been an influence on his daughter. Hale helped to raise money for the establishment of a monument on Bunker Hill and helped to preserve Mount Vernon.

As a young woman Hale was unable to receive a formal education, something both of her parents felt was just as right for women as it was for boys. Her own mother provided her with her education early in her life, but her college education came at the hands of her brother Horatio who was one of her closest friends. Horatio attended Dartmouth College where he would share what he learned with his sister so that she basically had received a college education upon his graduation. She would go on to teach at a private school until her mother's death in 1811, at which time she began helping her father run a small inn in Newport called the Rising Sun. It was at the Rising Sun that she met her husband David Hale, whom she married in 1813. He encouraged her to begin a career as a writer.

But Hale's career was not limited to being just an author. Her first novel "Northwood," published in 1827 five years after her husband's death, brought with it's success the offer to be the editor of "Ladies' Magazine", which saw a move for Hale and her five children to Boston, Massachusetts. She would also serve as editor to "Godey's Lady's Book" which began publication in 1837. She moved to Philadelphia in 1841 to be closer to the magazine she edited only after her youngest son had completed his education at Harvard. During her time as an editor she published works by such people as Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Hale believed firmly that a day of Thanksgiving should not be just a regional holiday but a national one. This lead to her petitioning five different presidents to do so. It was only the fifth one, Abraham Lincoln, who listened to her and passed an act establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Answer: Signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth

From February 10, 1904 until the signing of the peace treaty known as the Treaty of Portsmouth the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War for control of Manchuria and Korea. In 1905 facing the 1905 Russian Revolution, Czar Nicholas II decided to negotiate for peace. Though the two countries could have negotiated the peace settlement anywhere, they ended up doing so in Portsmouth after President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate the negotiations. While they were negotiating the peace settlement the diplomats from both countries stayed at the Hotel Wentworth, now known as Wentworth by the Sea, in nearby New Castle.

The treaty was signed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which is actually located in Kittery, Maine. However, the boundary is disputed and despite a US Supreme Court decision New Hampshire in 2006 once again laid claim to the island upon which the Naval Shipyard lays.

Answer: Mt Washington

Agiocochook, the Native American name for Mt Washington, means "home of the Great Spirit."

The first recorded climb of Mt Washington came in 1642 when the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, recorded the account of Irishman Darby Field who claimed to have accomplished this feat thus becoming the first known person to do so. Field's claim to have climbed the mountain is supported by his description of the mountain top which proved to be fairly accurate to how the summit actually appears. More than a hundred years later Field's notes of his climb were used by a party climbing the mountain in 1816, giving further credence to his having made such an ascent.

In his record of Field's climb Governor Winthrop calls Mt Washington the White Hill. This may have been one of the various names given to it by European settlers. But in 1784 a geological team led by one Dr. Cutler named it Mt Washington after then General George Washington.

Answer: The Old Man of the Mountain

Though thousands of years old and known to the Native Americans long before Europeans ever laid eyes on it, the rock formation that was known as the Old Man of the Mountain was discovered, according to the state parks department, by surveyors Luke Brooks and Francis Witcomb in 1805 during a survey of Franconia Notch. Interestingly, in 1604 Native Americans told a legend of a great stone face if one were to take the Merrimack River north, clearly showing that they had known about the rock formation long before Europeans, but the state picked 1805 as the "birth" of the Old Man. Thus it was actually a celebration of the acknowledged discovery by people of European descent that Eisenhower participated in.

On May 3, 2003 after having existed to thousands of years the rock formation which formed the Old Man of the Mountain finally fell down, taking with it one of the best known images of the state. This fall might have happened much sooner if not for the efforts of Reverend Guy Roberts who went in 1905 to the then owner of Franconia Notch, one Colonel Greenleaf, to discuss the fact that erosion was beginning to take away the rock formation and that generations to come would never get to see it. The two agreed that something had to be done though they did not know what to do. In 1915 Roberts found one Edward Geddes, who came up with a solution to save the stone face. Work to save the formation began the following year. Geddes received frostbite to the fingers of one hand, but his work in 1916 proved so successful that when he returned for his final trip to place cinder blocks on the formation in 1937 it had not moved an inch since 1916.

Over the years more would be done to protect the Old Man, with one Niels Nielsen becoming it's first official caretaker in 1960. He served in this capacity for the next thirty years, being succeeded by his son David in 1990. But despite all the work done to preserve the stone face for future generations it collapsed in 2003.

Answer: False

Although New Hampshire was one of the thriteen colonies which fought in the Revolution and formed the United States under the Articles of Confederation following the end of the war, its admittance into the union is based on the date it ratified the Constitution.

This would actually make it the ninth state as it ratified the Constitution June 21, 1788, weeks after South Carolina but just four days before Virginia. The last of the original thriteen states and the last of the thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution was Rhode Island, which did so May 29, 1790.

Answer: Concord

Governor Wentworth renamed the future state capital Concord after a border dispute between Rumford and the town of Bow. Ironically, Concord was a parish in the town of Bow and is today better known by those outside of the state than Bow is. In 1808 Concord was named as the state capital due to its central location in the state. Not only is it the state capital but it is also the county seat of Merrimack County.

Of the three people mentioned in the question, Judd Gregg is a former governor of the state; Henry Parkhurst was a state legislator, and Linda S. Dalianis was the state's senior associate justice of the state's supreme court.