African Burying Grounds Preservation Committee
When the African Burying Ground site used in the 1700s and then forgotten was accidentally uncovered in 2003, the Portsmouth City Council appointed the African Burying Ground Committee and asked the group to determine how best to honor those buried on Chestnut Street.
The original Committee was comprised of representatives from the Seacoast African American Cultural Center, Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, Inc. and the Portsmouth community. With the help and support of the community, the City Council, archaeological professionals and a nationally-known design team, they completed the design for the African Burying Ground Memorial Park, We Stand in Honor of Those Forgotten. The new African Burying Ground Memorial Park was completed in 2015.
African Burying Ground Memorial Park -- The African Burying Ground Memorial Committee has stewarded the memorial park and advocated for the preservation of other historic African and African-American burial sites.
In 2025, the Committee, chaired by Assistant Mayor Joanna Kelly oversaw $31,000 in maintenance work on the Memorial including:
- The figurative sculptures at the top of State Street were cleaned and recoated with a protectant.
- The 36 granite inscription panels (the ribbon) were cleaned of soils and accretions and the letters repainted.
- The silhouette sculptures were cleaned and lightly polished and coated.
- The stone surfaces on the front face of the terrace were cleaned and repainted
- Working with a tile installer and Jerome Meadows, the original artist, to repair the Sankofa cover on top of the burial vault
North Cemetery Reburial -- In 2023, the Committee assisted the City with a ceremony of reburial for skeletal remains uncovered during the 2016 restoration of a North Cemetery wall. Apparently, the original wall had been built over a row of graves. The graves were unmarked and the identity of those buried in them is unknown. Archaeologists mapped the locations of at least 18 burials from the 1800s and collected skeletal remains from the three graves that had been disturbed during the reconstruction. Buried on the margins of the cemetery, they probably lived on the margins in Portsmouth -- as poor, indentured or enslaved individuals.
Dinah Whipple Headstone -- On June 13, 2025, a headstone marking the presumed burial location of Dinah Whipple was ceremoniously dedicated in North Cemetery, adjacent to the headstone of her husband Prince Whipple. In 1781 Dinah was freed on her 21st birthday to marry Prince Whipple, enslaved by William Whipple in the nearby house on Market Street. When Prince died in 1796, he was buried in North Cemetery where his master’s family lies. But when Prince was honored by the GAR in 1908 for his service in the Revolutionary War with a headstone where a simple wooden cross once stood, there was no permanent marker made for Dinah Whipple. In June 2022, two Whipple family descendants: Laurel Yancey (the six-times great granddaughter of Prince and Dinah Whipple) and Tonya Ward Singer (the six-times great grandniece of William and Catherine Whipple), met in person for the first time in Portsmouth to research their interconnected histories together. In June 2023 they walked North Cemetery with Valerie Cunningham whose extensive research on Black History in Portsmouth suggested to her that it was logical that Dinah would have been buried next to her husband near the Whipple plot there. The nearby marked graves of their daughter and granddaughter suggest further proof. In June 2025 the descendants dedicated a headstone for Dinah next to Prince that with help from the City and the Colonial Dames of America in New Hampshire (owners of the Whipple/“Moffatt-Ladd House”) that they arranged to create and install a headstone for Dinah next to Prince.
The Committee has also discussed other African burial sites including the Langdon Farm.