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Fishley was among the three longest-surviving Revolutionary War veterans in Portsmouth and a patriot to the end, as this story from his obituary confirms: Born under the reign of King George, he lived under the first 13 American presidents, just missing New Hampshire born Franklin Pierce, who became President Number 14.Ĭapt. Fishley at first declined to shake the President’s hand saying he had no political sympathies with the man. In another ceremony, dressed in his uniform, he commanded a miniature ship that was transported from Portsmouth inland to Concord, NH among a crowd of 300 celebrants. He was a popular figure in patriotic events for decades, and was one of the few surviving veterans to attend the opening of the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston in 1843. He later commanded a coaster shipping between Portsmouth and Boston. Charles Lee and for the famous camp follower “Molly Pitcher” who took her husband’s place at a cannon when he was wounded in battle.Īfter the Revolution, Fishley served aboard a privateer, was captured and imprisoned in Halifax, according to the Portsmouth Journal. Monmouth is best known for the resulting court martial of Maj. Fishley was at Monmouth, the New Jersey confrontation led by George Washington. He served three years and, according to his own account, was among the men who marched near Valley Forge wearing no shoes or stockings. He entered the Continental Army in 1777, the paper says, under Gen. Fishley died at 91 and had become a familiar figure at public events. An 1850 obituary in the Portsmouth Journal says Capt. There’s much research to do, but in the week since the daguerreotype resurfaced, a picture of Portsmouth’s last “cocked hat” is evolving. He called at the house this afternoon and appeared well and healthy for an old man, he went to sleep and died December 26th aged 90 years, 7 months adn15 days.” George Fishley is 90 years on his birthday June 11, 1850. There is a note attached to the back of the image. “I immediately realized that I was holding one of the rarest images ever photographed - and a wonderful piece of Portsmouth history.” “I noticed this daguerreotype tucked against the back wall in a glass cabinet,” Peter says. (The museum is also known as the John Paul Jones House.) Peter was looking for artifacts to feature in an upcoming exhibit.
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“I was upstairs in the Langdon Room of the Portsmouth Historical Society,” society vice president Peter Narbonne told me minutes after making his discovery. This is a photograph of a man who fought the British in the Revolutionary War, something very few Americans have seen. We have seen hundreds of photographs of those men, Confederate and Yankee, posed stiffly or lying dead in fields of battle. It takes a moment for the truth to sink in.
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The Revolutionary Eyes of George FishleyĬaptain George Fishley stares into the camera, his tiny eyes almost lost in gray, a faded three-cornered hat balanced on his ancient head. I was thinking maybe they found the tintype in the 1850’s or else he would have been the oldest man in the country at that time as well. First I’ve ever seen or heard of a photograph of a Revolutionary War veteran.