A Room for a Captain
The John Paul Jones House stands on Middle Street, a handsome eighteenth-century home. It looks like what it is: the comfortable house of a prosperous eighteenth-century Portsmouth family.
Its most famous resident was a lodger. Its most persistent resident, according to the stories told inside, may be someone else entirely.
Built by Hopestill Cheswell
A Master Housewright
The house was built in 1758 by Hopestill Cheswell, a master housewright and successful African American builder, for Captain Gregory Purcell, a Portsmouth sea captain. Cheswell's work is a reminder that the craftsmen who shaped colonial Portsmouth were more diverse than its portraits usually suggest.
The Widow Purcell's Boarders
Gregory Purcell died in 1776. His widow, Sarah, kept the household going by taking in boarders, which she did until her death in 1783.
John Paul Jones
In 1781 and 1782 one of those boarders was John Paul Jones, the Revolutionary War naval officer. He rented a room in the house while he was in Portsmouth supervising the construction of the warship America. His stay gave the house the name it has carried ever since.
A Museum Since 1919
The Portsmouth Historical Society has owned the house since 1919 and operates it as a house museum. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972. Check the Historical Society for current hours and tour times before visiting.
The Ghost Stories of the John Paul Jones House
The Figure from the Attic
The best-known story here involves the attic. In a 2018 New Hampshire Public Radio feature, local historian and ghost tour guide Roxie Zwicker described what visitors have reported: "you see someone coming out of the attic dressed in 19th century finery, walking into one of the rooms." Follow them, and "they're gone."
Visitors have reported sightings like this on many occasions, and odd occurrences connected to the attic come up again and again in the house's stories.
Something Passing Through
Other accounts are more personal. A student journalist who toured the house in 2015 reported being told that, about a week earlier, a guest had felt something pass through her, an experience unsettling enough that an ambulance was nearly called. Some who tell the house's stories link the activity to Jones himself, though the figure in nineteenth-century dress suggests someone from a later chapter of the house's life.
Listening to the Stories
Zwicker, who insists on documenting history carefully, explained why she still collects these accounts: "if you can't document it, it didn't happen," she said, but "if they're telling ghost stories, I'm going to listen."
Who Walks on Middle Street?
The John Paul Jones House has been home to a captain, a widow, a string of boarders, and one of the most famous sailors in American history. It has been a museum for more than a century.
Nobody knows who the well-dressed figure in the attic might be. But if you visit, take a moment at the foot of the attic stairs. Many visitors before you say they saw someone come down.
