Noah Parker House

The Noah Parker House is next door to the Moffatt-Ladd House on Market Street.

Little is known about the history of this house. An unknown builder constructed the home prior to the American Revolution, around the same time as John Moffatt's mansion next door (1763).

Noah Parker, a blacksmith and whitesmith, moved in during the Revolutionary War years, probably in the early 1780s. A religious man, Reverend Parker delivered his first sermon in 1784 as the first Universalist minister in Portsmouth. He lived in this house until his death on August 17, 1787. Afterwards, one of Reverend Parker’s daughters ran a genteel boarding house here.

The photograph below, from C. S. Gurney's Portsmouth . . . Historic and Picturesque, shows the house primarily as it looked when the Reverend Parker lived there. Later owners made significant changes to the building.

During the 1920s, it was a boarding house called the "New Boston". Over the years, alterations included removal of the brick chimneys and the construction of an addition on the back, a dormer window, and a bay window. The front stairway is now parallell to Market Street.