PORTSMOUTH PEACE TREATY ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE
Members of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Anniversary Committee and elected representatives who sponsored the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day bill gathered in 2010 to recreate the courthouse photo of 1905 with the delegated.
People made a difference to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, then and now
The day the Russian and Japanese delegations arrived in Portsmouth to begin negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War, negotiations the planet -- and especially President Theodore Roosevelt -- hoped would end the horrors of the world’s first modern war, the Governor of New Hampshire hosted a welcoming reception. The photograph of those assembled beneath generously draped American flags (no favoritism for Russia or Japan expressed here or in the bunting decorating the storefronts downtown), shows the entire Russian and Japanese entourage and the prominent Americans.
Sergius Witte, chief plenipotentiary for the Tsar is the tall man in the front row. His counterpart, Baron Jutaro Komura, delegated by the Emperor is the much slighter person, three men to the right, staring straight at the camera (while his second, Kogoro Takahira, diplomatic minister of Japan to the US, gazes up at the rafters). Witte’s number two, Baron Roman Rosen is to the left. To the right of Takahira is Henry Willard Denison, legal counsel to the Foreign Ministry of Japan. He would later earn the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese for his efforts on their behalf in preparing both the treaties of Portsmouth and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of January 1905. Denison died in Tokyo. He grew up in Lancaster NH – and went to visit there the day after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed.
Between Witte and Komura are State Department representative Herbert H.H. Peirce and New Hampshire Governor John McLane. New Hampshire had seized the first opportunity to invite the diplomats here when word got out in June that Roosevelt had convinced both sides to try to negotiate peace. On June 21st the Executive Council voted in favor of extending the invitation. Executive Councilors Charles Floyd, J. Woodbury Howard, Edward Leach, Charles Greenleaf and Portsmouth’s own Fred Towle are pictured in the second row, as are our own Executive Councilor Bev Hollingworth and her colleagues in the 2010 image. With an engraved invitation to the Mount Washington Hotel in hand, and with guidance from New Hampshire Senators Burnham and Gallinger (in the middle of the second row), McLane and NH Secretary of State Edward Pearson (last row on the far left) called on the Russian and Japanese embassies in Washington on the morning of June 24th.George Moses, McLane’s secretary (two rows behind Denison) and later editor of the Concord Monitor later recalled that visit in his memoirs.
Roosevelt, while accepting New Hampshire’s hospitality chose Portsmouth instead, preferring the security and protocol of his Navy for the formal negotiations at the Shipyard and the transportation and communication links from the seacoast that facilitated his ability to monitor proceedings from the summer White House at Sagamore Hill on Long Island. He put Peirce (who had attended Philips Exeter Academy and was married to Helen Pierce of Portsmouth) in charge of arrangements.
The real story of the Treaty of Portsmouth begins to reveal itself in the rest of the crowd in that room; and is why the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum decided to recreate the historic photograph to tell the story of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Anniversary celebration in 2005 and events since. The 2010 photograph includes the chairman of the Forum and president of the Japan-America Society, Charles Doleac (the tall man in the front row). Governor John Lynch and Secretary of State Bill Gardner are there. Deputy Consul Hisashi Nakatomi and Japan Society of NH board member Sawako Gardner honor the Japanese delegation. Steve Upton from the Russia Society of NH, Dr. Marina Naumann (descendant of one of the Russian Orthodox Church priests who celebrated the Service of Thanksgiving in Portsmouth the day the Treaty was signed), Brother Constantin of the Manchester Russian Orthodox church and Kirill Finkelshteyn whose father attended the same St. Petersburg school as Gregory Vilenkin (second row on the left, behind the uniformed officers) honor the Russians.
Moving deeper into the rows and into the story of 1905 and 2005, we find Judge Calvin Page, executor of Frank Jones’s estate, the owner of the Wentworth Hotel, who made accommodations available for all 25 diplomats, for 30 days, at no charge. Postmaster John Bartlett (back row center), his son in law, had assisted Page with the local arrangements, including the decorating of the courthouse room with flags (he and Councilor Towle spent $100 on the effects).
Echoing Page today in the same position in the photograph is Frank Wetenkamp, general manager of Wentworth By the Sea Hotel, that hosted two State Dinners in 2005, the annual Theodore Roosevelt Nobel Peace Prize commemorations and innumerable visiting Japanese dignitaries and media making pilgrimages along the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Trail where Wentworth is an iconic shrine. In 1905 the Russian and Japanese delegations presented $10,000 checks to the Governor for the kindness, service and hospitality the hotel had shown them. Those funds became the Japanese Charitable Fund that exists today. Wentworth was also the scene of the appreciation banquet the Japanese hosted on the eve of the signing of the Treaty – in the same room as the 2010 photograph. And the same Grand Ballroom was the scene on August 29, 1905 – 105 years to the day of the 2010 photo recreation – for a banquet celebrating both sides’ final acceptance, earlier in the day, of the terms of peace.
At that banquet, guests viewed the film of the welcoming parade, taken on August 8th, the same day as the 1905 photo session. Organizing that parade, and substantially represented in the 1905 photo were the NH National Guard. Pictured in the group of uniformed officers in the rear center are NH Adjutant General A.A. Ayling, Inspector General George Waldron, Judge Advocate General Daniel Remich Quartermaster General William Thayer, Commissary General Frank Kaley and aides de camp Frederick Shepard, Clement Woodward and William Straw. In the front row in the 2010 photograph are Lt. Col. Richard Pounder and Lt. Col. Jeanne Pounder on behalf of the NH National Guard. They took point, organizing and coordinating the 2005 re-enactment of the Welcoming Parade which was also an opportunity to thank today’s troops for their service to the state and nation in combat overseas.
Next to the Guard are the Navy representatives for the Shipyard: Captain Bryant Fuller (current PNSY commander) and Cmdr. Mike Gilmore who was Shipyard second in command in 2005. Also pictured in 2010 are those who helped prepare the Shipyard for the 100th anniversary, up-rating the Treaty museum spaces in Building 86 for visitors just as a team of 400 workers did in four days in 1905. Having just hosted the welcoming reception at the Shipyard, the Navy was not in the photograph in 1905. In 2005, the Shipyard took many parts in the anniversary celebrations, recreating their welcoming luncheon and re-enacting the gun salute that greeted the news that the Treaty had been signed at 3:47 pm on September 5th. As they do each year at that day and time. The Navy salute is now the signal to start the statewide Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day commemoration of this important piece of New Hampshire history and the part New Hampshire citizens played in fostering the negotiations.
Research in 2005 and since has found that behind the headlines and behind the scenes in 1905 there were dozens of individuals from all walks of life who contributed to the welcome the Seacoast and the state offered to the diplomats. Coachman X, a black man noted for his matched team of grey horses drove the diplomats’ carriage in the parade. The Seacoast African American Cultural Center organized an exhibit of art inspired by African symbols for peace and harmony in 2005. Several National Guard and Navy, as well as civilian bands, played for the diplomats and the throngs of bystanders who flocked to the area in 1905. Arthur Hinton sang for the diplomats in 1905; Angelynne Hinson sang in 2005 and at the 2008 concert. The organizers and performers who produced the Treaty of Portsmouth Centennial Concert Series (15 concerts on successive Sundays with hundreds of performers) are represented in the 2010 shot, along with the composers of original music created for the centennial and performers from Treaty concerts presented since 2005. With them are those who wrote and staged original plays and films telling the story of the Peace of Portsmouth: Pontine Theatre, the NH Humanities Council Chatauqua and Green Acre Bahai School. Also pictured are the NH Art Association, Children’s Museum of New Hampshire and Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion who mounted exhibitions that told the story visually; and the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Old York Historical Society and Portsmouth Historical Society who created re-enactments (at the Elizabeth Perkins House and Creek Farm, respectively) and hosted key exhibits, then and since.
The 2005 program detailing all the events: lectures, films, performances, concerts, re-enactments, exhibits, church services, tours (boat, Chamber-guided and self-guided walks) and other creations is 64 pages long. Since then, new Forum friends have added additional commemorative events: a children’s book, a Labor/Portsmouth Peace Treaty Parade, commemorative concerts at The Music Hall, a Beat Night of poetry and jazz, a new film, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and new exhibits at the NH Archives and The Fells. And the official declaration of Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day throughout New Hampshire on September 5th. Senator Martha Fuller Clark and Representatives Robin Read, Jim Splaine and David Watters, sponsors of the bill, are important parts of the picture in 2010.
The mass of New Hampshire people in the 1905 photograph and the larger group in 2010 shows the extent to which ordinary people got involved in the celebrations. But the question that’s always asked is “Why?”
Why Portsmouth in 1905? Why did so many people care in 2005? And why should anyone care about the Portsmouth Peace Treaty now?
In 1905, in Portsmouth “an uncommon commitment to peace became a common virtue.” Jewish shopkeepers spoke truth to power when their countrymen asked them, in Russian, why they had abandoned their homeland for America. Prominent social hostesses with names like Peirce, Carey, Coolidge, Perkins and Heffinger made the face of public opinion a personal appeal that neither Witte nor Komura could deny. Their counterparts – in some cases descendants – in 2005 helped fund the celebration as Centennial Hosts. The Mayor of Portsmouth (Mayor Marvin is in the back row next to Pearson; Mayor Ferrini in that position in the 2010 image) knew his city could shoulder the responsibility in which President Roosevelt placed his trust (a responsibility not unlike the vetting process of the Presidential Primary campaign). On Sunday September 3, 1905 Bartlett, Towle, Page and Mayor Marvin hosted a Wentworth banquet for the Japanese “to thank them for the honor conferred this city and to congratulate them on the peace.” And on their departures, Bartlett presented silk American flags on behalf of the people of Portsmouth to both Komura and Witte, to which Witte replied, “Tell the people of Portsmouth how grateful we are for their hospitality and kindness.” Takahira, on departing the train station where a crowd had gathered to see both envoys off, told Bartlett how grateful the Japanese were to Portsmouth, saying “They have done more for us than we could ever expect from any one and we shall always thank them for it.”
In 1905 citizens made a conscious decision to dress up and come out in the street to welcome the diplomats. In 2005 each person who chose to get involved in the celebration had his or her own reasons and engaged the interest of dozens of organizations to see all the details through. The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum is documenting their stories; that is part of the reason for organizing the photo recreation.
But perhaps the reason can be summarized, at least for now, by something that happened at the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day bill. One of the members of the NH House who voted for the Treaty Day bill when it reached her committee brought her 4 year old granddaughter to the ceremony. She echoed little 5 year old Alida Carey who in 1905 watched over the banister as her parents welcomed the Russian and the Japanese diplomats to dinner at Creek Farm – and 80 years later passed the story on as witness of what happened here.
When asked why she brought little Madison to Concord to see Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day became NH law, the Representative said, “I want her to be aware that you have to be involved.” In Portsmouth in 2005 ordinary people celebrated making a difference. What happened here still matters. That strain of people who decide to get involved, still do.
Sergius Witte, chief plenipotentiary for the Tsar is the tall man in the front row. His counterpart, Baron Jutaro Komura, delegated by the Emperor is the much slighter person, three men to the right, staring straight at the camera (while his second, Kogoro Takahira, diplomatic minister of Japan to the US, gazes up at the rafters). Witte’s number two, Baron Roman Rosen is to the left. To the right of Takahira is Henry Willard Denison, legal counsel to the Foreign Ministry of Japan. He would later earn the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese for his efforts on their behalf in preparing both the treaties of Portsmouth and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of January 1905. Denison died in Tokyo. He grew up in Lancaster NH – and went to visit there the day after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed.
Between Witte and Komura are State Department representative Herbert H.H. Peirce and New Hampshire Governor John McLane. New Hampshire had seized the first opportunity to invite the diplomats here when word got out in June that Roosevelt had convinced both sides to try to negotiate peace. On June 21st the Executive Council voted in favor of extending the invitation. Executive Councilors Charles Floyd, J. Woodbury Howard, Edward Leach, Charles Greenleaf and Portsmouth’s own Fred Towle are pictured in the second row, as are our own Executive Councilor Bev Hollingworth and her colleagues in the 2010 image. With an engraved invitation to the Mount Washington Hotel in hand, and with guidance from New Hampshire Senators Burnham and Gallinger (in the middle of the second row), McLane and NH Secretary of State Edward Pearson (last row on the far left) called on the Russian and Japanese embassies in Washington on the morning of June 24th.George Moses, McLane’s secretary (two rows behind Denison) and later editor of the Concord Monitor later recalled that visit in his memoirs.
Roosevelt, while accepting New Hampshire’s hospitality chose Portsmouth instead, preferring the security and protocol of his Navy for the formal negotiations at the Shipyard and the transportation and communication links from the seacoast that facilitated his ability to monitor proceedings from the summer White House at Sagamore Hill on Long Island. He put Peirce (who had attended Philips Exeter Academy and was married to Helen Pierce of Portsmouth) in charge of arrangements.
The real story of the Treaty of Portsmouth begins to reveal itself in the rest of the crowd in that room; and is why the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum decided to recreate the historic photograph to tell the story of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Anniversary celebration in 2005 and events since. The 2010 photograph includes the chairman of the Forum and president of the Japan-America Society, Charles Doleac (the tall man in the front row). Governor John Lynch and Secretary of State Bill Gardner are there. Deputy Consul Hisashi Nakatomi and Japan Society of NH board member Sawako Gardner honor the Japanese delegation. Steve Upton from the Russia Society of NH, Dr. Marina Naumann (descendant of one of the Russian Orthodox Church priests who celebrated the Service of Thanksgiving in Portsmouth the day the Treaty was signed), Brother Constantin of the Manchester Russian Orthodox church and Kirill Finkelshteyn whose father attended the same St. Petersburg school as Gregory Vilenkin (second row on the left, behind the uniformed officers) honor the Russians.
Moving deeper into the rows and into the story of 1905 and 2005, we find Judge Calvin Page, executor of Frank Jones’s estate, the owner of the Wentworth Hotel, who made accommodations available for all 25 diplomats, for 30 days, at no charge. Postmaster John Bartlett (back row center), his son in law, had assisted Page with the local arrangements, including the decorating of the courthouse room with flags (he and Councilor Towle spent $100 on the effects).
Echoing Page today in the same position in the photograph is Frank Wetenkamp, general manager of Wentworth By the Sea Hotel, that hosted two State Dinners in 2005, the annual Theodore Roosevelt Nobel Peace Prize commemorations and innumerable visiting Japanese dignitaries and media making pilgrimages along the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Trail where Wentworth is an iconic shrine. In 1905 the Russian and Japanese delegations presented $10,000 checks to the Governor for the kindness, service and hospitality the hotel had shown them. Those funds became the Japanese Charitable Fund that exists today. Wentworth was also the scene of the appreciation banquet the Japanese hosted on the eve of the signing of the Treaty – in the same room as the 2010 photograph. And the same Grand Ballroom was the scene on August 29, 1905 – 105 years to the day of the 2010 photo recreation – for a banquet celebrating both sides’ final acceptance, earlier in the day, of the terms of peace.
At that banquet, guests viewed the film of the welcoming parade, taken on August 8th, the same day as the 1905 photo session. Organizing that parade, and substantially represented in the 1905 photo were the NH National Guard. Pictured in the group of uniformed officers in the rear center are NH Adjutant General A.A. Ayling, Inspector General George Waldron, Judge Advocate General Daniel Remich Quartermaster General William Thayer, Commissary General Frank Kaley and aides de camp Frederick Shepard, Clement Woodward and William Straw. In the front row in the 2010 photograph are Lt. Col. Richard Pounder and Lt. Col. Jeanne Pounder on behalf of the NH National Guard. They took point, organizing and coordinating the 2005 re-enactment of the Welcoming Parade which was also an opportunity to thank today’s troops for their service to the state and nation in combat overseas.
Next to the Guard are the Navy representatives for the Shipyard: Captain Bryant Fuller (current PNSY commander) and Cmdr. Mike Gilmore who was Shipyard second in command in 2005. Also pictured in 2010 are those who helped prepare the Shipyard for the 100th anniversary, up-rating the Treaty museum spaces in Building 86 for visitors just as a team of 400 workers did in four days in 1905. Having just hosted the welcoming reception at the Shipyard, the Navy was not in the photograph in 1905. In 2005, the Shipyard took many parts in the anniversary celebrations, recreating their welcoming luncheon and re-enacting the gun salute that greeted the news that the Treaty had been signed at 3:47 pm on September 5th. As they do each year at that day and time. The Navy salute is now the signal to start the statewide Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day commemoration of this important piece of New Hampshire history and the part New Hampshire citizens played in fostering the negotiations.
Research in 2005 and since has found that behind the headlines and behind the scenes in 1905 there were dozens of individuals from all walks of life who contributed to the welcome the Seacoast and the state offered to the diplomats. Coachman X, a black man noted for his matched team of grey horses drove the diplomats’ carriage in the parade. The Seacoast African American Cultural Center organized an exhibit of art inspired by African symbols for peace and harmony in 2005. Several National Guard and Navy, as well as civilian bands, played for the diplomats and the throngs of bystanders who flocked to the area in 1905. Arthur Hinton sang for the diplomats in 1905; Angelynne Hinson sang in 2005 and at the 2008 concert. The organizers and performers who produced the Treaty of Portsmouth Centennial Concert Series (15 concerts on successive Sundays with hundreds of performers) are represented in the 2010 shot, along with the composers of original music created for the centennial and performers from Treaty concerts presented since 2005. With them are those who wrote and staged original plays and films telling the story of the Peace of Portsmouth: Pontine Theatre, the NH Humanities Council Chatauqua and Green Acre Bahai School. Also pictured are the NH Art Association, Children’s Museum of New Hampshire and Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion who mounted exhibitions that told the story visually; and the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Old York Historical Society and Portsmouth Historical Society who created re-enactments (at the Elizabeth Perkins House and Creek Farm, respectively) and hosted key exhibits, then and since.
The 2005 program detailing all the events: lectures, films, performances, concerts, re-enactments, exhibits, church services, tours (boat, Chamber-guided and self-guided walks) and other creations is 64 pages long. Since then, new Forum friends have added additional commemorative events: a children’s book, a Labor/Portsmouth Peace Treaty Parade, commemorative concerts at The Music Hall, a Beat Night of poetry and jazz, a new film, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and new exhibits at the NH Archives and The Fells. And the official declaration of Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day throughout New Hampshire on September 5th. Senator Martha Fuller Clark and Representatives Robin Read, Jim Splaine and David Watters, sponsors of the bill, are important parts of the picture in 2010.
The mass of New Hampshire people in the 1905 photograph and the larger group in 2010 shows the extent to which ordinary people got involved in the celebrations. But the question that’s always asked is “Why?”
Why Portsmouth in 1905? Why did so many people care in 2005? And why should anyone care about the Portsmouth Peace Treaty now?
In 1905, in Portsmouth “an uncommon commitment to peace became a common virtue.” Jewish shopkeepers spoke truth to power when their countrymen asked them, in Russian, why they had abandoned their homeland for America. Prominent social hostesses with names like Peirce, Carey, Coolidge, Perkins and Heffinger made the face of public opinion a personal appeal that neither Witte nor Komura could deny. Their counterparts – in some cases descendants – in 2005 helped fund the celebration as Centennial Hosts. The Mayor of Portsmouth (Mayor Marvin is in the back row next to Pearson; Mayor Ferrini in that position in the 2010 image) knew his city could shoulder the responsibility in which President Roosevelt placed his trust (a responsibility not unlike the vetting process of the Presidential Primary campaign). On Sunday September 3, 1905 Bartlett, Towle, Page and Mayor Marvin hosted a Wentworth banquet for the Japanese “to thank them for the honor conferred this city and to congratulate them on the peace.” And on their departures, Bartlett presented silk American flags on behalf of the people of Portsmouth to both Komura and Witte, to which Witte replied, “Tell the people of Portsmouth how grateful we are for their hospitality and kindness.” Takahira, on departing the train station where a crowd had gathered to see both envoys off, told Bartlett how grateful the Japanese were to Portsmouth, saying “They have done more for us than we could ever expect from any one and we shall always thank them for it.”
In 1905 citizens made a conscious decision to dress up and come out in the street to welcome the diplomats. In 2005 each person who chose to get involved in the celebration had his or her own reasons and engaged the interest of dozens of organizations to see all the details through. The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum is documenting their stories; that is part of the reason for organizing the photo recreation.
But perhaps the reason can be summarized, at least for now, by something that happened at the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day bill. One of the members of the NH House who voted for the Treaty Day bill when it reached her committee brought her 4 year old granddaughter to the ceremony. She echoed little 5 year old Alida Carey who in 1905 watched over the banister as her parents welcomed the Russian and the Japanese diplomats to dinner at Creek Farm – and 80 years later passed the story on as witness of what happened here.
When asked why she brought little Madison to Concord to see Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day became NH law, the Representative said, “I want her to be aware that you have to be involved.” In Portsmouth in 2005 ordinary people celebrated making a difference. What happened here still matters. That strain of people who decide to get involved, still do.