Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
The Portsmouth, Maine navy prison did not exist prior to 1908. The text in question is: "his privateering great-grandfather [...] while serving a few months in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, prison, 104 years earlier." This text was relative to 1915, so 1810 ... which is a slight problem because the earlier description dated the imprisonment as 1813.
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In fact, the navy prison is in Kittery, Maine, where the naval base is and where sailors were sent to prison even before the moldering building that's on the base now. The confusion results because the base is called the Portsmouth Navy Shipyard as it's located in Portsmouth harbor. (TBH, I was being a little facetious and invoking some local color with the Portsmouth reference, which isn't important.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Whether it was in New Hampshire or in Maine was in dispute until the Supreme Court settled the issue in 2001 (it's in Maine); what the prevailing opinion was when the man in question was imprisoned (or at the time of the explosion), I don't know, but should Bacon have gone off on a tangent to explain the controversy? |
The boundary line between the states was in dispute only because New Hampshire kept disputing it. Winning the case would have changed the perceived boundary, but since it never did, it was in Maine.