Newtown was where my dad grew up. It was located between
downtown Portsmouth and the shipyard. Two wars brought an eclectic blend of
workers and military personnel that resulted in a vibrant neighborhood of
Catholics and Baptists, Irish and Poles and Italians. Row houses sprang up as
did plenty of grocery stores, bakeries, cleaners, and shoe shops, all with
apartments above.
A curious mix of decay and progress came together to wipe
out Newtown altogether, except in the minds of those who remembered the good
times.
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| Photo courtesy of Harvey T. Siegel |
Two poems written by some of the reunion-goers capture the life in
Newtown much better than I can paraphrase it.
Amy Johnson Crow continues to challenge genealogy
bloggers and non-bloggers alike to think about our ancestors and share a story
or photo about them. The challenge is “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”
Wendy
© 2019, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
Its a shame Newtown "died" off. It does sound by reading those poems that it was a great place to live and raise a family.
ReplyDeletebetty
Oh my goodness...and how great all those people came back to share their memories of a place again!
ReplyDeleteI love this! My family is so small we never held reunions - heck, we could have all fit at the dining room table. I wonder if somewhere along the line there was some sort of neighborhood reunion. I'm struggling with this weeks' prompt. :-(
ReplyDeleteLove this post! I returned last week from a reunion of the street where I grew up, which was ravaged by two Susquehanna River floods. No one lives on the street anymore, and many nearby houses have been torn down, but just as with Newtown, our memories of good times there persist even after the physical evidence is gone.
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