Free Birthday Bash At John Paul Jones’ House This Weekend
Happy birthday, John Paul Jones!
On Sunday, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will celebrate one of her most revolutionary residents. Although the patriot’s birthday is actually the 6th, July 10 is the day the city fetes American revolutionary and U.S. Navy founder, John Paul Jones.
At 1 p.m. the John Paul Jones House at the corner of Middle and State Streets opens its doors for a free and festive three-hour birthday party featuring live music and birthday cake for everyone in attendance. Local folk group Great Bay Sailor is slated to perform, and the Portsmouth Historical Society promises plenty of family-friendly, “patriotic festivities,” reports Foster’s Daily Democrat. Tours of the house where John Paul Jones lived from 1781 to 1782 will be free for the duration of the birthday party.
The Portsmouth Historical Society recommends parking on State Street or at the Bridge Street lot directly across from the Discover Portsmouth Center at the corner of Islington and Maplewood.
Who was John Paul Jones?
According to U.S. Navy history, John Paul was born in Arbigland, Kirkbean, Kirkcudbright, Scotland, on July 6, 1747.
When he was 13 years old, John Paul signed on as an apprentice to a Scottish sea merchant and set sail aboard a brig christened Friendship. By age 21, he was a successful merchant skipper in command of his own vessel, doing trade in the West Indies aboard the seafaring brig John.
John Paul added the Jones to his name when he established residence in the British colonies. On December 7, 1775, Jones accepted a first lieutenant’s commission and joined the Revolutionary War, serving aboard the Continental Navy flagship Alfred where he was the first to hoist the Grand Union flag. While commanding the Bon Homme Richard in battle against the British warship Serapis in the North Sea, Lieutenant Jones shouted his now-famous phrase, “I have not yet begun to fight!”
The Curious Case of John Paul Jones’ Corpse
John Paul Jones died in Paris on July 18, 1792 at the age of 45 and was buried in a graveyard that belonged to the French royal family. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the graveyard property was sold and abandoned. In 1845, military officer Colonel John H. Sherburne enlisted Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft’s assistance in retrieving Jones’ remains from the old Saint Louis Cemetery. Six years later, the campaign to bring John Paul Jones home to America almost worked.
Even if Jones’ Scottish relatives had not vehemently protested the exhumation, it would have been difficult to locate and transfer the body of John Paul Jones, American war hero. According to the U.S. Navy, Jones was laid to rest in an unmarked French grave. The navy does not explain how Ambassador Horace Porter “systematically searched” the graveyard for Jones’ bones from 1899 to 1905 when the remains were finally discovered.
President Theodore Roosevelt ordered four U.S. Navy cruisers to retrieve the war hero and bring him home at last. John Paul Jones was encrypted at the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 26, 1913.
Baby Boomers take note
If you are a Led Zeppelin fan who scanned the headline and assumed the multi-instrumentalist was hosting a free birthday party, apologies for the misunderstanding. As compensation, here’s something you may not yet know about John Paul Jones the musician.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, it was John Paul Jones, not Jimmy Page, who composed the iconic 5/4 riff that opens the Led Zeppelin classic “Black Dog.” In Cameron Crowe’s liner notes for Light and Shade, he quotes Jones as saying the following.
“I wanted to try an electric blues with a rolling bass part. But it couldn’t be too simple. I wanted it to turn back on itself. I showed it to the guys, and we fell into it. We struggled with the turn-around, until [John] Bonham figured out that you just four-time as if there’s no turn-around. That was the secret.”
[Photo by Will Clayton | Flickr | Cropped and Resized | CC by 2.0]
