If you have an interest in Historic Homes - then New Hampshire should be at the top of your vacation travel destination list. The Granite State has dozens of historic homes, sites, and homesteads.
Historians will find historic New England houses in nearly every corner of New Hampshire - the oldest of which is the historic Jackson House in Portsmouth. The Jackson House is the oldest surviving wood-frame house in New Hampshire and Maine. The house was built in 1664 by Richard Jackson, a woodworker, farmer, and mariner, on his families 25-acre plot. At that time, timber from the regions abundant pine forests formed the basis of the economy. The extensive Piscataqua riverway powered scores of sawmills and linked the wilderness to the sea and distant ports. The Jackson House is operated by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) and is open to the public. It is located at 76 Northwest Street, Portsmouth, N.H. 03801. Call (603) 436-3205 for hours of operation.
Other notable historic New Hampshire homes in the seacoast region include the Gilman Garrison House in Exeter, built as a "fortified house" in 1690, and the Governor John Langdon House in Portsmouth. The Langdon House was the 1784 home of John Langdon, a merchant, shipbuilder, Revolutionary leader, signer of the United States Constitution, and three-term governor of New Hampshire.
One Historic New Hampshire home that not only allows visitors but welcomes guests to spend the night, or an entire week or more, is the Chase House in Cornish (see photo right). The 
Chase House is now a wonderful historic Bed and Breakfast Inn. The entire Cornish region is an Historians delight - the Cornish Artist's Colony, and Saint Gaudens National Historic Site is located here. The Chase House was once the home of Salmon P. Chase.
Salmon Chase was born in 1808 in New Hampshire. The eighth of eleven children of a tavernkeeper and local officeholder, He received his early education in a local district school and a private institution. As secretary of the U.S. treasury, Chase presided over the complex and difficult task of financing the war; he was instrumental in establishing the national banking system in 1863. Chase had radical antislavery views, as well as political ambitions which put him at odds with the more moderate US President Abraham Lincoln. It was Lincoln, however, that appointed Chase to the US Supreme Court when Chief Justice Roger Taney died. And it was Salmon Chase who administered the Presidential Oath to Andrew Johnson following Lincoln's assassination.
Chase died of a paralytic stroke at the age of 73.
