480 Portsmouth Avenue

480 Portsmouth Avenue. Town of Greenland. , In the year 1675, John Johnson was granted a tavern keeper's license. He resided and operated the tavern where the roads meet from Portsmouth, Exeter, and Hampton, at today's 480 Portsmouth Avenue. This is the house immediately in front of you. Johnson became the first of many on the site to recieve this licens., Later, this building was home to Greenland's first post office, established in 1820. Nahaniel Marshall, the owner of the tavern at the time, was appointed Greenland's first postmaster. In 1824, Marquis de Lafayette (military leader of French forces who changed the course of the Revolutionary War) stopped at the same tavern while on a tour of New England. The road being built between Newburyport and Porstmouth, named after Lafayette, managed to divert traffic from Greenland, making the tavern unprofitable., [Sidebar:] , As one of the earliest settlements in the state of New Hampshire, Greenland was a paish of Portsmouth which at the time was called Strawbery Banke. In 1640, Captain Francis Champernowne moved from Strabery Banke and settled near present day Portsmouth Country Club, about 1.3 miles north of here. He named his farm "Greenland." His large possession of land included many farms, one of which is now the town of Mudbury (named after Campernowne's ancestral home in Devon, England). t their request, residents of Greenland were later granted a separate parish in 1706. Greenland would incorporate in 1721 and annex parts of Stratham in 1805 and 1847.