Moffatt-Ladd House

The Moffatt-Ladd House on Portsmouth's waterfront was built in seventeen sixty-three by John Moffatt, a prosperous merchant and sea captain whose wealth came from the timber trade and shipping. His son-in-law William Whipple later lived here, and Whipple signed the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy-six. The three-story Georgian mansion with its counting house and terraced garden represents the height of colonial Portsmouth prosperity. It passed through the Ladd family in the nineteenth century and has been a museum for more than a century.