As we inventory the collection at the Portsmouth Historical Society, we come across another group of primary sources that give us a

High School blueprints
photo of lighthouse
blueprint legend
inside lighthouse
outside lighthouse
Ft. Butts drawing

view of historical places.  We have blueprints and technical drawings of Fort Butts, Muscle Shoal Bed Lighthouse, Portsmouth High School, Pearson Yacht building and the Glen Manor property.  We may discover more as we go through all the storage drawers.  What blueprints and technical drawings give us is another view – maybe an inside view – of what things used to look like.  They provide dimension and details that we would not get from a map or a photograph.  Looking at blueprints we start with the legend to ground us in what kind of information we can find.