The house at 43 Middle Street in Portsmouth was built in 1758 for merchant and sea captain Gregory Purcell. The successful builder Hopestill Cheswell, a member of a prominent New Hampshire family of African and European ancestry, is associated with its construction. After Purcell’s death, his widow Sarah took in boarders. John Paul Jones stayed with her while naval work brought him to Portsmouth, giving the boardinghouse its enduring public name.

Jones first came to Portsmouth in 1777 to take command of the newly built Continental sloop Ranger. From this port he sailed to France, received the first formal salute to the American flag from a foreign naval power, raided the British coast, and captured HMS Drake in 1778. The museum tradition holds that he rented a room here during the Ranger period, though the surviving documentation makes that early stay less certain than his later residence.

Jones’s most celebrated battle occurred in 1779 after he transferred to Bonhomme Richard. Off Flamborough Head, he fought HMS Serapis at close range, lashed the ships together, and forced the stronger British vessel to surrender even as his own ship became unsalvageable. That action did not occur from Portsmouth, but it explains the reputation he carried when Congress later assigned him to supervise one of the largest ships yet attempted in America.

In 1781 and 1782, Jones again lodged in Portsmouth while overseeing construction of the 74-gun ship America. Building such a warship demanded timber, iron, rope, canvas, skilled shipwrights, money, and coordination among Congress, naval agents, and local yards. Before America entered American service, Congress gave the vessel to France to replace a French ship lost in Boston Harbor. Jones left Portsmouth without commanding the finished ship.

The building was a private boardinghouse, not Jones’s permanent home or naval headquarters in the modern sense. That distinction matters because the site represents the domestic and commercial setting surrounding wartime ship construction. Sarah Purcell’s need to rent rooms, the work of craftspeople and laborers, and Portsmouth’s maritime economy were all part of the environment that supported a celebrated officer whose battles took place far away.

The Portsmouth Historical Society has operated the house as a museum since 1920, and it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972. Later ownership, alterations, and museum interpretation have shaped what visitors see. The marker compresses Jones’s Ranger and America associations into one line; the fuller history separates a probable 1777 lodging from the better-supported 1781–1782 stay and places both within the citywide effort required to build and outfit Continental warships.