CORRECTS TO CLARIFY WILSON IS CONSIDERED THE FIRST FEMALE AFRICAN AMERICAN NOVELIST - In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016, JerriAnne Boggis stands next to a statue of Harriet Wilson in Milford, N.H. Wilson, who was born in Milford, is considered the first female African-American to publish a novel on the North American continent. Boggis is part of a group of African-American and white scholars who are working on what they hope will be a statewide, black history trail that recognizes African-American contributions. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
CORRECTS TO CLARIFY WILSON IS CONSIDERED THE FIRST FEMALE AFRICAN AMERICAN NOVELIST - In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016, JerriAnne Boggis stands next to a statue of Harriet Wilson in Milford, N.H. Wilson, who was born in Milford, is considered the first female African-American to publish a novel on the North American continent. Boggis is part of a group of African-American and white scholars who are working on what they hope will be a statewide, black history trail that recognizes African-American contributions. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) Credit: ap photograph

Portsmouth, n.h. — The New Hampshire house that inspired Harriet Wilson, the country’s first female African-American novelist and author of Our Nig in 1859, still stands on the edge of Milford.

It offers a glimpse of what life was like for a woman who worked there as a white family’s servant. But nothing marks the home’s historical significance. A statue of Wilson is in Milford park.

It’s the same in Greenland, where nothing marks the site where Ona Marie Judge, the former slave of Martha Washington, lived after escaping by ship to Portsmouth. Nellie Brown Mitchell, a famous black opera singer in the 1850s and 1860s who sang in England and formed her own concert company, also called Dover home. But you wouldn’t know it.

“Black history in the state remains invisible and unheralded,” said JerriAnne Boggis, director of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail and who hails from Milford. “It speaks to the invisibility of a culture and the importance that it plays. If we don’t recognize a culture, then we aren’t recognizing what it means to be American.”

Boggis, along with several other scholars and activists in the state, wants to change that.

Inspired by the creation of a black heritage trail in Portsmouth more than two decades ago, they are drawing up plans for a similar trail that would cover the entire state. They envision a network snaking through nearly a dozen towns and featuring as many as 60 sites — some of which are already recognized by their town’s historical societies or the state.

Supporters are now in the process of forming a nonprofit to develop the trail and raise money for it.