by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 24, 2023.
Emory Eldredge wasn’t born in Exeter. His family arrived in town from Taunton, Massachusetts about 1896 when Emory was eight years old. His father worked at the Exeter Machine Works as a machinist. Young Emory must have shown promise, as he was admitted to Phillips Exeter Academy at the age of 14 and graduated with the class of 1906.
Emory’s path would lead him away from Exeter for decades. He attended Harvard and the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1912. That same year he married Lucy Watson. When war broke out in 1917, Eldredge served in the new submarine service and was assigned time at the Portsmouth Naval Base. Between the wars, he served in the Pacific. He seemed wistful for New England, writing to the Exeter News-Letter in 1931, “I am nearly at an end of my foreign service and expect to give up my command about 20 August and return to the United States. Have just completed two and a half months of special duty with my ship on the Yangtse at Wuhu and Nanking and am glad of a little more active ship work with the squadron here at Chefoo. My family are at Shanghai now waiting for me to be detached and join them, after which we shall sail for Seattle on one of the President liners. My future tour of shore duty sends me to San Diego for a month, then to Kansas City in charge of navy recruiting in Missouri and Kansas. This duty will be good for me, as I need rest ashore. Destroyers are strenuous. Next summer, 1932, I hope to take leave enough to get to New England again, when I shall certainly visit Exeter.”
During World War II, he captained a troop carrier, USS Mount Vernon. In 1947, after years of service and now a widower, he returned to Exeter to start a new chapter in his life.
Exeter drew him back as the place of stability he remembered from boyhood. He purchased a house on Portsmouth Ave and lived the remainder of his life in our town. He was a frequent speaker at Exeter High School, helped with the youth baseball program and served in the state legislature for five terms. It was a busy, active retirement. He fell ill in early 1964 and died that February at the age of 75.
That same year, a young art student from Exeter, Victor Rogers, painted a portrait of Captain Eldredge. It is clearly the work of a student artist, but it is an excellent likeness. The painting was displayed in various locations in town, most notably at the Exeter Public Library in 1967. There is a photograph of the presentation with Roger’s mother, Phyllis, gazing up at Captain Emory Eldredge’s likeness. Librarian Harriet Pirnie stands on the opposite side of the painting. It hung in the children’s room at Phyllis Rogers’ request, “because of Captain Eldredge’s fondness for children.”
After that, we lost track of the painting for many years. The Exeter Public Library moved to a new location, and it doesn’t seem to have made the move with the books. Quite a few years ago, the Exeter Historical Society had a phone call from someone saying they had the painting and might like to donate it. The Society was interested, but the donation didn’t come through. Perhaps circumstances had intervened, and the painting changed hands. Sometime before the pandemic, it was found in a swap shop in Gilmanton, New Hampshire by Philip Womersley. He knew nothing about Captain Emory Eldredge or his connection to Exeter, but he liked the painting. It hung for roughly six years in his vacation home. When the time came to close the cottage and sell it, he didn’t want to relegate the painting back to an uncertain future at the swap shop. There had been a note attached to the back, he recalled, that was written by the artist, Victor Rogers. The note said that this was one of his first portraits he’d made and was of a man named Captain Emory from Exeter, NH. The note had disappeared by the time Womersley was interested in donating the painting, but he remembered enough information to call the Exeter Historical Society as a possible recipient. Captain Emory Eldredge’s portrait has now found a home in our collections – in the old library building where it was once displayed. Like Eldredge himself, having travelled a bit, it is now home.
Image: Portrait of Captain Emory Eldredge (1888 – 1964) by artist R. Victor Rogers.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org.