By Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, January 1, 2021.
We all know how 2020 went. It was a year suspended. A year we’ll forever break into the “before times,” prior to mid-March, and the pandemic times. 1920 was the “after time.” It was after the horrors of World War I and after the fear of the 1918-19 influenza. These two shocks still left lingering discomfort.
In January, influenza returned. It wasn’t as deadly, but it was very, very present. Helen Tufts, a young piano teacher and daughter of a Phillips Exeter Academy professor, had helped to care for the boys who fell ill in 1918. She’d been recruited to bring meals and had willingly served with enthusiasm but little training. It couldn’t have been much of a surprise when she fell ill after only a few days volunteering at the makeshift clinic set up in the Academy gym. In January 1920, Dr. Perry stopped by her house on Pine Street to tell her that, although they’d once again set up a clinic in the gym, they wouldn’t need her this time. “He said a good deal about my helping last year,” she mentioned. He was most likely trying to ascertain her comfort level. The experience had made her quite ill. Three days later, she was called again to assist. Ever the trooper, Tufts dutifully reported to the gym and served meals three times a day for the following week. The Exeter News-Letter, perhaps at the suggestion of the Academy, minimized the illness, “At the old gymnasium there are now about 10 students, all convalescing from colds,” adding “two and possibly three Academy students are sick with pneumonia at the Cottage Hospital.” Having seen it before, however, Helen wrote that she assisted the nurses, “who have about 20 boys with what seems to be light cases of the influenza.” Thankfully, the flu in 1920 was not the same flu that had taken so many lives in the dreadful winter of 1918-19.
1920, like 2020, was a presidential election year. The election would be different from any other before it – this time women would be voting. But even before the election, there were concerns about the presidency that nearly led to a constitutional crisis. President Wilson had suffered a debilitating stroke the previous October. The details of his condition were kept from the public until February, when it was revealed that Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, had been calling cabinet meetings and had suggested that perhaps it was time to have Vice-President, Thomas Marshall, assume the role of president. The president’s wife, Edith Wilson, pushed for and received Lansing’s resignation. Mira Richards, Exeter’s Washington correspondent, noted of the incident, “It has opened up a world of conjecture as to the true condition of the President, physically and nervously, and a feeling of great distrust has resulted.” By early March there were four bills pending that addressed the question of executive absence or disability. The proposals would have placed the decision of presidential removal – either temporary or permanent - into the hands of the Supreme Court or the Cabinet. The idea was bounced around for another 47 years until the 25th amendment was passed in 1967.
Locally, there were other, less ponderous issues to address. The question of how best to memorialize Exeter’s soldiers and sailors in the Great War was undertaken by a committee. In March, the committee recommended, “that the memorial should be a piece of sculpture typifying the ideals that actuated the United States in its entrance and in its achievements in the Great conflict.” They also recommended Exeter native son, Daniel Chester French, be hired to do the job. French visited his hometown and looked over various sites. By the end of the year, plans for the statue to be erected in Gale Park were well underway. Land for the park was donated by Alice Gale Hobbs in honor of her father, Stephen Gale.
Exeter’s two congregational churches, the First Parish and Phillips Church, united in late 1920 after having been separated theologically since 1743. Joint services had been held most of the year in anticipation of the event. Phillips Church was sold to Phillips Exeter Academy two years later.
The November election went smoothly. In acknowledgement to the recently passed suffrage amendment, the first vote was cast by a woman, Pearl Stevenson, who according to etiquette was recorded as “Mrs. Reginald Stevenson.” The oldest voter was Mrs. Lydia Davis, age 98, who, as a widow, had earned the right to use her first name. The votes went overwhelmingly to Warren Harding, a Republican, from Ohio.
The year had begun with a small local scandal. January 9th: “Several Exeter housewives have this week been victimized by an egg swindler. A few after giving him a dollar failed to receive the dozen eggs and those delivered were the reverse of fresh.” One can only wonder if this notice was inserted by Exeter News-Letter editor John Templeton’s wife, Ella Gilman Templeton. She tirelessly wrote copy for the paper for decades. It’s easy to imagine her annoyance trying to get breakfast ready if she’d come into contact with this character.
The highlight of the local news year, however, had to be the story of the two little daughters of former Exeter resident, Charles Henry Burpee, who travelled from Salem, Oregon, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, alone on the railroad. Burpee put the girls, Carol and Elsie, ages 7 and 8, onto the train for a five-day trip with minimal instructions – each wore a tag listing her name and destination only. “In changing trains at Chicago and Boston they traversed the width of the two great cities – from one station to another – as fearlessly as cats jump from fence to fence,” the News-Letter noted. “The real anxiety was on the part of the railroad officials whose duty it was to see that the children were started in the right direction that they took the right bus and got off at the right place.”
“Everybody was just fine to us!” Carol declared when interviewed on their grandmother’s front steps on the old farm. “We had more candy than we could eat! And some nice old men brought us breakfast.” “And Carol insisted on getting off the train whenever it stopped,” chimed in Elsie, “and I was scared to death the engine would start and leave her behind.”
From the Exeter Historical Society, here’s to a Happy New Year.