by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, February 17, 2023.
Several years after Exeter erected the beautiful Robinson Female Seminary building to educate the town’s girls, it became apparent that some type of full-time caretaker would be needed. The cleaning was tended by a “janitress,” but it was clear that the building, with its rudimentary steam heating and limited plumbing would need someone with more specialized skills. The grounds, beautifully laid out by landscape architect Robert Morris Copeland, required careful tending. It wouldn’t do to keep depending on day-laborers. At the September 15th, 1869, meeting of the school’s trustees, a position called ‘engineer’ was created to maintain the building and grounds.
The list of tasks was extensive. “His duties shall be, to have charge of the heating apparatus of the Seminary Building, to keep the boiler properly supplied with water day and night, to keep the rooms in the building supplied with the requisite amount of heat; to be responsible for having all the water pipes, drainage pipes, and machinery generally in good condition at all times; He is also to assist the janitress in her duties so far as he finds time. He is also to keep the steps and avenues to the Seminary Building free from snow and ice so far as his other services will permit. And when not otherwise employed to work as he may be required to work upon the Seminary grounds and elsewhere as the Trustees may order. The Trustees shall have the privilege of discharging him whenever his services are not satisfactory to them.” All for a whopping twelve dollars per week. They were certain that Burley Glidden, of Newfields, would be more than happy to accept the job. To everyone’s surprise, he refused. It may have been the commute or the threat of dismissal but perhaps he got a better offer. Within several years, he was listed working for the Swamscott Machine Company in his own town. The trustees then made the pitch to Thomas Colcord. Instead of a week-by-week agreement, Colcord signed on for $600 per year. It worked out to slightly less money annually, but with a guarantee of employment. He soon proved to be indispensable.
Colcord was native to Exeter, born in 1820. His father was a local farmer, one of many members of the Colcord family in town. Thomas trained as a carpenter and briefly moved to Massachusetts to work for the railroad. It was there that he picked up skills with steam engines. He returned to town in the 1850s, working on his farm and doing local carpentry jobs. An ode to Colcord, written in The Seminarian in 1893 stated, “The requirements of the position were exacting and varied. But he was well fitted to meet them. Possessed of much mechanical skill, his knowledge of wood and iron working-tools was in constant requisition, and he went from the tasks of the boiler-room to the mending of a desk-lid, or the fitting up of an amateur stage, with the readiest of alacrity.” He was the first one called if the pencil sharpener broke or the toilet was (again) plugged. Mr. Colcord was the first one to enter the building in the morning, stoking the boiler, seeing that the heat reached all the way to the third floor. He was the last one to leave, locking the big front door after everyone had left for the day.
“In the early days of the Seminary the heating appliances were inefficient, and the plumbing poorly planned and defective. Many a bitter winter day, the only heat that penetrated the iciness of the school rooms radiated from the janitor’s warm heart, and the only inducement for the thermometers to rise above the state of zero depression, was the warm pressure on their bulbs of the janitor’s grimy thumb.” He was well known for his acts of kindness, generally for students of little means. “What many a destitute family could tell of deeds of kindness done so secretly that the left hand knew not the service of the right, would find more than a counterpart, if all the Seminary girls were to tell the grateful secrets of their hearts, - the memories of little and of great kindnesses.”
After the close of school in 1893, Colcord took a trip to the World’s Fair in Chicago. After returning, he announced his retirement in July, taking everyone by surprise. The Exeter News-Letter noted, “although still in excellent health, Mr. Colcord is seventy-three, and has well earned the season of rest, which all his friends will heartily wish him.” A trip to Virginia to visit relatives was cut short when his house on Main Street was gutted by fire the following year. Undeterred, he rebuilt and lived in the house for the remainder of his life. His obituary, in 1904, called him “a man of the finest character.”
Image: Thomas Colcord, hard at work at Exeter’s Robinson Female Seminary. The photo appeared in the RFS student publication The Seminarian.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org