by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, October 19, 2024.
In the early 1800s, one of the most popular forms of travelling entertainment was the arrival of a panorama show. Broadsides plastered onto local fences and buildings would announce the arrival of these shows. A hall was let, the audience lighting was dimmed, and a large paper scroll would be unrolled in front of brightly lit oil lamps onstage. People would gasp at the excitement of painted scenes of far-away places. One of the most popular panorama shows was The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, which played across the country beginning in 1848. Exeter’s most popular program was a panorama of New York City, which was shown at the Congregational Church. Panoramas provided visual entertainment in a portable and more cost-effective way than dramatizations. People were yearning to see the world around them.
Early forms of photography arrived around mid-century. Daguerreotype and ambrotype images provided images – and a new type of trade came to most American towns: the photographer. Exeter’s first photographers arrived about 1850. One of them, Charles Davis, was part of the Davis Brothers studio located in Portsmouth. In 1858, Charles was tasked by his brother Lewis, to open the studio in Exeter. It did well, and many of our earliest photographic portraits in town were produced by Davis Brothers. In 1866, the brothers sold the Exeter business to William Hobbs, who had been working for them in Exeter.
William Hobbs became well known in town for his portraits and he broadened his business to include stereoviews. A stereoview was more than just an ordinary photo. It had two photographs – that seemed to be identical but were not – on a piece of heavy card. Placed into a handheld stereopticon (or stereoscope), the viewer would look through a facepiece and see a three-dimensional image. To make the images, a photographer used a specialized camera with two lenses approximately five inches apart – about the same distance as one’s eyes. It was similar to the old View Master toys. These were photographs that allowed one to feel as though they were travelling far away. Like panoramas, stereoviews allowed people to see outside their own world.
But a local photographer, like Hobbs, needed to stay in town to take care of all the usual photography business: babies, grandparents, prominent people – even funeral portraits. He couldn’t be taking off for Jerusalem anytime the mood hit the community. And so, Hobbs took photos of local scenes. His stereoviews of Exeter are the best images we have of the town during the period just after the Civil War. He took photos of the buildings in town. He used his stereo camera to capture Academy boys paddling on the river. He captured a group of church picnickers. It was Hobbs who first documented everyday downtown scenes. Hobbs stereoviews of Water Street provide us with a trove of information. We know how people dressed in 1870. We can look at how the streets were paved (or not paved, in any real sense). He photographed the river and inadvertently caught the outhouses lined up along String Bridge. No one, in their right mind, would have ever considered photographing outhouses.
Hobbs active period in Exeter ended abruptly in August of 1881 – just a month after he finished a project for Phillips Exeter Academy – when he died of infection following hernia surgery. Other photographers took over for him. But it was Hobbs who was the first to really capture the pulse of the town.
In 1934, a young Exeter boy named Ben Swiezynski was hired by the Hampton Union Leader and the Portsmouth Herald to work as a photographer. This was the beginning of a career that would last over 50 years. With only a bit of time away during World War II, Swiezynski became a photographic and film documentarian of Exeter’s history. Like Hobbs, Swiezynski focused on the local environment, providing us with pictures of people, events, landscapes, and changes in our town. At the Exeter Historical Society, his photos have been used repeatedly to document our history.
An exhibit of Ben Swiezynski’s work is on display at the Historical Society from October 8th through November 26. A live presentation will be the feature of the Society’s November 6th program at 7pm at the Exeter Town Hall.
Barbara Rimkunas is Co-Executive Director at the Exeter Historical Society. We are open to the public at 47 Front Street, Tuesday & Thursday 2:00 – 4:30 and Saturday 9:30 – 12:00.
Image: William Hobbs took this photograph of Exeter’s first Lincoln Street train depot about 1870. It was featured on a stereoview card and is one of the only images of the station, which burned in 1890.