by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 18, 2022.

Three cheers for Exeter’s field hockey team! Exeter’s girls have been a force in the game since the early 20th century. Before Exeter High School was coed, before the teams were named the “Blue Hawks,” before there were varsity sports for girls, before Title IX opened athletics through law, the girls of Exeter’s Robinson Female Seminary played field hockey. Their toughest challenge was finding other teams to play.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 4, 2022.

When the United States entered World War II in late 1941, everyone expected women would be recruited as nurses. Both the US Army and Navy had established nursing corps beginning in 1901 and 1908 respectively. Early in the war, it became evident that the military would need a massive amount of participation in other non-combat areas and there simply weren’t enough men to fill the jobs. Both the Army and Navy quickly set up programs for women’s participation. Exeter women served from the onset.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, October 21, 2022

Little Ella Winslow never knew her father, who died when she was just three months old. The only child of Darius and Hannah Winslow, she was born in Northfield in 1846. Her mother married again, after Ella turned three, and her step-father, John Dearborn, quickly embraced his new role. Some families are cobbled together in this way. For Ella, it may have influenced the remainder of her life.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, October 7, 2022.

The story of this place, M’squamscook, is longer and deeper than the history that is usually told. It is customary to begin the story of Exeter, New Hampshire in 1638 with the arrival of the Reverend John Wheelwright. But it is not the beginning of the story of this place. The meeting of the two rivers – Exeter and Squamscott – at the falls is a place that has thousands of years of human history. People were drawn here because of the river. This is a unique location, the rolling falls of freshwater that tumbles into a salty mix that leads out to the sea. It’s a place where fish come back to breed because their ancient DNA tells them “This is the place.” And for people, the fish are delicious. A bountiful resource. M’squamscook – the place of the red fish was teeming with salmon, shad and river herrings called alewives.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, September 23, 2022.

There is a period in Exeter’s history that we do not like to talk about. We were once part of Massachusetts.

The English began arriving in M’squamscook in the early 1630s, confident that the region was open for the taking, having obtained patents from the English crown. Historian, Charles Bell, described the only other English habitations, Strawbery Banke and Dover, as, “straggling, small and weak, being self-ruled, for as yet there was no general government in New Hampshire. The Europeans who composed the population had most of them come thither to better their worldly condition by fishery and trade, and with no purpose of a religious character.” There were a few English families living at the falls of the Squamscott River, three headed by men named ‘Thomas:’ Thomas Wiggin, Thomas Leavitt, and Thomas Wilson. The other known inhabitants were Ralph Hall and Edward Hilton.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, September 9, 2022.

In 1932, Clifton Towle, the Superintendent of Exeter’s schools, wrote, “We shall be faced soon with a redistricting of our school areas and with a consolidation of our system made necessary by the opening of St. Michael’s Parochial School which will remove one hundred sixty pupils from our first four grades.”

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, August 26, 2022.

As August draws to a close and school is set to begin, it is once again time to start signing the kids up for afterschool activities. For a lot of families, this means dance class. Decisions need to be made – when are classes, how much will it cost, are there discounts for siblings, is it a competitive or recital school, what is the dress code, will these dance shoes still fit in the spring? Those who’ve done it, know.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, August 12, 2022.

Betty Kreger began the month of August in 1945 canning beans. Her husband, Bob, was working day shifts doing war work. She tended the victory garden and taught piano lessons. The war was coming to a close—everyone knew that. The European theater had ended in April. Roosevelt was dead, Hitler was dead, Churchill was voted out of power. Everything felt somehow different, yet still the same. Middle-aged Betty and Bob had grown accustomed to life during wartime. It was not easy, but at least they were used to the rhythms of rationing, making do, casualty lists and worry. The future seemed to hold long battles, and more losses, in the final push to take the Japanese mainland.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 29, 2022.

In 1933, with the end of prohibition in sight, Exeter braced itself for the return of dry versus wet political battles. New Hampshire had been dry since 1917, when wartime restrictions were placed on alcohol. Even before the war, the state had limited access to the public by creating ‘licensing laws,’ which allowed individual towns to decide whether to authorize alcohol sales. Before national prohibition in 1920, Exeter, like most New Hampshire towns, held a citizens vote every two years to decide the issue – and these elections were sometimes heated.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 15, 2022.

When, in 1866, Frank Hervey installed a soda fountain in his restaurant on Front Street, he was bucking the trend. Most soda fountains were found in drugstores. The water cure craze that swept the United States in the 1850s involved not only plunging into hot and cold baths but drinking naturally sourced mineral water to improve health. Some of this water tasted very unpleasant, particularly if it was from a sulfur spring, but if the level of carbon dioxide in the water was high, there was a pleasant fizzy quality. Surely this was beneficial to the body.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 1, 2022.

It’s July and every Monday evening members of the Exeter Brass Band can be heard playing their hearts out at the bandstand in the center of town. Now celebrating 175 organized years, the band has been part of Exeter’s history since 1847. While poking through the archives with Garrett Pray of Exeter TV, we came across a handwritten musical score for a piece called The Exeter Grand March. Intrigued, Garrett took copies to bring to the band while the Exeter Historical Society took on the task of researching the piece.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, June 17, 2022.

Charles and Eliza Hervey had a knack for cooking. They arrived in Exeter shortly after their 1836 wedding in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The location of their first restaurant in town is unknown, but by 1845 they were running a saloon and confectionary shop on Front Street next to the Squamscott Hotel. The Herveys are credited with being the first to sell ice cream in town, although this may simply be a local legend. Certainly, Ernest Templeton, writing under the moniker, “Rockingham Rambles,” gave them credit, writing in 1943: “In the Brooks house 100 years ago Mrs. Eliza Hervey established a restaurant and became the first person to sell ice cream in Exeter. At that time a few of the town’s exclusive hostesses had endeavored to make their own ice cream, getting the ice from the Adams icehouse in the rear of what is now the Kennedy house on Center Street, and mixing it with lemon and cream, but compared with the modern product it was a sorry article.”

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, June 3, 2022.

When former president Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in Exeter by helicopter in 1962, he landed at the Phillips Exeter Academy playing fields and not the Exeter airport. Logistically, it made sense to place his arrival on Academy grounds (he was visiting his grandson who was attending the school) rather than the airport on Linden Street. It also made sense because there wasn’t an airport on Linden Street, even though there had been proposals to build one there since the 1940s.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, May 20, 2022.

“Probably for the first time in the history of Exeter a child of Chinese parentage has been born in Exeter.” So wrote a notice in the Exeter News-Letter announcing the birth of Priscilla Ung in 1937. Her family lived on Water Street above their laundry business in a building that no longer exists. Her parents, Hung Yum and Hom Ung, arrived in the United States in the 1920s when it was difficult for Chinese immigrants to gain entry in the country, particularly for women. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, had effectively shut down immigration for Chinese nationals. Men had to prove that they were merchants, or sons of merchants, and not unskilled laborers. Single women were presumed to be sex workers unless they could somehow prove that they were daughters of merchants or wives of merchants. Chinese immigrants were not allowed to become naturalized citizens, having been deemed “unassimilable” to the general population.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 25, 2008

In the postcard collection of the Exeter Historical Society there are a few depicting the Trade and Carnival Week parade in 1914. Behind the happy throngs of people on Water Street, standing on a lot that is today populated by coffee-sipping patrons of Me & Ollie’s bakery, is the laundry shop of Chin Lee, a Chinese immigrant.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April, 29, 2022.

1938 was Exeter’s Tercentenary year – 300 years as an organized town. People lined the streets in February to watch dog sled races and they lined up again in July for the mammoth anniversary parade. In September, mother nature unleashed the great Hurricane of ’38, bringing down most of the trees on Front Street. People would certainly remember 1938 as a great rush of excitement, and as a time before the reality of World War II set in.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April 8, 2022.

What was a town to do when money was tight, but roads needed to be upgraded? In the past (specifically the Colonial and post-colonial period) it was common to raise funds through a lottery. The first lottery in America was organized in Boston in 1745 to pay off military debt. It may seem odd that stoic Puritanical New Englanders would resort to (gasp) gambling to pay the bills, but lotteries became common methods to finance all sorts of things.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, March 25, 2022.

In early March of 1882, George E. Lane, a businessman in Exeter was riding high. A native of Stratham, he’d opened a prosperous book and stationary store on Water Street in Exeter in 1866. Throughout the 1870s, Lane gained overwhelming trust from the public. On the board of the Union Five Cents Savings bank, he was elected as treasurer in 1872, a position he kept until 1881, when he resigned to become the bank president. The voters of Rockingham County elected him as county treasurer in 1875, and in 1881, the NH State legislature elected him “Commissary General of the State, with the rank of Brigadier General on Governor Bell’s Staff.” He was so well trusted that the Exeter News-Letter wrote, “In 1879, at the request of several of his friends he started in a private banking business, and through the universal confidence he enjoyed his deposits have always been large.”

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, March 11, 2022.

In 1907, the trustees of the Robinson Female Seminary found themselves searching for a new French and German language teacher. Harlan Bisbee, the school principal, was pleased with the choice of Miss Fannie Perley and said of her, “Miss Perley has had the advantage of advanced study in modern languages in this country, in Germany and in France. She is, moreover, an experienced teacher, and conducts her classes in French and German in the vernacular.” She was also, at 37 years old, hardly a young whippersnapper. Born in Enfield, NH, in 1870, the first third of her life found her living with her parents and teaching. Her education after attending Enfield public schools is sparce. She earned no college degree and didn’t complete any teacher training at a state normal school. Year after year, the list of Robinson Seminary’s corps of teachers – which listed the academic degrees of teachers – would simply say “Fannie Perley – French & German.” Despite this, she was a dependable teacher at the school for 26 years.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, February 25, 2022.

In researching Exeter’s Black heritage, one of the most consistent frustrations is that we do not often hear the words of the people we’re researching. White families not only leave a paper trail of registered births, baptisms, marriages, land deeds, census records and death (with marked graves), but also letters, diaries, and obituaries. The social status of Black New England families left most of the paper trail blank. Exeter’s 1800 census, for instance, only the first names of all but two Black residents – leaving us to guess whether “Hannah, ditto (negro)” is Hannah Merrill or another woman named Hannah. Sometimes, we must look in awkward places to hear the voices of the past.