by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April 28, 2023.

Eight years ago, a local family donated a quilt to the Exeter Historical Society. Vivid red blocks are interspersed with appliqued scenes from Exeter. The colors are bright and the fabric, although giving off a decidedly colonial vibe, can best be described as 1970s ‘vintage.’ The donors knew very little about the quilt, except that they’d won it in a raffle during the bicentennial celebrations. This left the Historical Society scrambling to find out more about the quilt’s origins.

 by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April 14, 2023.

In the spring of 1949, Exeter’s business district bloomed not with flowers, but with silver parking meters. After quick approval from the town selectmen, “the speed with which the holes were drilled and the hollow pipes positioned, however, caught many residents by surprise,” wrote the Exeter News-Letter on May 15th. The meters were placed along Water Street from Great Bridge to Swasey parkway on the river side and from Clifford to Center Street on the opposite side. They then extended along Center Street and Front Street around the square. “Tempers became ruffled in a few instances where residents and businessmen discovered meters being arbitrarily set up a uniform distance apart without regard to location. Thus, the meter pipes with their glistening silver paint will be found at the front doors of several residences, and in front of the Catholic and Congregational Churches.”

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, March 31, 2023.

Novelist John Knowles wasn’t from Exeter. Born and raised in West Virginia, he came to Phillips Exeter Academy as a member of the class of 1945 and set his most famous work, A Separate Peace, in Exeter. With these credentials, we can consider him an Exeter author.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, March 17, 2023.

Dottie Milbury recently called the Exeter Historical Society to suggest we highlight the Exeter School of Practical Nursing. She has a personal connection – her mother, Frances Buxton, was on the faculty. A highly accomplished professional, Buxton brought her training from Danvers State Hospital School of Nursing, Boston City Hospital School of Nursing and Simmons College, where she received a BS degree. The program was not the same as the Exeter Hospital Nurses Training School that had run from 1909 – 1935. That school prepared students for a career as a registered nurse. Practical nursing had different training with different certifications.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, March 3, 2023.

If you wanted to bake a fruit pie during the waning days of winter in 1800, the first step would be soaking the dried fruit. Fresh fruits and vegetables were unavailable until the summer months. Local fruit in New England – apples, peaches, berries, plums, and grapes – were carefully dried during the summer months. Other methods of food preservation, salting, smoking, and pickling didn’t lend themselves well to fruit. A small amount of fruit was processed into jams and jellies, but sugar was expensive and there was no sterile canning yet. For practical purposes, dried fruit was the only game in town.

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.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, February 3, 2023.

The Exeter News-Letter described Albertus T. Dudley as the town’s “most devoted and loyal townsmen.” Although he wasn’t born in Exeter, he became one of the town’s biggest boosters in the early 20th century. He was one of the founders of the Exeter Historical Society in 1928 and a trustee of the Exeter Hospital. As a trustee of the Exeter Public Library, he was largely responsible for adding the children’s room addition to the old library, a room which now serves as the archives for the historical society.  He arrived in town fresh out of Harvard in 1887 to run the Phillips Exeter Academy gymnasium and teach Latin. Although he’s closely associated with the school, he remained a teacher there for only a few years, spending the bulk of his teaching career at Boston’s Noble and Greenough’s School until 1917. Then, at the age of only 51, he retired to Exeter, moving into his wife’s ancestral home in the Square on Front Street.

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, January 6, 2023.

1922 began icy and cold. “That walking early yesterday morning was dangerous,” reported the Exeter News-Letter, “is attested by the fact that three employees of the Exeter Manufacturing Company had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries received in falls.”

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 23, 2012.

Most Exeter residents have fond memories of shopping in the downtown at Christmastime and the fun that takes place as the season kicks off. Since the 1890s, when local merchants began actively advertising gift items, the town has decorated and encouraged people to join in the festivities.

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.