page_title: Exeter, New Hampshire
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Exeter, New Hampshire / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Gilman Garrison House, Exeter, NH; from a 1906 postcard. It was built in 1709.
context_page_description: Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 14,306 at the 2010 census and an estimated 15,317 in 2018. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood. Home to the Phillips Exeter Academy, a private university-preparatory school, Exeter is situated where the Exeter River feeds the tidal Squamscott River.
  The urban portion of the town, where 9,242 people resided at the 2010 census, is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Exeter census-designated place.
  Exeter is named after the historic city in Devon, England.
context_section_description: The area was once the domain of the Squamscott people, a sub-tribe of the Pennacook nation, which fished at the falls where the Exeter River becomes the tidal Squamscott, the site around which the future town of Exeter would grow. On April 3, 1638, the Reverend John Wheelwright and others purchased the land from Wehanownowit, the sagamore. Wheelwright had been exiled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a Puritan theocracy, for sharing the dissident religious views of his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson. The minister took with him about 175 individuals to found the town he named after Exeter in Devon, England. Local government was linked with Massachusetts until New Hampshire became a separate colony in 1679, but counties weren't introduced until 1769.
  One of the four original townships in the province, Exeter originally included Newmarket, Newfields, Brentwood, Epping and Fremont. On July 4, 1639, 35 freemen of Exeter signed the Exeter Combination, a document written by Reverend Wheelwright to establish their own government. The settlers hunted, planted and fished. Others tended cattle and swine, or made shakes and barrel staves.
  Thomas Wilson established the first grist mill on the eastern side of the island in the lower falls. This mill was established within the first season of settling in Exeter, and his son Humphrey assumed control of the mill in 1643, when Thomas died.
  Some early Exeter settlers came from Hingham, Massachusetts, including the Gilman, Folsom and Leavitt families. In 1647, Edward Gilman, Jr. established the first sawmill, and by 1651 Gilman had his own 50-ton sloop with which to conduct his burgeoning business in lumber, staves and masts. Although he was lost at sea in 1653 while traveling to England to purchase equipment for his mills, his family later became prominent as lumbermen, shipbuilders, merchants and statesmen.
  The Gilman Garrison House, a National Historic Landmark, and the American Independence Museum were both former homes of the Gilman family. The Gilman family also donated the land on which Phillips Exeter Academy stands, including the Academy's original Yard, the oldest part of campus. The Gilmans of Exeter also furnished America with one of its founding fathers, Nicholas Gilman, and the state of New Hampshire with treasurers, a governor, representatives to the General Assembly and judges to the General Court.
  The Gilman family began trading as far as the West Indies with ships they owned out of Portsmouth. It was a high-stakes business. In an 1803 voyage, for instance, the 180-ton clipper Oliver Peabody, owned by Gov. John Taylor Gilman, Oliver Peabody, Col. Gilman Leavitt and others, was boarded by brigs belonging to the Royal Navy under command of Admiral Horatio Nelson. Enforcing a blockade against the French, Nelson offered ship Captain Stephen Gilman of Exeter a glass of wine and paid him for his cargo in Spanish dollars. The trip demonstrates how far afield the ambitious merchants of Exeter reached in their trading forays.
  Exeter suffered its last Indian raid in August 1723, and by 1725 the tribes had left the area. In 1774 the rebellious Provincial Congress began to meet in the Exeter Town House after colonial Governor John Wentworth banned it from the colonial capitol at Portsmouth. In July 1775, the Provincial Congress had the provincial records seized from royal officials in Portsmouth and brought to Exeter as well. And so Exeter became New Hampshire's capital, an honor it held for 14 years.
  Exeter had a significant black community at this time. In 1790, at the first census, Exeter had a community of 81 free blacks (in 14 households, 11 of which they owned), and two enslaved blacks. 
  This was the highest percentage of blacks in the state at 4.7%. Many blacks, such as Jude Hall (namesake of Jude's Pond on Drinkwater Road), earned their freedom fighting in the Revolutionary War, and many settled near the west bank of the Squamscott River after the war. Jude Hall is buried in the Winter Street cemetery. Reverend Thomas Paul of the African Meeting House in Boston was born in Exete
caption: Gilman Garrison House in 1906
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26"}