Exeter historical timeline

Exeter is one of New Hampshire’s four original towns and was briefly the centre of its government.

Founding

Settled in 1638 by the Reverend John Wheelwright and followers, who had been banished from Massachusetts in the antinomian controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson. They bought land from the Squamscott people and built at the falls. The town joined Massachusetts in 1643 and returned to New Hampshire in 1679.

Mills and shipping

The falls powered saw and grist mills, and the tidal river carried timber, masts for the Royal Navy and later manufactured goods. Shipbuilding was significant into the nineteenth century.

The revolutionary capital

Portsmouth, the colonial capital, was exposed to the Royal Navy and loyal to the crown, so from 1774 the provincial congress met inland at Exeter, and the town served as New Hampshire’s seat of government for the duration of the war. On 5 January 1776 the congress adopted a constitution — the first written by any of the colonies, and adopted six months before the Declaration of Independence. The state treasury was kept in the Ladd-Gilman House.

Phillips Exeter Academy

Founded in 1781 by John Phillips, and grown into one of the leading secondary schools in the United States, with an endowment that makes it one of the wealthiest.

Anne Hutchinson’s circle

The town was founded by religious exiles. Wheelwright was Hutchinson’s brother-in-law and was banished with her supporters for preaching a doctrine of grace that the Massachusetts authorities judged heretical and, more to the point, subversive of clerical authority. Exeter was therefore settled by people specifically expelled for dissent, which is a New England origin story more common than the received version allows.

Since

Textile and shoe manufacturing, then decline, then a comfortable commuter and school town.