Exeter

Historically Speaking

Barbara Rimkunas

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781625843500
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In March 1841, as townspeople flocked to the Exeter Courthouse to view a state-of-the-art diorama of the Conflagration of Moscow, the courthouse itself went up in flames. What was dubbed the Conflagration of the Courthouse is just one of the intriguing events revisited by historian Barbara Rimkunas in this collection. Exeter was also home to a score of eccentric personalities including Dick the fire horse, whose obituary in the town paper ran longer than that of the fire chief, and the mysterious Dr. Windship, a surgeon in the American Revolution who later earned the epithet of thief, fraudster and attempted bigamist. From scandals and Scotsmen to revolutionaries and river rats, Exeter: Historically Speaking reveals the many different threads with which Exeter's vibrant historical tapestry is woven.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Exeter’s Working Waterfront
• The Piscataqua Gundalow
• Exeter’s River Rats
• Was the String Bridge Ever Made of String?
• Streets and Their Names—Court Street and Pine Street
• Leather Tanning in Exeter
• The Exploding Cannons of Gilman Park
• Dick the Fire Horse
• Exeter Nurses Training School
• This Old Outhouse
• Scottish Prisoners in Exeter
• The Mysterious Doctor Windship
• Lewis Cass
• In Search of the Sunbeam
• General Marston’s Missing Statue
• The Innovative Mind of Benjamin Clark Gilman
• Daniel Chester French and the World War I Memorial
• How to Change a Dump into a Park
• Exeter’s Uncommon Dentist—Charles Gerrish
• Doctor Alice Chesley
• The Chestnut Street Jail
• Scandal in Exeter, 1873
• The Brickyard Riot of 1891
• Crime of Passion
• Temperance and the New Englander
• The Anti-Suffragettes
• The Ladies of the Frauenverein
• George Washington Stepped Here
• Robert Todd Lincoln’s Big Flunk
• Presidential Visit, Summer of 1889
• War of 1812
• The End of the Established Church
• A Day at the Beach
• Hampton Beach Disaster, 1898
• Hurricane of 1938
• The Elephant on Water Street
• The Ghosts that Haunt the Historian
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author