by Barbara Rimkunas
This “Historically Speaking” column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, December 4, 2020.
A recent inquiry arrived, via social media, with a photograph of a large white house. “Any info out there about this house?” Generally, it’s hard to find information about a large white house in Exeter – so many houses in town fit that description. Numerous people replied that they remember the house and had, perhaps, known someone who lived there. The picture was a post card with the label “The New Lincoln House, Exeter, NH.” Sounds like a project for the Exeter Historical Society!
Sharon Lang-Sweetser, who owned the postcard, kindly gave us permission to use the image and do a bit of digging. We quickly determined the building’s address at 75 Main Street. She added that she’d heard it was maybe a boarding house (or fraternity house) for Phillips Exeter Academy students. Academy students frequently had to scrounge around for housing. At the time the school opened, there were no dormitories available to out of town students. When Robert Lincoln attended in 1859-60, there was only one dorm available – Abbott Hall. He chose to live in Mrs. Clark’s boarding house on Chestnut St. So, maybe 75 Main Street was a boarding house for Academy students. Luckily for us, we have a card index of all the known houses in Exeter that were approved for boarding Academy students. Back in 2006, Constance Brown was working on a project to document the lives of both the students who boarded and the families that hosted them. She was hoping to put it into book form – perhaps as a companion to her previous book, In a Man’s World: Faculty Wives and Daughters at Phillips Exeter Academy (well worth a read, if you can find it). It turned out that there were hundreds of homes that were used to board students over the years. We made a public plea for people to tell us the stories, but it may have been too late. The boarding system ended in the 1930s. Few responses came in. However, we still have the card file. A quick check revealed that 75 Main Street was not used as a boarding house for Academy students.
Next, we checked the county registry of deeds to find out if the assessor’s date of 1900 is roughly accurate. Maps of the town did not show a building on that location until the map of 1893. This agreed with the sale of the property, with no buildings mentioned, on April 1, 1890, to James W. Johnston. Johnson advertised his new business in the 1891 Exeter town directory. “The Quincy, J.W. Johnston, Proprietor. Situated one minute’s walk from the Depot. Newly furnished with all modern improvements. The traveling public are cordially invited to call and see us. Rates, $2.00 per day, fair reduction by the week. Connected with the House is a first-class Livery Stable, also a sale stable of first-class Canada horses.” The ad matches the 1893 map, on which “Quincy House” is located on Main Street just opposite Lincoln Street. There was another ‘Quincy House’ located in Boston. It was actually the more famous Quincy House and most likely Johnston borrowed the name. In any event, Johnston didn’t stay in Exeter long. We were unable to find much information about him. He sold the Quincy House in 1898 to Horace Langley of Epping and seems to have taken his first-class Canada horses elsewhere.
At this point, the name of the establishment was changed to the “Lincoln House” most likely due to its proximity to Lincoln Street and in honor of Abraham Lincoln. It was managed by John Rundlett, listed in the 1900 census as “hotel keeper.” But it seems to have been more of a boarding house than a traditional hotel. The census lists five boarders, single men, mostly shoe workers, as well as Rundlett’s in-laws, living at the Lincoln when the census taker arrived. The town already had two well-equipped hotels in town: the Squamscott and the American. Both were located in the downtown. The Lincoln, although closer to the rail depot, was not quite as convenient to the business center. Rundlett ran the Lincoln for about five years.
Edward Towle was living on Court Street running a livery stable at the turn of the century. He would become locally famous as a character in Henry Shute’s Real Diary of a Real Boy series of books published in the early 1900s. In 1903, he purchased the Lincoln House. Towle’s father, Levi, had been a hotel man, managing first the Granite House on Center Street and later, much longer, the American House, which stood on Water Street where the public parking lot is today. It was during Towle’s ownership and management of the Lincoln House that it moved its advertising from the ‘hotels’ section of the directory to the ‘boarding house’ listings. It was probably during this time-period that the postcard was produced. Sharon says the postmark indicates that it was mailed in 1930, but it’s not unusual for post cards to be mailed long after they are first printed. Towle owned the structure the longest, until 1925, when it was sold to Philibert Bertrand, a carpenter and contractor. In 1935, the occupants of the house are listed as Bertrand, Dennis and Nelly Landry and Albert and Olive Hoyt, so it appears Bertrand rented out rooms (or possibly converted it to apartments – he was a carpenter, after all).
Since Bertrand’s ownership, it has no longer been known as “the Lincoln House.” Today it is still an apartment house. The followers on Facebook remember it fondly, even if they did correctly recall that it was the site of a murder in 2005. The Historical Society doesn’t judge. It’s just another fact. An incident, if you will, in the long 130-year history of a building once known as “the Lincoln House.”
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Many thanks to Sharon Lang-Sweetser, Jessica Caverly and all the folks who commented on Facebook. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Postcard photo of Exeter’s Lincoln House, a hotel, boarding house and apartment building on Main Street. Image courtesy of Sharon Lang-Sweetser