by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 19, 2021.
Exeter’s first commercial district was the town square on Water and Front Street. The second was on Lincoln Street. The arrival of the Boston & Maine railroad in 1841 brought both freight and visitors to town. The subsequent decades found the industrial center drifting from the river to the railroad. The population in town began to drift westward as well. New neighborhoods developed around the factories as immigrants arrived to fill the workforce.
Daniel Kelleher arrived in town around 1886. Born in Maine to Irish immigrant parents, he worked as a carpenter at the box manufactory. He married Delia Sheehan and together they saved enough to purchase a building on Lincoln Street just opposite the B&M depot. It looked small from the street view, but there was plenty of room inside. The 1900 census lists the couple with seven boarders rooming in the house. Three of the boarders were Italian immigrants working at the shoe shop. Boarders stayed for weeks or months, but not for years. At some point in the decades that followed, the Kellehers seem to have stopped taking boarders and instead ran the place, which they called the “Travelers Home” as more of a hotel. Downstairs featured a restaurant and shop, which the town directories described as selling fruit, but the 1910 census dubbed “novelty shop.” Just who would this type of establishment cater to? The Kellehers took advantage of their location near the railroad and hosted the many travelling salesmen who ventured through town.
The job of salesman, even a travelling salesman, was more respectable in the past. Small merchants in local towns depended on them for ordering goods and bringing new merchandise to an eager public. Large firms needed these on-the-ground salesmen to get the goods to market. Numerous Exeter men worked the sales circuits. One was Rolla Tyler, a Phillips Exeter Academy graduate who lived on Court Street. After graduation, he’d gone into the laundry business and invented a machine called the “Tyler ironer” that he continually tinkered with in his downtown shop. The Exeter News-Letter explained his change of vocation: “confinement in the laundry brought on tubercular conditions, so he discontinued the business, upon the advice of the well-known Dr. Perry, that he might live in the open. He then established a route through the country selling ‘Globe soap’ and small wares. The out-of-door life proved so beneficial that all tubercular symptoms disappeared and he enlarged his business, adding dry goods to his store, which he carried in a two-horse team. People anticipated his monthly calls and found it very convenient to patronize him. Some of his customers corresponded with him to the end of his life.” Though the outdoor life seemed to cure him of any TB, it was still a hard life. Long hours on the road away from home were tough.
Edward Richards worked initially for a grocery company out of Boston. His son took down his father’s stories of life on the road as a “drummer” – the local term for salesman.
“Encumbered by his heavy cases, the drummer alternately shivered in the drafty junction waiting rooms in winter or sweltered on the scorching platforms in summer. Many of Father’s grocer customers were established off the rail lines and then Father and his fellow travelers resorted to the hired rig from the nearest livery stable. Drawn by a dispirited hard-mouthed livery nag of uncertain disposition but definite age, locomotion was highly uncertain. Patiently guiding the animal over the mud and sand that represented the road systems of that day, the drummer had often done a day’s work before he ever made his first call.” Exhaustion was the most prominent feature of the job. As he travelled from town to town, these “knights of the road,” as they called themselves needed a half decent place to spend the night.
“It was the day, too,” continues Richards, “of the country hotel, or inn, that existed chiefly for the accommodation of these commercial travelers and their teams. Few of these hostelries were worthy of the name, with their lumpy beds and fly-ridden dining rooms where heavy foods swimming in grease were the standard fare.”
Despite this harsh description, these establishments were a respite to the tired men of the road. A friendly face and a home-cooked meal from someone like Delia Kelleher was most welcome, particularly since Exeter was a dry town with no saloons to haunt. She and Daniel ran the Travelers Home together until she tragically died quite suddenly on her daughter’s wedding day in 1921. Daniel carried on with the restaurant and store, although it’s not clear whether the Travelers Home still provided lodging. He remarried within a year and became a booster for Lincoln Street’s development, hoping that ‘Depot Square’ would become the type of gathering place the downtown had become. He arranged events for Fourth of July celebrations – bringing concerts and fireworks (often sold at his store) to the west end of town. “It was in Exeter a quiet Fourth except for the evening at Depot Square,” reported the Exeter News-Letter in 1925, “which from 7 to 10 at the initiative of Mr. Daniel J. Kelleher was enlivened by an excellent concert by the Dover City Band, good singing and a fine display of fireworks. The Square was thronged.” Despite his enthusiasm, the idea of ‘Depot Square’ died after Kelleher’s death in 1927. The town took to long parades on the Fourth and seemed to try to make civic events more town wide. The little restaurant was sold and managed by other people. It became Kennison’s Floor Covering in 1958, later K&M Appliance & TV before falling vacant in 1966. It was razed a few years later.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Daniel and Delia Kelleher ran the Travelers Home on Lincoln Street in the early decades of the 20th century. It stood on the present site of St. Vincent De Paul Community Assistance Center.