lesson 1: fly to a country you do not dare to call your own.
taste the words that flow off the tongues of your relatives,
and when you spit them out, a jam of syllables and accents,
watch for the lemon-sour purse of their lips.
can you feel your misshapen gratitude when your grandmother hands you a gift,
a souvenir? remind yourself that your time here is temporary.

lesson 2: tolerate a thousand stilted video call conversations
with your grandmother, realize you are looking for an escape
between every sentence, hiss when your mother grips you tighter.
you will whisper how do you say this in chinese?
and the phone will say connectivity issues
and while she answers your grandmother’s face will be frozen in a smile.

lesson 3: hear the arguments flare when they think you’re asleep
and let them fester in your memory when you lie awake.
remember, cancer is equally devastating in all languages.
remember, hospital bills are expensive in every country.
remember, your grandmother has curly hair, soft between your fingertips.
remember, you must pronounce her name correctly when you start praying.

lesson 4: do not learn, and do not recognize the tears that flow
when your grandmother dies the way your stiff syllables always did–
slow, painful, withering away into ash and air.
bite down on your mutinous tongue, let the blood rise sharp and hot in your mouth,
feel a fraction of the pain she must have,
count how many times you told her i love you
and know that no matter how much you practice saying it now
it can no longer be enough.

lesson 5: listen to the things your mother whispers on her knees,
the musk of incense seeping into the floorboards.
do you recognize what rots in the space between her sentences,
the crevices of her cries, the way every word trembles with regret?
speak in those lagging video calls with a grandfather
you are determined to call your own, let the words fall flat
 and pick up their remnants, because at least you are trying,
and maybe this time it is enough to say
 我爱你.
i love you.
know that this is worth all the misshapen words in the world.

Kaylee Chen ’23 received the American Voices Medal, one of the highest writing honors awarded in the 2022 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition, for this poem.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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'Rules of the Road'

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'Xocolata Calenta'

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The Lord God Bird

Diversity, equity and inclusion have risen to the forefront of educational thought in recent years. Exeter hired its first director of equity and inclusion in 2018 and accelerated its efforts in DEI after the events of the summer of 2020. This push for equity helped lead Exeter to institute new curricular programs, to devote more administrative attention to DEI topics, and to announce need-blind admissions this past fall, among other initiatives.

I recently had the pleasure of discussing this movement for equity with John Palfrey ’90, president of the MacArthur Foundation and former principal of our sister school to the south. During his time at Andover, he helped implement need-blind admissions, and he has continued to support equitable policies at the MacArthur Foundation by leveraging “creative people and institutions” and supporting socially responsible investment. He talks about equity in education as making efforts to safeguard equitable educational outcomes and making sure everyone feels a sense of belonging and can participate fully in school life.

Given this conception of equity, I think it’s possible to sort discussions about equity and its promotion into two categories: conversations of policy implementation and conversations about maintaining equity in daily interactions. The former has to do with institutional programs and the latter has to do with the day-to-day experiences of marginalized groups, such as in the classroom. And while conversations about equity in education typically and rightfully often focus on inequities in the public education system, independent boarding schools such as Exeter might be able to support equity in their own important and unique ways.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the Deed of Gift established Exeter as a school to educate “youth from every quarter,” a straightforward and seemingly simple statement for a diverse student body. As Palfrey notes, the charge highlights the power education has “to bring people together across all kinds of difference in ways that almost nothing else can.” I think that like the U.S. Constitution, the way we interpret those words — and that document as a whole — has evolved over the past 240 years, but the purpose and the message remain much the same. In the 1850s, a commitment to “youth from every quarter” meant building Exeter’s first dorm to support students who couldn’t pay for room and board in town. In the 1950s, it meant expanding financial aid outreach by bringing in newspaper boys from the Midwest. In the 1970s, it meant making sure Exeter was working well for promising young women. Today, it means drawing attention to and supporting students of color and students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.

The notion that Exeter should be a diverse, national school has its roots in a pro-democracy project. That hope, in 1781, was to help educate the youth of the new nation as a means of strengthening it. This project continues: The kind of intermixing possible at a national school like Exeter, Palfrey says, “could help bridge some of the stark divides that we suffer from as a democracy.” However, given the inequity still present in our society, it’s not easy to figure out exactly what means would best further Exeter’s goals. As Palfrey sees it, persisting inequity seems to indicate that “very few of these programs have worked especially well.” This is not to downplay the significant progress made in the past few decades; we merely point out that institutional policy- making is often not as straightforward as one may hope. Further experimentation and exploration are necessary. This is why moves such as instituting need-blind admissions are crucial in ensuring Exeter can make good on its unique position in higher education.

The conversations about managing day-to-day interactions within the Academy prove little easier. While it is straightforward to point out the benefits of treating people equitably, humans are notoriously fickle beings and myriad factors may impede our behaving equitably. So, what can we do to make sure our daily interactions support an equitable environment, or at least do not perpetuate inequity? How can we make sure the Harkness table works for everybody?

Palfrey thinks that the project starts before anybody walks into a classroom. It entails “approaching the Harkness table with an inclusive mindset and with attention to the students’ various backgrounds and needs.” He says it involves thinking carefully about the questions one poses before class and may require having conversations with students after class. And while Exeter boasts a phenomenal faculty, it can be difficult for even the most skilled instructors to support their students every time they need it and with the right type of support. Addressing errors and learning to fine-tune methods will help ensure support is always there for a struggling student.

However, there is a robust and growing literature at the intersection of philosophy and psychology that argues on normative and pragmatic grounds that we should address such mistakes without calling into question the character of the person who made the error. People are imperfect, and studies show that to denigrate someone for making an honest mistake tends to alienate peers and undermine the good intent on which they were trying to act. Palfrey and I agree that this method of constructive, amicable feedback can be difficult given the sensitivity of the topics involved, but it seems important to maintain the type of open, honest conversation that allows discussion-based learning to thrive in classrooms, dorms, faculty and trustee meetings — indeed, at all levels of the institution.

Exeter has laid significant foundations for further progress in the push for equity. The decision this fall to go need-blind, the creation of a DEI Task Force and the adoption of a DEI vision statement address the challenges of accessibility, and address the hard intellectual work done in conversations about institution-level policy implementation. But the hardest work may be yet to come. It is tricky to balance discretion and the openness that gives Exeter’s distinct pedagogy its strength and helps bind the community together. Figuring out what to do when things go awry is likewise a delicate task. Palfrey and I believe that, while it may be challenging for Exeter’s leadership to guide the community through these difficult topics, their directives in making the Academy a more equitable institution have the potential to invigorate and further strengthen Exeter as a place of learning.

Cameron Frary ’20 is currently a student at Bates College. While at Exeter, he penned columns for The Exonian with a focus on the Academy’s history. He is also the 2020 recipient of the Gordon Editorial Award, given annually to an Exeter student who displays through editorial journalism a passionate dedication to personal freedom, particularly freedom of conscience and its expression.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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A shared experience

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Exeter Today

A conversation with Exeter's director of equity and inclusion

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'An invitation for further conversation'

It’s hard for me to believe that I am already wrapping up my fourth year at Exeter. I’m grateful to take this moment to reflect upon some of the ways Exeter has grown to become a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), Dean of Faculty (DOF) and Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) teams have evolved and expanded over the past few years. The additions of an Asian student coordinator and an LGBTQA+ student coordinator in OMA, an assistant director in the OEI and an assistant dean in DOF have increased the bandwidth of our offices and the opportunities for broad engagement with the community. An exciting slate of programming is now offered, including a Lunar New Year celebration, Black History Monthgala, Dia de Los Muertos, a webinar series and the OMA Leadership Summit.

We’ve also created ample opportunities for students to learn about diversity, equity and inclusion within the curriculum. The Core Values Project: Conversations about Anti-oppression, Community Values and Justice is a joint Office of Equity and Inclusion and Dean of Students project that builds on the antiracist mini courses developed last year. Discussion group facilitators work in pairs to pitch project ideas, and their peers select a discussion group that interests them. Some of this year’s Core Values Projects include Balikbayan: The Return Home, Exonians in the Philippines Study Away Proposal; An Artistic Exploration of Queerness: Showcasing Queer Identity Through Art and Performance; and Windows and Mirrors: Multimedia Representation of Anti-oppression, Community Values and Justice at Exeter.

New classes were also added to the Courses of Instruction, including MAT40J:Mathematics of Social Justice, INT535: Asian American History and Literature and EXI545: The Intersection of Science, Health and Race in America.

I am confident that our students are graduating with the critical-thinking skills they will need to be successful in an increasingly global and interconnected world.

The Office of Institutional Advancement has worked with members of the General Alumni Association Board of Directors to bring a series of affinity-based networking opportunities called Identity + Affinity to the alumni community. In late February, a Black Alumni Affinity Programming Committee produced a fantastic program, “For Us, By Us: The History of 164 Years of Black Excellence at Exeter,” in which Alexanderia Baker Haidara ’99 presented her historical research. Big thanks to GAA director Una Basak ’90 and the members of the planning committee, including Haidara, Ciatta Baysah ’97, Julian Bobb ’90, Lori Lincoln ’86, Lars Ojukwu ’03, Mike Oneal ’74 and Russell Washington ’89. The Identity + Affinity Series continues with programming for Asian American/Pacific Islander, LGBTQA+ and Hispanic/Latinx affinities.

I’ll be joining IA “on the road” this year to bring Core Values Project discussions to alums and parents all around the country. You will have the opportunity to experience the same types of conversations we are having here on campus.

Looking ahead, we will host the Exeter Diversity Institute, or EDI, this summer, with educators from all over the country coming to campus to discuss how to navigate identity and promote equity in school communities and at the Harkness table. In August, we’ll have an EDI for Academy employees, and we’ll welcome a talented and diverse cohort of new colleagues to PEA.

September will kick off the second year of the Equitable Exeter Experience, a pre-orientation program for students of color, students with high financial need, students who are the first in their families to go to college and students who are members of the LGBTQA+ community.

One of my favorite things about Exeter is that we are never comfortable with staying the same. We are always looking for ways to grow, progress and improve. I’m proud of this community and I can’t wait to see what the future brings for us.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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Anti-racist minicourses energize the community

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'An invitation for further conversation'

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A shared experience

Mock Trial Teams Finish 1-2-3 at State Championships

Exonian argumentative (and theatrical) talent ran deep during the New Hampshire Mock Trial Championships in February, with Big Red teams capturing the top three spots. John Lee ’22, Arhon Strauss ’23, Angela Zhang ’23, Teja Vankireddy ’22, Sav Bartkovich ’23, Michael Hsieh ’23 and Charles Potjer ’24 defeated their Exeter teammates Colin Jung ’24, Selim Kim ’24, Anderson Lynch ’23, Michael Nardone ’24, Liam Brown ’23, Angelina Gong ’25, David Goodall ’24, Alysha Lai ’23 and Amara Nwuneli ’25 by only four points in the final round, earning the chance to compete in the National High School Mock Trial Championship that will be held virtually in May.

Gold Medal in Academic Writing

Parmis Mokhtari-Dizaji ’24 won the gold medal in the fall 2021 cycle of the annual Academic Writing Contest held by the Harvard International Review, a quarterly magazine focusing on international affairs and featuring articles and commentary by leading scholars and policymakers worldwide. In addition to writing her essay, which explored the role of COVID-19 in isolating supply chain networks and accelerating deglobalization, Mokhtari-Dizaji gave a 15-minute presentation and oral defense of her argument before a board of the magazine’s judges.

Exonians Bound for Carnegie Hall

Two Exeter musicians have been selected to join the Carnegie Hall National Youth Orchestra, a monthlong summer program of intensive musical training and performance. Violinist Jane Park ’24 and bassoonist Adam Tang ’25 will join the prestigious youth ensemble starting in late July for a week in residence at Purchase College, State University of New York, then head to Miami to work side by side with the New World Symphony Orchestra and perform at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center. The ensemble will then return to New York City for a week of training, culminating with a performance in Carnegie Hall’s famed Stern Auditorium.

Students, Faculty and Alums Collaborate on High-Level Research Study

Current Exeter student Ella Kim ’23 and recent grad Catherine Griffin ’19 are among the co-authors of a new study published in the journal G3:Genes|Genomes|Genetics this spring. Titled “Transgenic Drosophila Lines for LexA-dependent Gene and Growth Regulation,” the study highlights work that led to the CRISPR-based course taught in spring 2021 by Science Instructors Anne Rankin ’92 and Townley Chisholm, as well as a new curriculum developed by Exeter Summer teacher Liz Morse based on experimental genetics. Rankin, Chisholm and Morse are also among the study’s co-authors, along with Dr. Seung Kim ’81 of the Stanford University School of Medicine and students and instructors from the Lawrenceville School, Oxford University and Stanford.

National Ocean Sciences Bowl Debut

After officially launching during the winter term, Exeter’s new Ocean Awareness and Action Club (O2AC) got off to a running start thanks to a last-minute entry into the Nor’easter Bowl, a regional ocean science academic competition that is part of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB). “We completely crushed it,” says club co-head Tanya Das ’22, who competed on the winning team alongside co-head Ariana Thornton ’24, Ayman Naseer ’24, Alexander Luna ’24 and Helena Kline ’24. They will now represent Exeter for the first time ever in the NOSB finals, held virtually on May 6-15, 2022. Meanwhile, Das and her fellow O2AC members are looking to continue educating themselves as well as recruit new members and potentially find alumni speakers to bolster the club’s focus on raising awareness about — and taking action to combat — marine pollution. “Our current project is the ocean link project, where we’re creating a website [that shows] different people at Exeter and their connection to the ocean,” she says. “Right now the ocean seems kind of far away, kind of separate, and we want to make it seem closer and show how we’re all connected to it.”

Math Club Hosts International Middle School Competition

The blizzard conditions on January 30 didn’t prevent 35 Exeter students —all members of the Math Club — from hosting a math competition attended by nearly 800 middle school students from around the world. Teams of up to four students faced off in the live online competition, which included an individual round, team round and a high-stakes “guts round” of 24 questions answered in only 75 minutes. Kevin Cong ’22, Neil Chowdhury ’22, Jacob David ’22, Lucy Xiao ’22, Eric Yang ’22, Max Xu ’23, Alan Bu ’24 and other Math Club leaders devoted long hours to writing and editing problems of varying difficulty, producing the competition, grading the responses and conducting statistical analysis. They also hosted two live panels during the competition, covering “Math Life at Exeter” and women and nonbinary-identifying people in the mathematical professions.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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Exonians capture 20 medals in Scholastic competition

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Exeter senior wins $90,000 in science competition

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Kendrah Su '22 gains two golds, one silver in Scholastic Awards

Venimus victum!

We come to conquer! That’s the rallying call of Societas Kirtlandi, or the Kirtland Society, a tightknit group on campus who relish all things ancient. “We are a family, united by a common love for the Classics and by a certain divine madness!” says Nick Unger ’90, instructor in Classical Languages and the club’s faculty adviser since 2004. “Where else in the world can you fight with (foam) swords, ride a chariot and speak a dead language?”

While some say the club’s “origin is shrouded in the mists of time,” we asked former club co-head and unofficial historian Charlie Preston ’21 to pull back the curtain and tell us more.

When was the club founded?

The club was founded by Lawrence “Larry” Herrmann ’53, Preston says, and established by vote of the faculty in September 1952. “It will not purely be a scholarly group discussing rules of syntax,” said Herrmann at the time. “It will be more organized and less social than the regional clubs.” A month later, 17 Latin 3 and 4 students attended the first Kirtland Society meeting, which featured a lecture on the “Ironies of Virgil,” delivered by Instructor in Latin Howard S. Stuckey.

Coach Dana Barbin has spent his life in a hockey rink. Sometimes even when he was not supposed to. The Exeter native — who played at Exeter High School before going on to enjoy an outstanding career at the University of New Hampshire — would occasionally sneak into one of the Academy rinks for an extra skate and workout. For the past 35 years, he’s just walked in the front door.  

Barbin officially stepped onto campus in 1987 and immediately found a spot behind the boys hockey bench. On Feb. 26, he celebrated his 1,000th game as a coach with a 3-2 victory over — who else — Andover during winter E/A.   

Barbin spent his first five seasons as an assistant under coach Bill Dennehy before he assumed the head coaching role in 1992. Barbin served as the head coach for the next 29 years before returning to his role as an assistant under current head coach — and his former player — Tim Mitropoulos ’10 in 2021.  

Barbin has amassed quite the laundry list of accomplishments while building Exeter hockey into one of the premier prep programs in the country. He led Big Red to a 30-3-0 record and a Division I New England title in 1999, and has seen hundreds of former student-athletes continue their careers at the NCAA Division I, II and III levels and 11 former players drafted into the NHL. Barbin, who also played and coached internationally in Denmark in the 1980s, was inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey in 2011. Over the course of his head coaching career, Barbin put together a staggering 582-235-53 record.  

Congratulations, Coach! 

Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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Big Red athletes make their mark

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Matt Callahan '09 to lead Big Red boys lacrosse

When I first learned about the Perrin Fellowship, which gives the recipient a grant for independent postgraduate study, I thought of my grandparents. If they hadn’t left their respective homelands for new educational opportunities, I wouldn’t be here. Because of them, my family is a mixture of different cultures, nationalities and ethnicities. My grandparents were the ones who assured me it was OK to leave home at 14 to attend Phillips Exeter Academy. They have taught me to unabashedly pursue the world, to find love in new languages and to empathize with cultures I didn’t understand.

THE PLANNING PROCESS

When I accepted the Perrin Fellowship, in April 2021, I had just received my first COVID vaccine shot. The overwhelming feeling at the time was positive. Borders would open by the summer. Graduation was in-person and maskless. Unfortunately, that perspective was exceedingly optimistic.

When I began to make travel plans in late July and early August, I contacted dozens of university professors from countries across the globe with specializations in anthropology, history, political science and archaeology. I desired to secure a position as a research assistant or an intern, so that I would have a knowledgeable mentor and vast resources to help guide my exploration. As an 18-year-old solo female traveler, I thought staying on a university campus for a few months, rather than traditional globetrotting, would be the safest bet for both COVID and personal security. And even though it would be more difficult, I wanted to explore cultures that are harder to access, like those in Africa and Polynesia.

I received a surprising number of welcoming and enthusiastic responses from universities in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia. But as the Delta variant shocked the world, those enthusiastic yeses turned into apologetic noes. By mid-August, a cycle kept repeating itself: A professor would say yes, I would meet with them over Zoom and begin setting plans, then receive the fateful email. At one point, I received 12 refusals in one week. And as someone who had just escaped the unprecedentedly competitive college admission cycle unscathed, that level of rejection felt soul crushing.

But there was one Nigerian university that remained consistently supportive in having me as a visiting researcher. Set in the heart of the ancient Oyo Empire, the university had a botanical garden, a zoo, a dam and multiple security checkpoints. I would be studying under a professor in both Nigerian history and development studies, and I was incredibly excited. Nigeria was high on my list to visit because of the impact of neocolonialism.

I also knew a little bit about the Oyo Empire from one of my Exeter English projects. It was a vast and complex empire before colonization, and aspects of the culture were still prominent across West Africa today. I would also be the first in my family to step back on the African continent. So, in late August, I agreed to visit for two months starting in October.

Planning for a two-month stay in a developing country was a big undertaking. This included multiple vaccinations, personal security considerations and proper documentation. At one point, I had to fly down to the Nigerian Consulate in Washington, D.C., to fight for my visa. Due to COVID, Nigeria was accepting only essential travel, and on a case-by-case basis. I would not take no for an answer, and I told them I would not leave the building without a visa. Finally, after months of planning and two rescheduled flights, I boarded a plane for Lagos in mid-October.

Hunter Stetz squats beside a deep mud puddle in the woods, a small trowel in his hand. He sinks the trowel into the fallen leaves surrounding the hole. The tool halts with a clink.

“This might have been a chimney base,” he says.

He points to other spots around the perimeter of the soggy depression near a trailhead in the Academy Woodlands. “I think this was a cellar hole.”

A story is unfolding at the edge of the woods, a story originally told 240 years ago and now coming to light. Depending on where the tale leads, it could connect the Academy to one of the American Revolution’s most tragic heroes and offer its students the chance to study early Black American history in their own backyard. That’s because the cellar hole Stetz believes he has found might have belonged to Jude Hall.

Hall was an enslaved man who fought on the colonists’ side in exchange for his freedom. He settled in Exeter in 1783 after the war, and legend has long held that he lived with his family near a small pond next to what became Drinkwater Road. The pond today is even named Jude’s Pond.

But no house remains, and the exact location of the homestead has never been determined.

Stetz, a Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, native and a field technician for a local archaeological consultant, became intrigued with Hall’s story — and the murkiness about the home’s location — a year ago. That curiosity led him to his discovery last fall, and he notified Warren Biggins, the Academy’s manager of sustainability and natural resources. “For me, the Academy Woodlands have always seemed an ideal version of a living laboratory, and one that offers our students incredible opportunities for experiential learning across a wide variety of academic disciplines,” Biggins says. “I’m extremely excited for the potential projects and collaborations that may result from this discovery.”

Adds History Instructor Troy Samuels, a trained archaeologist: “For our curriculum, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say this offers truly transformative opportunities to expand who and what Exeter history courses discuss. … This offers a new thread for students to latch on to. In Jude Hall’s story, we are a different version of what it means to be American, to be a New Hampshirite, to be from Exeter.”

Who was Jude Hall?

Hall was born in the late 1740s. Enslaved first to the Philemon Blake family of Kensington, Hall was sold to an Exeter resident named Nathaniel Healy shortly before the start of the Revolutionary War. Slavery was legal if uncommon in the region; Exeter Historical Society records show that 38 enslaved people were among the town’s 1,741 inhabitants in 1775.

How Hall came to enlist and fight for the colonists’ cause is not entirely clear. In his book Patriots of Color, George Quintal Jr. writes, “Soon after being sold to Healy, Hall ran away from his new master. When the war broke out, he enlisted and fought on the Colonial side.” Other reports theorize that Hall may have been Healy’s proxy, fighting in his enslaver’s place in exchange for his freedom.

According to a National Park Service account, Hall enlisted on May 10, 1775 — just weeks after “the shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord. A month into his service, Hall became one of more than a hundred Black and Native American soldiers to fight in the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he narrowly missed being struck by a British cannonball. His legend, told in The History of Kensington, NH, 1663 to 1945, is that of an outstanding soldier and a mighty figure who “could lift a barrel of cider and drink from the [tap].”

in 1776 and 1779 and served “until the peace and then was discharged.” Records show he signed for military pay several times over the eight years, and he fought in some of the most famous battles of the war, including Ticonderoga and Saratoga. In the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, Hall is said to have earned his nickname “Old Rock” while serving under George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Hall returned to Exeter in 1783 — the year PEA opened its doors to its inaugural class. Now a free man, he married Rhoda Paul, a member of one of New Hampshire’s prom-inent free Black families, and by all accounts they settled beside a small pond near the Exeter-Kensington town line to farm and raise a large family.

Were his story to end there, Jude Hall would likely be a mostly forgotten figure of early America. But his tale turns tragic. Three of the Halls’ four sons — born free — were abducted and sold into bondage. From the National Park Service, citing an 1833 affidavit by the Halls’ son-in-law Robert Roberts: In 1807, their son Aaron was kidnapped in Rhode Island, “sent to sea, and has not been heard of since.” Six years later, David Wedgewood of Exeter claimed their 18-year-old son James Hall owed Wedgewood four dollars. Wedgewood had James “tied and carried to Newburyport jail, and the next morning … put on board a vessel bound for New Orleans, and sold as a slave.” At an unknown date the Halls’ son William “went to sea. … After arriving in the West Indies, [William] was sold there as a slave.”

William Hall would ultimately escape after 10 years and flee to England. Aaron and James most likely died as captives.

Jude Hall would never see or hear from his three oldest sons again. He died on Aug. 22, 1827, and was buried in Exeter. Rhoda Hall moved to Maine after his death, leaving behind the house next to the pond.

Hiding in plain sight

Today, that pond — formally catalogued by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names as “Judes Pond” — is part of the 836-acre Academy Woodlands. Over decades, the Academy acquired land straddling the Exeter River that comprises the woodlands. Most of the tract that includes the pond was received as a gift to the school in 1910. The pond sits along Drinkwater Road near an entrance to a trail network that crisscrosses the woods. The “one-story, two-room house” Hall reported owning while applying for the military pension is gone, however. Whether it was demolished, fell down or burned to the ground, the house is lost to history.

That’s where Stetz comes in. He took an active interest in finding the location of the homestead after his firm, Independent Archaeological Consulting, in Dover, New Hampshire, was unable to determine its location while working on a project at the Blake Family farm in Kensington. “I basically took it as a challenge,” Stetz says.

Stetz combed the area around the pond on foot looking for any evidence of human use on the landscape. He made use of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) maps of the region that reveal what the ground surface looks like underneath vegetation. “Stone walls are a great example of things that are evident on LiDAR,” he says. “I looked for irregular depressions and checked out a few I saw on the map, but the only location that was promising just happened to be the first depression I encountered.”

He zeroed in on a sunken spot in the land near Drinkwater Road and the pond. What set apart this location from other candidates around the pond, Stetz says, is the presence of large stones surrounding the depression. “There are a few stones visible above all the dead leaves and pine needles that accumulate and decompose every year, but I stuck a thin metal rod in the ground in various places and found that there were more stones beneath the ground surface that made a rectangular shape and that there were hardly any stones within or outside of the rectangle.” Stetz estimates the rectangle to be approximately 15 feet by 18 feet.

Barbara Rimkunas, curator of the Exeter Historical Society, said there are no known records showing Hall owned a house or land in Exeter. An 1802 map of Exeter shows an unnamed road that was to become Drinkwater Road, with a few homes identified along its path. None belongs to Hall. But an 1822 murder trial offers clues as to the location of his house. Hall was called as a witness in the trial of John Blaisdell, accused of the fatal assault of John Wadleigh. His testimony, published in pamphlet form, reveals where the Hall home was in relation to some noted landmarks:

“Between 8 and 9 on the evening of [February] 18th, somebody knocked at my door. My house is near the Exeter line and about a mile and a quarter from Folsom’s. Told my children to open the door. Blaisdell came in and appeared frightened, and asked where the Captain was, (meaning me). He said, he wanted me to help lead Wadleigh in, that he was drunk and had been fighting with a sleigh. … Wadleigh’s house is between the Cove bridge and mine, about 30 rods from mine. I heard heavy groans, found the deceased, lying on his side. I lifted Wadleigh up and led him home — he appeared to shudder with cold.

I got a fire which he seemed to need. … Blaisdell went away and wanted me to go home with him — I said don’t go, and Blaisdell said he must go to take care of his cattle. Wadleigh died about three quarters of an hour before day — I was with him at that time. Blaisdell’s house is in Kensington about a half a mile from my house.”

The 1802 map locates “Cove Bridge” along the road and “Folsom’s Tavern” at the corner of what today is Drinkwater and Hampton roads. Hall testified that “my house is near the Exeter line and about a mile and a quarter from Folsom’s.” The pond is in fact 1.2 miles from the Drinkwater-Hampton junction and approximately two-tenths of a mile from the Exeter-Kensington town line. The trial testimony may be the best evidence and only documentation that Hall did in fact live at this location.

Is this the place?

Today the site offers no obvious clues — and little else of note to the amateur observer. White pines tower over-head, and smaller trees partially obscure the site from the trail. One could appreciate how a hundred years’ worth of visitors to the woods passed by without noticing. Determining if Stetz’s discovery has historic value ultimately will require some digging. “I think the first step is to do some minimally invasive investigation of the area to get a sense of what we have in terms of remains,” says Samuels, the Exeter history teacher. “Once we have a general picture, I think the next steps would be excavation, working, of course, with local and regional interested groups as well as our students to tease out as much detail about the archaeological remains as possible.”

The discovery of bricks, ceramic shards, glass and nails all could offer clues that a house once stood on the site. Dating such artifacts would further pinpoint a domicile’s vintage. Sometimes, you even get lucky. “I know one homestead in which they found the initials of the suspected homeowner on a piece of bottle glass,” Stetz says.

“There are all sorts of fun techniques we could show our students and use to get as holistic a picture of what took place at the site as possible,” Samuels says. “Will any of this definitively show that this was Jude Hall’s homestead? Probably not — that type of definitive information is rare even in historic archaeology — but the more complete the picture, the more sound our hypotheses can be.”

Even the possibility that the site has historic significance is exhilarating for Samuels. The digging for history is nearly as important as its discovery. “Archaeology offers historical teaching a certain vitality; you form a different relationship with the past when you are touching it then when you are simply reading about it,” Samuels says. “I am so eager to give our students that experience, to let them actively recover history, and especially the histories of groups who have not been given a leading role in the drama that is the history of America. … The opportunity to excavate and write the material history of such a fascinating and important person as Jude Hall — and to bring students along for the ride — is kind of the archaeological dream.”

Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the summer 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.