John Phillips, Academy Founder

Exeter, NH

Standing in Exeter since about 1730, this handsome frame house is remembered as the home of Jeremiah Smith, one of early New Hampshire's most accomplished public men. A veteran of the Revolutionary War who reportedly marched to the Battle of Bennington, Smith went on to serve in Congress, sit as chief justice of the state's highest court, and win election as governor in the young republic's early years. His career spanned the generation that turned a cluster of former colonies into a working state government, with Exeter — a onetime Revolutionary-era capital of New Hampshire — as his home ground.

Exeter, NH

In the decades after the Revolution, New England's religious landscape was reshaped by preachers who broke from the established Congregational order and the rigid Calvinism of their fathers. Abner Jones was one such itinerant of the early 1800s — a physician turned evangelist who helped lead the 'Christian' restorationist movement, which rejected denominational labels and insisted that ordinary believers could read Scripture for themselves. Working across Vermont, New Hampshire, and beyond, men like Jones rode the energy of the Second Great Awakening, planting independent congregations in towns such as Exeter. The date on this marker sits near the close of a long life spent on horseback and in the pulpit.

Exeter, NH

This clapboard house dates to around 1718, when Exeter was a tight-knit New England town not far removed from its Puritan founding. A century later it became home to Amos Tuck, an Exeter lawyer and congressman remembered as one of the antislavery politicians who helped bring the early Republican Party into being. Here too was born his son Edward Tuck, who went on to make a fortune in banking and finance and became one of the great philanthropists of his age.

Exeter, NH

In 1828, Exeter, New Hampshire was the kind of compact New England town where the printed word did the heavy lifting of public life. A publisher like John J. Williams would have set type by hand and worked a flatbed press to turn out the newspapers, almanacs, sermons, and schoolbooks that a literate town depended on. Exeter—already known for its schools and its lettered citizens—was fertile ground for a trade that carried news and ideas from the print shop into ordinary households.