Theophilus Smith Junior
Exeter, Rockingham County, New Hampshire
Marker Inscription
Theophilus Smith Junior / Esquire / Circa 1725-1750
Erected by Exeter Historic District Commission
The Story
By the second quarter of the 1700s, when this man lived and died, Exeter was already nearly a century old — one of New Hampshire's founding towns, settled in 1638 beside the falls of the Squamscott River. The title "Esquire" trailing his name marked him as a man of property and local standing in a tight-knit colonial community where such distinctions still carried real weight. A memorial like this, giving little more than a name and an approximate span of years, is often the only surviving trace of the colonial-era gentry who quietly built New England's coastal towns.
Why it matters
It is a small but tangible link to the founding generations of colonial New England — the largely unrecorded local lives that laid the groundwork for the towns which, a generation later, would help launch a revolution.
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