The area was once the domain of the
Squamscott Native Americans, a sub-tribe of the Pennacook nation, which fished
at the falls where the Exeter River becomes the tidal Squamscott, the site
around which the future town of Exeter would grow. On April 3, 1638, the
Reverend John Wheelwright and others purchased the land from Wehanownowit, the
sagamore. Wheelwright had been exiled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a
puritan theocracy, for sharing the dissident religious views of his
sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson. The minister took with him about 175
individuals to found the town he named after Exeter
