Jeannette and Jennette: the Story of the Talbot Gym
by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, August 30, 2019.
“Exeter’s growing school population were treated to the unusual pleasures of new classrooms, desks and, in some instances, teachers, as over 1,500 youngsters attended the opening sessions of the school year yesterday morning,” announced the Exeter News-Letter on September 8, 1955. Indeed, it seemed like nearly everything changed that school year. Exeter High School was co-educational for the first time since 1867, when the girls had been separated to attend the Robinson Female Seminary. “Some of the boys expressed mild discomfort at being outnumbered by their opposite sex in classrooms. Others expressed pleasure.” Younger students were consolidated at the new Lincoln Street elementary school instead of being sprinkled around town in smaller buildings. Additionally, the new Salk vaccine, administered that year to first and second graders, promised a future free of the fear of polio outbreaks.
Construction on Lincoln Street School and the addition to the high school had begun the previous year. As part of the expansion, a long-delayed project called the Talbot Gymnasium was built out of funds the Robinson Seminary had been sitting on since 1929. The story of the benefactor and the delay takes us back 75 years before the building opened.
Willard and Jeannette Talbot arrived in Exeter with their young daughter, Mary, in 1874. Willard was a brick manufacturer. Their second daughter, named Jennette, like her mother only with a slightly different spelling, arrived in November of 1876. Another daughter, Ethel, was born a few years later just before her young father’s death. Jeannette Talbot found herself, at the age of 26, a widow with three daughters to raise. She kept herself afloat in the house on Front Street – perhaps by taking in boarders, as widows often did. The girls were bright and picked up their lessons quickly. In 1884, little Jennette entered the Robinson Female Seminary at the tender age of 9. That same year, the elder Jeannette Talbot took advantage of the relatively new New Hampshire law that allowed women to vote in local school elections and took it upon herself to run for the school board itself. She was soundly defeated, garnering only three votes. The three positions up for grabs that year went to men. Just the same, it must have inspired her daughter Jennette. At her graduation from the Seminary in 1893, she read an essay entitled, Girls as Bread-Winners. “It is not now as formerly a question of the ability of girls to earn their living. That has been proved beyond questioning. The positions they have won are so many and varied that a wise choice is difficult.” She headed to Boston University and returned four years later to teach in Exeter schools from 1901 – 1905. Meanwhile, her mother remarried and headed out west. Perhaps this is what inspired young Jennette to pull up stakes in Exeter and take a position teaching in an Arizona mining camp in 1907.
Once the Talbots headed west, it becomes difficult to follow their moves. Jeannette Talbot Emerson and her new husband, John, settled in San Diego, California. The younger Jennette married a man twenty years her senior named John H. Gay. The marriage may not have been a happy one. Exeter residents found out about the marriage only when Gay died in 1915. He and Jennette never had children. We hear from her again in 1927, when her marriage to Edward Snowden Baxendale was announced. Settling in La Jolla, California, Jennette became active in civic life.
She visited Exeter quite often and in August of 1929, she generously donated 325 shares of stock from Chase National Bank for a gymnasium for the Robinson Female Seminary. This was announced on the front page of the Exeter News-Letter. “Mrs. Baxendale on her recent visit to Exeter met with the trustees of the Seminary and signified her intention of making this gift. She was favorably impressed with the plans and photographs of the Spaulding gymnasium at the Normal School at Keene and requested that its general designs should be followed.” The plans for the building, now in the collections of the Exeter Historical Society, are of classical design – quite different from the Talbot Gym that would be dedicated in 1955.
Her gift to the town was greatly appreciated, but poorly timed. Within four months the greatest stock market crash up to that time occurred and her shares quickly plummeted in value from nearly $80,000 to under $2,000. The plans were put on hold. The next two decades saw many reasons to stall the project. The money was no longer there, World War II put a hold on construction and after the war there was much talk of Robinson Female Seminary shuttering its doors to co-education. In 1954, just before the vote to merge the high schools, the town went before the State to release the funds. “Recently,” reported the school board, “the Superior Court of New Hampshire ruled in favor of the Exeter School District with reference to the Talbot Fund and as a result of this decision the School District of Exeter will have approximately $45,000 - $50,000 toward the cost of a gymnasium when and if it builds a new co-educational high school. The only stipulation of the Court is that the gymnasium be named the Talbot gymnasium in honor of the donors.”
Neither Jeannette Talbot Emerson nor Jennette Talbot Baxendale lived to see the dedication of the new building. At the time of her death in 1942, Ernest Templeton wrote of Jenette that, “she was very fond of Robinson Seminary and was the first graduate to give a substantial amount for its betterment. She felt that the pupils might benefit by a course of physical training and to provide a gymnasium. Mrs. Baxendale was ever regretful that the project could not be carried out.” 1955 finally completed her work. And now that Talbot Gym has become our polling place, we can only imagine that Jeannette Talbot Emerson, who ran for the school board before she was fully allowed to vote, would be pleased to find her name affixed to it.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Original plans for the Talbot Gymnasium created in 1930 (but never completed) were inspired by the Spaulding Gymnasium at Keene State College.
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, August 30, 2019.
“Exeter’s growing school population were treated to the unusual pleasures of new classrooms, desks and, in some instances, teachers, as over 1,500 youngsters attended the opening sessions of the school year yesterday morning,” announced the Exeter News-Letter on September 8, 1955. Indeed, it seemed like nearly everything changed that school year. Exeter High School was co-educational for the first time since 1867, when the girls had been separated to attend the Robinson Female Seminary. “Some of the boys expressed mild discomfort at being outnumbered by their opposite sex in classrooms. Others expressed pleasure.” Younger students were consolidated at the new Lincoln Street elementary school instead of being sprinkled around town in smaller buildings. Additionally, the new Salk vaccine, administered that year to first and second graders, promised a future free of the fear of polio outbreaks.
Construction on Lincoln Street School and the addition to the high school had begun the previous year. As part of the expansion, a long-delayed project called the Talbot Gymnasium was built out of funds the Robinson Seminary had been sitting on since 1929. The story of the benefactor and the delay takes us back 75 years before the building opened.
Willard and Jeannette Talbot arrived in Exeter with their young daughter, Mary, in 1874. Willard was a brick manufacturer. Their second daughter, named Jennette, like her mother only with a slightly different spelling, arrived in November of 1876. Another daughter, Ethel, was born a few years later just before her young father’s death. Jeannette Talbot found herself, at the age of 26, a widow with three daughters to raise. She kept herself afloat in the house on Front Street – perhaps by taking in boarders, as widows often did. The girls were bright and picked up their lessons quickly. In 1884, little Jennette entered the Robinson Female Seminary at the tender age of 9. That same year, the elder Jeannette Talbot took advantage of the relatively new New Hampshire law that allowed women to vote in local school elections and took it upon herself to run for the school board itself. She was soundly defeated, garnering only three votes. The three positions up for grabs that year went to men. Just the same, it must have inspired her daughter Jennette. At her graduation from the Seminary in 1893, she read an essay entitled, Girls as Bread-Winners. “It is not now as formerly a question of the ability of girls to earn their living. That has been proved beyond questioning. The positions they have won are so many and varied that a wise choice is difficult.” She headed to Boston University and returned four years later to teach in Exeter schools from 1901 – 1905. Meanwhile, her mother remarried and headed out west. Perhaps this is what inspired young Jennette to pull up stakes in Exeter and take a position teaching in an Arizona mining camp in 1907.
Once the Talbots headed west, it becomes difficult to follow their moves. Jeannette Talbot Emerson and her new husband, John, settled in San Diego, California. The younger Jennette married a man twenty years her senior named John H. Gay. The marriage may not have been a happy one. Exeter residents found out about the marriage only when Gay died in 1915. He and Jennette never had children. We hear from her again in 1927, when her marriage to Edward Snowden Baxendale was announced. Settling in La Jolla, California, Jennette became active in civic life.
Her gift to the town was greatly appreciated, but poorly timed. Within four months the greatest stock market crash up to that time occurred and her shares quickly plummeted in value from nearly $80,000 to under $2,000. The plans were put on hold. The next two decades saw many reasons to stall the project. The money was no longer there, World War II put a hold on construction and after the war there was much talk of Robinson Female Seminary shuttering its doors to co-education. In 1954, just before the vote to merge the high schools, the town went before the State to release the funds. “Recently,” reported the school board, “the Superior Court of New Hampshire ruled in favor of the Exeter School District with reference to the Talbot Fund and as a result of this decision the School District of Exeter will have approximately $45,000 - $50,000 toward the cost of a gymnasium when and if it builds a new co-educational high school. The only stipulation of the Court is that the gymnasium be named the Talbot gymnasium in honor of the donors.”
Neither Jeannette Talbot Emerson nor Jennette Talbot Baxendale lived to see the dedication of the new building. At the time of her death in 1942, Ernest Templeton wrote of Jenette that, “she was very fond of Robinson Seminary and was the first graduate to give a substantial amount for its betterment. She felt that the pupils might benefit by a course of physical training and to provide a gymnasium. Mrs. Baxendale was ever regretful that the project could not be carried out.” 1955 finally completed her work. And now that Talbot Gym has become our polling place, we can only imagine that Jeannette Talbot Emerson, who ran for the school board before she was fully allowed to vote, would be pleased to find her name affixed to it.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Original plans for the Talbot Gymnasium created in 1930 (but never completed) were inspired by the Spaulding Gymnasium at Keene State College.
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