Dwight Miller

Researching the personal history of an individual is always a journey into a life. All lives are filled with activity and engagement, and families play an important role in these searches. Both engagement and family connections can be traced over time through census records and newspaper accounts. This month, my goal was to learn as much as I could about the life of Alva “Bill” Burkett, a young man raised in Exeter who was killed at a young age in the Battle of Saipan in 1944. What aspects of...

Memorial Day 2026 is coming up next month. This holiday, begun after the Civil War to mourn those lost in military service to the nation, is the most somber of all federally recognized days. It was first called Decoration Day, as families decorated the graves of the fallen with flowers. May was chosen because it is a month of blooming flowers. This year, the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Though that date...

R.C. Merryman Reuben Colburn Merryman was born in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, into a nation—and a family—on the rise. Named for his maternal grandfather, Reuben Colburn, a prosperous Maine ship captain, young Reuben inherited both maritime ambition and frontier nerve. His father, Andrew Curtis Merryman, was already a successful timber operator in Marinette, Wisconsin, when Reuben entered the world. After his mother died when he was four, he was helped along by his aunt Carrie, his...