The phone rang and I answered it. "Umm, oh, hello," said the man on the other end. The tentativeness of the voice instantly told me that this was someone who was not expecting a human being to answer the phone. He was expecting a recorded message. Sometimes it’s easier to confront an issue by putting a bit of distance between it and you.

"I was wondering if I could get some information." He paused. "I was jogging through the PEA woods and I found something … " His voice trailed off, but I already knew what he had found.

A quiet encounter with nature had turned into a discomfiting meeting with one of the realities of the past. He had probably been troubled by it for the remainder of his run. He had found the lonely grave of Susannah Holman Brown.

We get many phone and e-mail inquiries at the Exeter Historical Society. Most of these are quick fact checks. You could easily say "trivia," but to a trained historian, trivial bits and pieces are actually the details of our historic past.

Genealogists call and come to visit very frequently. When I first started working at the Historical Society I thought these people were nuts. They arrive in our research room with notebooks full of information. Exeter is so old, dating back to 1638, that we are often the last stop for the last traceable ancestor in their American line. They want to find the dates - birth and death - for these people. Most of the time they also want to find the final resting place.

I’ve come to better understand the drive of the genealogist. At a certain point in one’s life, there is a confrontation with mortality, perhaps the death of one’s parents or siblings. At this point, there is a realization that you have become the keeper of the family story. I’ve rarely met a genealogist under the age of 50.

Pictured is the burial place of Susannah Holman Brown in the quiet woods of the Phillips Exeter Academy off Drinkwater Road. Courtesy photo

It was this quest to pass on the family story that led a woman into the woods in the early days of the 20th century. She was looking for the feebly marked grave of her grandmother. At the edge of the woods, she found the spot she’d been told about. It was a rough fieldstone on a slight mound. Here, she placed a new marker inscribed with all she knew of her grandmother:

Susannah Holman, wife of Joseph Brown, 1785-1812, also an infant daughter.

Susannah Holman Brown, like countless women in her day, died during childbirth. It was a delivery so difficult that her child died with her.

Susannah and Joseph had two other daughters who survived and raised children of their own. Susannah’s early death, at age 27, is a vivid reminder of the harshness of life. Childbirth was, and still is, a death-defying act.

Joseph Brown buried his wife and daughter on his own land instead of in the town burying ground. Perhaps he wanted her to be near him. Perhaps this way he was able to keep her, and her final resting place, part of the family story. Her granddaughter, by placing a marker, made her story our story.

Now near a nature trail, the tender site makes us pause, as it did the jogger, and seek out the details of our past.

Barbara Rimkunas is the curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Her column appears every other Friday in this space. She may be reached at exhissoc@aol.com.