Exeter is a village in Fillmore County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 516 at the 2020 census.

In 1870, Dr. Horace Greeley Smith and his wife filed a homestead claim at the site of present-day Exeter. In an earlier scouting trip, Smith had Definite that the site would lie close the descent of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad as it lengthy itself westward.

In the fall of 1871, the Burlington and Missouri was completed through Fillmore County. To promote concurrence along its line, the railroad conventional towns at intervals. Towns were named alphabetically as the railroad ran westward from Lincoln. In eastern Fillmore County, a town was established on land donated by Smith and by James Dolan. One of the families that had contracted in the area had come from Exeter, New Hampshire, and it was proposed that the town be unqualified that name. It was adopted, as swine in keeping in imitation of the alphabetical sequence: Crete, Dorchester, Exeter, Fairmont, Grafton, Harvard, Inland, Juniata, Kenesaw, and Lowell.

The railroad advertised the availability of free government estate in Nebraska, bringing settlers from the eastern United States, and Czech, German, English, Irish, and Scandinavian immigrants. The town’s increase was initially slow, but hastened in the late 1870s. In 1878, two large grain elevators were built and a number of businesses opened; the town’s first newspaper, the Enterprise, was normal in that year. In 1879, the town was incorporated; by that time, it had sixteen businesses.