Through A Glass Darkly

July 21, 2011Posted inDanville Green, From the archives, Historical people, Historical sites

How glass plate technology met high Tech

By Mark R. Moore
 
A fine lady in a hat out for a drive.

His­to­ry in Danville is more than smelly, mildewed books full of dates and records of live birth and dead molder­ing bones. Most peo­ple in the Unit­ed States live in sleek, shiny, mod­ern con­nect­ed metrop­o­lis­es where the pejo­ra­tive phrase “What have you done for me late­ly?” sym­bol­izes both the imme­di­ate lack of car­ing and super­fi­cial con­nec­tions as opposed to what we have here in Danville. It’s what I would call “wear­able his­to­ry” here. Your best friend might be relat­ed to the street you live on (was be a Brain­erd, it might be Green­bank Hol­low, the res­i­dence you live in might have been known for a hun­dred years as Dr. Smith’s House or, pos­si­bly, the Pet­tengill farm. The hill you can see might be Roy Moun­tain and you find there’s an eigh­teen year old Roy on Face­book. Strangest of all, that per­son, by and large, can, if asked, quick­ly trace their lin­eage direct­ly back to why that house, hill or road was named for a per­son in their fam­i­ly, not because the fact was drilled into them at school, but because they have a ret­i­cent North­east King­dom nob­less oblige (broad­ly defined-defer­ring to a per­son because of their family’s past his­to­ry past)and sim­ply grew up with a sto­ry in their past and is left for you, the present, to dis­cov­er how the past appel­la­tion became attached to the house or hol­low. Recent­ly, I was pre­sent­ed with a group of dif­fer­ent sized, dark, appar­ent­ly smoky glass pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives that had been in encased a shoe­box in a cel­lar for near­ly hun­dred years before they saw the light of day and asked to dis­cov­er what rela­tion, if any they have to Danville.

The box of glass neg­a­tives was brought to me by His­tor­i­cal Har­ri­et. Har­ri­et is always going through our store of arti­facts and likes to sur­prise me with her lat­est dis­cov­ery and see what I will do with it. Before want­i­ng to delve into the box and see how His­tor­i­cal Har­ri­et would adapt avail­able mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to solve to solve the prob­lem of get­ting a pic­ture from an old, dark chem­i­cal­ly coat­ed neg­a­tive I did some research on the his­to­ry of glass plates. Short­ly after Louis Daguerre and William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot pio­neered the daguerreo­type in 1839 which were print­ed on sil­ver-plat­ed cop­per or brass. Fred­er­ick Scott Archer, an Eng­lish sculp­tor, expand­ed their dis­cov­er­ies the dis­cov­er­ies of Daguerre and Tal­bot and came out with the wet glass plate know as the wet col­lo­di­on neg­a­tive. Because it was coat­ed glass and not paper the wet glass neg­a­tives cre­at­ed a sharp­er, more detailed neg­a­tive and could pro­duce more than one print from a neg­a­tive but this had to be done with­in five minutes.

Ned, You Ought To Take Me in Your Auto

April 4, 2011Posted inDanville Green, From the archives

The story of the first automobile in Danville

Ned Pet­tengill’s lit­tle red car, the first in Danville, sits in front of the Bad­ger black­smith shop on what is now Route 2.

By Mark R. Moore

Ancient Roads. When I first heard of their exis­tence, I had visions of a myth­i­cal high­way hid­den under the soil and stones in some cor­ners of the Repub­lic of Ver­mont. Soon I learned it was a mat­ter of old, fad­ed charts and the rec­ol­lec­tions of long-time res­i­dents. But even the maps and mem­o­ries get fuzzy with the pas­sage of time. The roads become ruts, the ruts get filled in, and the road becomes not an obscure ram­ble through the forest.

Yet the doc­u­ments at the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety set me on a clear path where I met the image of the first car and first car own­er in Danville–the recent­ly mar­ried 24-year-old own­er of a red tour­ing auto­mo­bile, Ned Pet­tengill. But first, let’s review a bit of his­to­ry of the auto­mo­bile in Vermont.

Going to See the Elephant

March 30, 2011Posted inDanville Green, From the archives, Historical events, NSM articles
Harper’s Week­ly image of the fir­ing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861
By Paul Chouinard, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

 

April marks the begin­ning of the sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al obser­vance of the out­set of the Civ­il War with the fir­ing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Har­bor, April 12, 1861. For the next four years the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety will reprint excerpts of arti­cles pub­lished in the North Star from 1861 to 1865 focus­ing on Danville’s involve­ment in the Civ­il War.

“Going To See The Ele­phant” was an expres­sion used by enlis­tees in the Union Army describ­ing the expe­ri­ence of coun­try boys going off to war where they would expe­ri­ence life in ways they could not have imagined.

Under the lead­er­ship of Gov­er­nor Eras­tus Fair­banks, Ver­mont respond­ed quick­ly to the call for men to join the Union forces. Dur­ing the Civ­il War, Ver­mont con­tributed more per capi­ta from its trea­sury and from its pop­u­la­tion of young men to the con­flict than any oth­er state in the Union. Danville’s finan­cial com­mit­ment of approx­i­mate­ly $36,000. to the war effort , as well as the num­ber of its enlist­ments was extraordinary.

In 1861, Danville had a pop­u­la­tion of about 2,500 con­sist­ing of about 350 men between the ages of 18 and 45. Out of this pool of men, from 1861 to 1865 Danville fur­nished 245 enlist­ments con­sist­ing of 194 dif­fer­ent men. The bal­ance was account­ed for by re-enlist­ments. By the end of the war, Danville had lost a total of 35 men. Twelve of those who lost their lives were killed in bat­tle and the rest died from expo­sure, star­va­tion, or sickness.

A Leap Year Proposal I Send by Mail

January 30, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, NSM articles
Flo­rence and Her­bert Stan­ton of North Danville
By Mark R. Moore

We tend to think of peo­ple whose writ­ings date from the ear­ly 1900s as “old” folks–ossified cit­i­zens of Danville who were “set in their ways” and as per­son­able, humor­ous and emo­tion­al as a mar­ble stat­ue that we touched as a child. Fre­quent­ly, in the course the course of clas­si­fy­ing fam­i­ly doc­u­ments for the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, I come across one that offers insight that shows that they were not much dif­fer­ent that teenagers are today.  Had I read only Flo­rence Johnson’s 1907  let­ters to Her­bert Stan­ton (her hus­band only a year lat­er) I would been con­firmed in a strait­laced con­trol­ling stereo­type of an all-know­ing spouse-to-be. In the fol­low­ing let­ter, Her­bert was con­fined to home with mumps.