The Artist as Historian

The com­plet­ed draw­ing of Danville’s old stone gaol by Robin Rothman

Artist Robin Roth­man was giv­en a mis­sion; Mary Pri­or want­ed her to recre­ate, as cor­rect­ly as pos­si­ble, two of Danville’s his­toric pub­lic buildings—the Bark Meet­ing House and the old stone gaol (jail). Nei­ther of these build­ings still stands; nor are there sketch­es or pho­tographs of them. It was a job for his­tor­i­cal sleuths. The two worked in tan­dem, dig­ging up as much writ­ten mate­r­i­al as pos­si­ble as well as Robin vis­it­ing the sites where the build­ings were thought to have stood.  Before she passed, Mary saw Robin’s ren­di­tion of the Bark Meet­ing House, and it brought tears to her eyes.

 

As time pro­gressed, Mary became con­fined to her house, but Robin con­tin­ued to pur­sue the jail. “I hoped to fin­ish it so she could see that one, too,” said Robin. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Mary passed in July; the piece was fin­ished in late September.

Along with the fin­ished draw­ings, Robin has record­ed and sub­mit­ted her sleuth’s path for the his­tor­i­cal record. How did she get to her fin­ished draw­ings? When asked, she smiles and emphat­i­cal­ly says, “It’s a total fab­ri­ca­tion!” We will trace her method in arriv­ing at the jail draw­ing now and let the read­er decide how well she has done. 

For the jail, her research includ­ed site vis­i­ta­tions to the Dow-Web­ster house, lat­er sold to B.F. Hav­i­land, on Brain­erd Street. The house is still there, occu­pied present­ly by Jamie and Lind­sey Beat­tie. Robin walked and stud­ied the land­scape sur­round­ing the house, look­ing for pos­si­ble foot­ings of the jail. She found hints of a stone wall and parts of a bro­ken, hewn gran­ite stone. A hump of earth can be seen where pos­si­bly the jail stood. 

A map draw­ing was of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to her. The Beers Atlas of 1875 hangs on the wall at His­tor­i­cal House. It shows Jail Street (now Brain­erd) with the foot­print of the Hav­i­land house and anoth­er struc­ture sit­ting akim­bo to it enti­tled “Old Jail.” Robin was puz­zled by its place­ment in the land­scape; the jail does not sit par­al­lel to the street. Instead, it is more in line with the present day Mason­ic Tem­ple (orig­i­nal­ly the Bap­tist church). 

  

To find back­ground on its most like­ly con­struc­tion, she pored over micro­film of the old North Star, read and reread accounts relat­ing to the struc­ture in his­tor­i­cal gazetteers, the town his­to­ry and searched the Inter­net for pho­tos of oth­er his­toric stone jails. 

The orig­i­nal jail in Danville was con­struct­ed in 1796 of logs. In 1801, when Danville became the shire town of Cale­do­nia Coun­ty (the coun­ty seat), it was upgrad­ed. Accord­ing to Child’s Gazetteer, it was con­struct­ed with “square logs, notched and pinned togeth­er.” That jail also includ­ed a pil­lo­ry and whip­ping post. 

Lat­er, in 1834, Danville was required of to build a more sub­stan­tial jail. Town records show that the Town Warn­ing of 1834 includ­ed an arti­cle to see how much mon­ey the town would raise to build the new jail. It was decid­ed to raise $1,000; an equal sum would be raised by sub­scrip­tion.  Ira Brain­erd was put in charge of the con­struc­tion. Accord­ing to Child’s, the struc­ture was made of “immense gran­ite stones, some 20 foot in length, quar­ried in Danville, hewn and dow­elled togeth­er.” In 1838, the court ordered a pick­et fence to be installed around the jail. A 10 to 12 foot high fence made of planks that were sharp­ened to a point was added. 

Two arti­cles from the North Star were used by Robin to help deter­mine the jail design. In her search, she found the escapades of a pris­on­er, Daniel Floyd, to be most help­ful. In the first arti­cle, Floyd, “a pris­on­er con­fined on a charge of rail­road thefts, and await­ing his tri­al at the next Coun­ty Court” alert­ed the jail­er to a fire in his cell. The arti­cle relates that the jail­er ran upstairs to douse the fire, putting Floyd in anoth­er cell to do so. From this, Robin sur­mised the struc­ture was at least a two-floor affair.

In a lat­er issue, Floyd is report­ed to make his actu­al escape:

“Last Sun­day night or ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing, Daniel Floyd, …await­ing his tri­al at the next Coun­ty Court, suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing his escape from the jail in this vil­lage. To effect it, he evi­dent­ly had help from some one out­side the prison, who no doubt fur­nished him tools to work with. With an inch and a half auger he bored out a space large enough to admit his body, from a large heavy beam over­head, and in this way gained the attic. He then removed some stones at one cor­ner at the north gable end of the attic, and hav­ing fas­tened a rope firm­ly round the chim­ney, swung him­self down by it, out­side, into the prison yard. It was then a com­par­a­tive­ly easy mat­ter for him to scale the high pick­et fence, jump over the oth­er side, and “be off.” 

“ …Two panes of glass were bro­ken out of his cell win­dow, and though it was pro­tect­ed by heavy iron bars run across, yet from the tracks and oth­er appear­ances out­side, it was evi­dent that some one, prob­a­bly by the use of a lad­der, had hand­ed in to the pris­on­er, by break­ing the win­dow glass, the auger, rope, &c…”

Jack­pot! There was an attic from which the pris­on­er removed stones as well as descrip­tion of a chim­ney,  win­dow treat­ment and gable ends. At this point, Robin had a good idea about how the build­ing looked and func­tioned. Now she had to set it in its sur­round­ings to cre­ate a sense of place.

But before we get to that, it is impor­tant to know the fate of the jail. In 1856, Danville’s shire town des­ig­na­tion was stripped and giv­en to neigh­bor­ing St. Johns­bury. The cit­i­zens of Danville were angry about what they felt was a theft of pow­er by polit­i­cal intrigue insti­gat­ed by the Fair­banks fam­i­ly. Much ill will result­ed. The North Star report­ed heav­i­ly upon the sit­u­a­tion, stat­ing Danville had gone through much expense in build­ing, main­tain­ing and upgrad­ing the Coun­ty Seat facil­i­ties. These includ­ed a hand­some court­room and fire­proof room for Coun­ty records. Like­wise, the jail was con­sid­ered to be the best in the state.

The town fought the change, but to no avail. Still, hard feel­ings pre­vailed and when the new Coun­ty seat offered to buy the stones of the jail for $700 and move them to St. Johns­bury to build their own new facil­i­ty, the Town refused to sell them. The old jail stood emp­ty until 1877 when it was torn down. The stones were pur­chased for a sum of $100 by the North Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in St. Johns­bury. They became the foun­da­tion stones for the church tow­er. In the church records, it is report­ed that the ser­mon that fol­lowed the open­ing of the church referred to the stones as “removed from Satan’s realm to serve a high­er purpose.”

Though the jail was no longer in use, Robin felt set­ting it accord­ing to the Beers map of 1875 would give the best feel as to how the build­ing fit into the town land­scape. In the mid-1800’s, B.F. Hav­i­land, who now owned the house where the old jail stood, was a well-known horse breed­er of Mor­gans.  A num­ber of pho­tos exist at His­tor­i­cal House of the Hav­i­land house, barn, fam­i­ly and live­stock.  The most famous of his hors­es can be traced back to the orig­i­nal Justin Mor­gan. That horse had one white foot, and Robin believed might be in one of the pho­tos. She also had two pho­tos of Hav­i­land himself–one stand­ing, hold­ing the lead of a horse and one of him seat­ed in a hitched Brew­ster Buggy.

Now, she had all the pieces nec­es­sary to do her artist’s mag­ic. She called one day and said, “It’s done. Come get it before I ruin it!” 

So, read­er, you may now judge. Is this work of art a total fab­ri­ca­tion? On this sub­ject , Robin quotes from the Mika­do with her flash­ing smile: “Cor­rob­o­ra­tive detail intend­ed to lend verisimil­i­tude to an oth­er­wise bald and uncon­vinc­ing nar­ra­tive.” Mary would be hap­py, I believe.

Both the Bark Meet­ing House and the Old Stone Gaol draw­ings will be on dis­play at His­tor­i­cal House dur­ing the month of December.