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.

Town Meeting, 2011

March 2, 2011Posted inTown business
Well, our first Town Meeting using Australian Ballot is over. Citizens explain their view of the new process, before and after the meeting. Click here for a 3+ minute video…

It Ain’t Necessarily So

February 27, 2011Posted inNorth Danville, NSM articles

…or How a Vermonter Brought His Girlfriend to a Minstrel Show

Locks of love and tick­et stubs
By Mark R. Moore, Ver­mont Asso­ciate at Danville His­tor­i­cal House
Beside the two tick­et stubs that lie before me on the desk are two locks of hair. One is longer, thick and satiny with a slight curl. The oth­er is wispy and of a rougher texture.

Like many things at His­tor­i­cal House, a glance at the sur­face of what one encoun­ters does not reveal the facts. Instead, these items are more like a mul­ti-faceted dia­mond, a kalei­do­scope of thoughts and con­clu­sions that change with the slight­est turn. The facts must be eval­u­at­ed against the par­tial evi­dence that we have before us as well as our knowl­edge of the past, placed in con­text of the present. Add to that the knowl­edge we gath­er from out­side sources, and it will bal­ance our first gut reactions.

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.