North Danville Village Farm Receives Vermont Century Farm Award

North Danville Village Farm Receives Vermont Century Farm Award

January 9, 2014Posted inHistorical people, Historical sites, North Danville, NSM articles

By Pat­ty Con­ly, Direc­tor of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society
Image Above: For-Clifs barn in the mid­dle of North Danville vil­lage. PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN (LANGMAID) LYNAUGH

There is a unique charm about the quaint and pic­turesque vil­lage of North Danville, nes­tled in the north­east­ern cor­ner of Ver­mont.   It has remained essen­tial­ly unchanged in many ways for the past cen­tu­ry.   Just ask any­one who lives there present­ly or has lived there at any time in the past.  Some of the faces and names have changed, but their mem­o­ries and lega­cy remain through friends and rel­a­tives still liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. There is a strong sense of will­ing­ness to help one anoth­er that has endured gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies liv­ing in the vil­lage, as well as those liv­ing in hous­es or on farms on the out­skirts of town. North Danville was once bustling with mills and busi­ness­es cen­tered around its prime loca­tion on the Sleep­ers Riv­er, which runs par­al­lel to the low­er part of the vil­lage.  Today most of those busi­ness­es are no longer in exis­tence; how­ev­er, sev­er­al long-stand­ing fam­i­ly owned farms are still thriving.

The name Lang­maid has been asso­ci­at­ed with farm­ing in this area for many gen­er­a­tions, and their fam­i­ly farms con­tin­ue to dot the land­scape in and around Danville. But, there is a unique char­ac­ter about the Cliff Lang­maid farm, now known as the For-Clifs farm in the heart of North Danville.  It was renamed to reflect cur­rent own­er Cliff Lang­maid and his father and for­mer own­er, For­rest Lang­maid.  The unique­ness lies in the fact that it is a work­ing farm sit­u­at­ed right in the cen­ter of the vil­lage. You sim­ply can­not pass through the North Danville with­out notic­ing the big red barn.

Clif Langmaid, Lee (Langmaid) Beattie and Plynn Beattie
Clif Lang­maid, Lee (Lang­maid) Beat­tie and Plynn Beat­tie. PHOTO BY LIZ SARGENT

In the sum­mer months, as you approach from Danville and make the turn head­ing into the vil­lage, you will like­ly see the emer­ald green hill­side pas­ture dot­ted with black and white Hol­steins graz­ing in the field amid yel­low dan­de­lions. If you hap­pen to dri­ve through around milk­ing time, you may have to wait patient­ly as Plynn Beat­tie or Lee Lang­maid Beat­tie act as tem­po­rary “traf­fic con­trol cops” to stop cars and direct a parade of cows saun­ter­ing across the road mak­ing their way to the barn.  This is a less famil­iar sce­nario now in many small towns across Ver­mont and the North­east King­dom. How­ev­er, it is still a rare find in the epi­cen­ter of North Danville! 

The Largest Refugee Crises Ever Created on the American Continent

January 9, 2014Posted inHistorical events, Historical people, NSM articles

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Black fugitives forging the Rappahannock river.
Black fugi­tives forg­ing the Rap­pa­han­nock river.

Civ­il War his­to­ry often gives short shrift to the fact that the con­flict pre­cip­i­tat­ed the largest refugee cri­sis ever seen on the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. Before we read Danville’s North Star reports for Jan­u­ary of 1864, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand how the Union was han­dling the freed­men prob­lem that was cre­at­ed by Lincoln’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion on Sep 22, 1862.

The Procla­ma­tion declared that if a rebel state did not return to the Union by Jan­u­ary 1, all slaves would become free. How­ev­er, slaves did not wait until the begin­ning of the year; they began stream­ing toward Union lines and the refugee cri­sis was on. One reporter wrote, “There were men, women and chil­dren in every state of dis­ease or decrepi­tude often near­ly naked with flesh torn by the ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ences of their escape.” But if ex-slaves thought they had a bet­ter life, they were often mis­tak­en. “Often the slaves met prej­u­dices against their col­or more bit­ter than they had left behind.”

September 1863–New Depths of Inhumanity Attained, Southern Noose Tightens and Wiggles

December 23, 2013Posted inHistorical events, Historical people, NSM articles

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The atrocities of war--This drawing of the Sack of Lawrence Kansas was just one of the many.
The atroc­i­ties of war–This draw­ing of the sack of Lawrence, Kansas, was just one of many.

Sep­tem­ber brought news about how the Union dealt with its desert­ers. Two men on oppo­site sides, whose twist­ed souls were fired ear­li­er in the caul­dron that was the Kansas-Mis­souri Bor­der War, led their “troops” on a mis­sion of mur­der­ing, ran­sack­ing and plun­der­ing non-com­bat­ants. The bat­tle for East­ern Ten­nessee — North­ern Geor­gia con­tin­ued to heave to and fro.

September 5, 1863 Danville North Star

Mil­i­tary Expectations

Head­quar­ters Army of the Potomac Aug 29 – The exe­cu­tion of sub­sti­tute desert­ers sen­tenced to death in Gen­er­al Orders No. 84 took place today. More than ordi­nary inter­est was exhib­it­ed on the exe­cu­tion of mil­i­tary law, and it is esti­mat­ed that not less than 25,000 per­sons were present…The ground was select­ed, and every arrange­ment so com­plete that no acci­dents occurred to mar the solem­ni­ty of the proceedings….

The crim­i­nals were sit­ting upon their respec­tive coffins with yawn­ing graves in their rear…. At the order to fire, 86 mus­kets were dis­charged, and instant death was announced by the Sur­geons in atten­dance as a result. The bod­ies were then placed in their respec­tive graves, and the cler­gy per­formed the last reli­gious rites over the deceased.