The historical marker on Danville Green has been Vermont’s only public acknowledgement of Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens was born in Danville and educated in Peacham.
By Paul Chouinard, President of the Danville Historical Society
On Sunday October 30, The Danville Historical Society and the Danville Chamber of Commerce will honor Thaddeus Stevens in a ceremony for the unveiling of an etching of his portrait that is being presented to the Vermont Statehouse. The ceremony will be held at the Danville Congregational Church and begin at 2:00 PM to be followed by a reception in the Church dining room.
January 10, 2010, Vermont Civil War Historian, Howard Coffin, addressed the Danville Historical Society at its Annual Meeting, focusing on Danville’s involvement in the Civil War. Following delivery of his address, Mr. Coffin suggested that he felt it would be a most appropriate sesquicentennial project for the Danville Historical Society to coordinate an effort to raise funds for commissioning a portrait of Thaddeus Stevens to be presented to the Statehouse for inclusion in its collection of portraits of prominent Vermonters.
It is ironic that in the 219 years since the birth of Thaddeus Stevens that the only memorial in Vermont to his legacy as one of America’s great civil rights advocates is a State Department of Historic Sites marker on Danville Green indicating Danville as the place of his birth. There has never been any public portrait or piece of sculpture honoring the enormous contributions he made on the national level to affect the emancipation of the slaves and to grant them civil rights.
Senator Jane Kitchel was quoted in the Caledonian-Record on July 1, 2011, at a meeting between the Vermont Agency of Transportation and Danville residents and business owners. “Maybe this project is a lot like having a baby. When we get done we’ll be pleased with what we have, hopefully.”
There’s no doubt about the pain. Anyone trying to make it through and around Danville this summer has experienced it. Frustration has sometimes been high, but lately it seems people, at least locally, are waiting for the baby with more stoicism. And while wel’re waiting, there is renewed interest in what the final product is going to look like. Over the past 20-plus years, the collective memory of how this project evolved has dimmed; perhaps a review of how we got here from there is useful. So, a little history…
At Danville Fair, Patty Conly and I encouraged Danvillites to send in class photos. Look at this gem from 1945, sent to us by Joan (and Ted) Sargeant. I recognize…
Vermont Associate and archivist at the Danville VT Historical Society
Preston in full dress uniform
How many times do we wish history would come alive for us? The sweat of bodies and horses, the ting, clink and clang of accouterments , the deep glow and scent of burnished leather, shining brass buttons, the glint of bullion gold braid on sleeves and shoulders in the bright sunlight, passing through a natural archway of fragrant lilac. Walt Whitman put observations like this into verse:
…the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah, my brave horsemen!
My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the perils were yours.)
This was undoubtedly the spirit that then Captain Addison Webster Preston of Danville conveyed to starry-eyed new enlistees as he recruited them into Company D of the 1st Vermont Cavalry in 1862. Here at the Danville Historical Society we have Addison Preston’s blue wool dress uniform, his dress pants, his boots, cartridge box, horse’s halter, flask and McClellan saddle.
More importantly, I think, we have a photograph of him at around the age of 33 that conveys his image—his thinning hair is swept back, his mustache is fierce, his eyes are fiery and he grasps his sabre’s hilt as if ready to draw it and smite the enemy.
He was promoted to Lt. Colonel by 1863 and commanded the entire 1st Vermont Cavalry. Quoting from Joseph D. Collea, Jr’s book The First Vermont Cavalry in the Civil War, upon his death the Vermont Record wrote, “Colonel Preston was characterized by quickness of perception, thought and action which made him what he was as a soldier and an officer. He never found exactly his right place til he went into the army…Col. Preston might not have achieved so signal a success as he did in war. He was a born soldier, and found that out when the country sounded the call to arms.”
But this does not mean he failed to attend to the needs of his men or their families. The record is replete with letters written by him to widows and the Government Pension Board detailing a trooper’s last illness or his heroism in battle. His after-battle reports are succinct in contrast to the dramatic accounts he sent back to the papers in Vermont.
His personal letters to his younger brother, William Henry Preston (future Principal- 1867–1870- of Danville Academy), shows he also continued to be attentive to matters at home. In letters housed at the Kitchel Center, Fairbanks Museum, and transcribed by Lynn Bonfield, the reader witnesses his direct and commanding style.
“Henry
“I have written to B. N Davis to day and I wish you to keep your eye out for Col Sawyer and also one Sgt Mitchel of Co D when he took home with him. Say to Esq Davis to look sharp for the Col. I fear he will try to injure me in Vt if you hear of it let me know. Are you going to teach this winter or study a profession?
“How much did you make last fall…
“Remember Energy is what can grow. I will write you often on this subject…
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.
For two days, the Vermont Civil War Hemlocks encamped in Danville during the 2011 Memorial Day weekend. Many attended both the encampment and the Memorial Service held at the Methodist…
An American Flag, flown over the United States Capitol and presented to the Danville Historical Society by Senator Patrick Leahy, flies over the Victorian fountain in Danville Green Cemetery honoring…
A Vermont Civil War Hemlock explains why he takes part
Steve Wakefield, living historian with the Vermont Civil War Hemlocks
By Sharon Lakey
At the 125th anniversary of the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox, Steve Wakefield, living historian, had one of those crystalline moments. “I was with the 5th of New Hampshire at the head of the column. When I turned around, I saw 3,000 federal troops standing behind me, all perfectly aligned. “The moment didn’t last long, maybe three seconds, but in those few seconds, I was there.” To be transported through time—those are the seconds a living historian cherishes.
In 1963, Andy Fisher, a history teacher in Concord, VT, attended the 100th observance of the Battle of Gettysburg, a reenactment of the battle that turned the tide in the Civil War. The event was so inspiring to him, he returned home to create the Vermont Civil War Hemlocks, a non-profit group whose goal is education. Three years later, 16-year-old Steve Wakefield went to one of the group’s meetings and joined. He was uniformed and equipped in 1971 and took part in his first reenactment that year.
“I don’t like the term reenactment,” said Wakefield. “I am a living historian.” He goes on to explain that to reenact implies an individual is acting. “We don’t act; during an event, we actually live the experience 24-hours a day. At night, we don’t retire to the tent with a beer cooler.” And anyone who has witnessed the Hemlocks in action, perhaps in something as simple as a parade, recognizes immediately that they are living in the moment, and it is not taken lightly.
