Raising Israel Randall

April 12, 2012Posted inHistorical people, Historical sites, North Danville, Uncategorized

Local historian conjectures a life not found in the history book

Lance Com­fort holds the Israel Ran­dall deed that he bought on Ebay.

By Sharon Lakey

“The ide­al his­to­ri­an goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: “Lazarus, come forth!” and sets him that was dead for ages, blink­ing and pas­sion­ate, in the sun.”

AUSTIN O’MALLEY, Key­stones of Thought

Lance Comfort’s Lazarus is Israel Ran­dall of North Danville, and his attempt to raise him start­ed with a deed he bought on Ebay.

The deed, a time-weath­ered doc­u­ment, begins with “Know all men by these presents that I Jesse Leav­en­worth of Danville in the Coun­ty of Orange and State of Ver­mont for and in con­sid­er­a­tion of the sum of thir­ty pounds law­ful mon­ey to men in hand paid before the deliv­ery here­of by Israel Ran­dal of Danville…” The deed is dat­ed Novem­ber 30, 1791.

With deed in hand, Lance began his own his­tor­i­cal mys­tery tour with a series of ques­tions that devel­oped into a con­jec­tured under­stand­ing of Israel Randall’s life in Danville. “His­to­ry is writ­ten by the sur­vivors, the win­ners, those who passed their his­to­ry for­ward. If a fam­i­ly didn’t stick around, they do not appear in the his­to­ry book,” said Lance, point­ing to Vil­lage in the Hills a his­to­ry of Danville, Ver­mont that lay on the table in front of us. A quick check of the index in the book shows no Israel Randall.

How­ev­er, Randall’s name does appear once in the book—page 24 on the map that is cap­tioned: “Final divi­sion of land under Danville’s sec­ond char­ter in 1802 fol­low­ing set­tle­ment with New York for ’30,000 rights.’” There, in the tini­est of print, is a plot with­out a num­ber read­ing “200A Israel Ran­dall.” The first town char­ter was grant­ed under New York with the name of Hills­bor­ough; the sec­ond char­ter was grant­ed under Ver­mont with the name Danville. Vil­lage in the Hills describes this con­fus­ing process in detail in chap­ter two. It was a process that Lance believes affect­ed Ran­dall as well as and oth­er ear­li­er set­tlers. Could Ran­dall have set­tled first under the Hills­bor­ough char­ter, then lat­er be made to com­ply with the sec­ond? Lance believes this is likely.

The Secret Room

September 23, 2011Posted inNorth Danville
Shirley Blod­gett Lang­maid, left, shares writ­ings of Ten­nie Touis­sant from the North Danville cook­book. On the right is Eliz­a­beth Syman­ick, the Brain­erd Memo­r­i­al librar­i­an, who served as a mod­el for Mrs. Touis­sant in the book.

A new Northeast Kingdom adventure book

By Sharon Lakey

“Shaw­na and Thea are work­ing togeth­er on a math project for their eighth-grade class. But the num­bers don’t add up, and they make a star­tling discovery—the secret room in the base­ment of Thea’s house, an old Ver­mont inn.

The code on the walls makes the girls—and every­one in town—wonder why there was a secret room. Was it part of the Under­ground Rail­road, or per­haps some­thing less, well, hero­ic? Dis­cov­er­ing the truth is hard­er than they would have thought, espe­cial­ly when the truth is not what you want to hear.”

On Sep­tem­ber 10, 2011, North­east King­dom author, Beth Kanell, will offi­cial­ly have her sec­ond nov­el released by her new pub­lish­er, St. Johns­bury-based Brig­an­tine Media. When she told me about the release date, she looked at me mis­chie­vous­ly and said, “9 10 11. Wouldn’t Shaw­na and Thea love that?”

Ahh, that’s right. Shaw­na and Thea, the two main char­ac­ters in the sto­ry, do love numbers.

After read­ing a pre­lim­i­nary copy of the book, Beth and I arranged for an inter­view to begin in North Danville, the town that served as a muse for The Secret Room, which she sets in fic­tion­al North Upton. Beth shared that it was a request by her friend, Mary Pri­or, to set a nov­el there. Mary, who had grown up in the cen­ter of the vil­lage, rec­om­mend­ed its strong spir­it of place as a per­fect set­ting to help work the mag­ic of story.

In Search of House Roots–The Varney House

July 17, 2011Posted inHistorical sites, North Danville

 By Mary Barlow

In 2005 we decid­ed to move to Ver­mont. We start­ed look­ing in our price range in many towns from Ran­dolph to Bar­ton but final­ly set­tled on Danville as a friend­ly, beau­ti­ful place to con­cen­trate our efforts. After look­ing at 40 houses–some new, some old, some ren­o­vat­ed, some not so good–we rec­og­nized that we want­ed a house that was old, with good “bones,”and afford­able for us to renovate/restore and make our own. On Decem­ber 16, 2005, in one of the biggest snows of the win­ter, we bought our house in North Danville vil­lage and began the process of fix­ing it up.

Our first vis­i­tor was our neigh­bor from across the road, Ger­ard Lamothe, who wel­comed us and told us about the com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions: the Com­mu­ni­ty Club, the School Asso­ci­a­tion and the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, all housed in the old North Danville School just up the road. We joined the Com­mu­ni­ty Club and soon heard about the Old House Com­mit­tee. Here we learned the basics of prop­er­ty research.

The approach nor­mal­ly used is to work back­wards from the cur­rent own­er to the one pri­or and so forth. The Danville Town Clerk’s office has a card file that cross ref­er­ences Grantor (sell­er) and Grantee (buy­er) with the book and page num­ber where the deed is filed. The books with all the deeds, quit claims, mort­gages and pro­bate court doc­u­ments from Danville going back to before the char­ter of Danville (which was signed in 1802) are there for your research.

As one fol­lows the own­er­ship back in time, prop­er­ties were divid­ed, joined, and descrip­tions are not eas­i­ly rec­og­nized (using stake and stone mark­ers, trees, and fences, etc ). If prop­er­ty was inher­it­ed and the pro­bate was not filed in Danville, fur­ther research may take you to St Johns­bury or to old Orange Coun­ty records. Fad­ed ink, cen­turies old writ­ing and no longer used words made for time-con­sum­ing read­ing and some­times required the use of a mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

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.