Trailing Thaddeus Stevens

By Sharon Lakey, Direc­tor of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Exchange of infor­ma­tion and gifts. Before the tour, the group had break­fast at the Choate-Sias head­quar­ters in Danville. Paul Chouinard (who brought some of Bernadet­te’s muffins) Ross Het­rick, Pres­i­dent of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety, and Lois White are ready for the adventure.

Mary Pri­or was in the Dia­mond Hill Store, and a man walked in with a tee-shirt pro­claim­ing he was a mem­ber of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety. Mary, who had been track­ing down what she called the “Thad­deus Stevens Trail” for the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, intro­duced her­self. They had a nice con­ver­sa­tion about Danville being his birthplace.

She had already dri­ven a reporter from Burlington’s Sev­en Days and Howard Cof­fin around the area, show­ing them where she thought his birth­place might be. Lat­er, she direct­ed an auto tour with sev­er­al mem­bers of the Soci­ety to points of inter­est in Danville and Peacham to share what she had uncov­ered. So it was of inter­est to us last June when Ross Het­rick (the man wear­ing the tee-shirt) called and intro­duced him­self as the Pres­i­dent of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety. He want­ed to dri­ve to Danville from his home in Penn­syl­va­nia with inten­tions of putting togeth­er a video of Thaddeus’s birth­place. With Mary’s prepa­ra­tion, we felt ready for the event. One fine morn­ing we met at the His­tor­i­cal House, ready to fol­low the foot­steps of our most illus­tri­ous native son.

Our first stop was on Pen­ny Lane in Danville Cen­ter where Thad­deus was born to Joshua and Sal­ly Mor­rill Stevens. The roads have changed since the fam­i­ly resided there in the late 1700’s, so it is dif­fi­cult to place the exact place of his birth. But it was known to area res­i­dents that the Steven’s place was some­where near their road. Bet­ty Carr Calkins, who grew up on the road as we know it, remem­bers her fam­i­ly speak­ing of the “Stevens” place.

Mary had asked Pen­ny Lane res­i­dent and avid horse­woman for help in locat­ing a cel­lar hole in the approx­i­mate area. With con­sent of the landown­ers where the house sus­pect­ed to be, Ann Hal­stead has been search­ing the area for sev­er­al years. She has come upon only one promis­ing cel­lar hole. Know­ing we were com­ing, Ann flagged the route to the old cel­lar hole; it was quite a hike in, and it was June—black flies. But when we final­ly stood in the area, not­ing the rock wall and large trees, errat­ic stone foun­da­tion and old apple trees, we thought it was pos­si­ble. We’ll have to do more deed inves­ti­ga­tion and hope­ful­ly a search for arti­facts to date the cel­lar hole.

After the hike, we trav­elled to Greenbank’s Hol­low where Sal­ly took her chil­dren after Joshua aban­doned the fam­i­ly. She went to stay for awhile with her broth­er, E.R. Mor­rill. His home is just anoth­er cel­lar hole now, but it is not­ed on the Greenbank’s Hol­low map. We enjoyed a pic­nic lunch at the old mill site by the water before we hus­tling to Peacham to make our appoint­ment with Lor­na Quim­by, cura­tor of the Peacham His­tor­i­cal Society.

Lor­na was a wealth of infor­ma­tion about Thad­deus, who was schooled at the Cale­do­nia Coun­ty Gram­mar School, the only free pub­lic edu­ca­tion avail­able in the area at that time. She was deter­mined that her chil­dren would be edu­cat­ed. (At a lat­er date, Lor­na would share infor­ma­tion from school records show­ing that Thad­deus had at one time been cen­sured for his behav­ior in school. Ah, Thad­deus, always a free thinker, but an apolo­getic one, too.)

Lor­na then took us to the house where the fam­i­ly lived while Thad­deus was in school. It is a small cape on the East Peacham road that is some dis­tance and down­hill from the vil­lage. It is believed that the fam­i­ly was allowed to live there as Sal­ly kept house for the own­ers. For a young man with a dis­abil­i­ty, the dai­ly walk to school would have been an endeav­or, tak­ing much phys­i­cal endurance.

The orig­i­nal site of the school is at the Peacham ceme­tery, which is not­ed on a mon­u­ment there, but we took the time to see the grave of his moth­er. Sally’s body lies in a peace­ful fenced plot in which flow­ers are plant­ed at all four cor­ners. Lor­na explained, “Thad­deus left mon­ey for ceme­tery upkeep, but made the stip­u­la­tion that it could be used only if there were flow­ers plant­ed on his mother’s grave every spring.” Need­less to say, that task is always done. “He knew what he was doing,” said Lorna.

On the way back to Danville, we drove the Thad­deus Stevens road and took a moment to enjoy the view from the house that Thad­deus bought for his moth­er and broth­er. It is on a hill that looks over the beau­ti­ful hills of Peacham. It was a farm with big barn. Lor­na had explained at the ceme­tery that Thad­deus always felt guilty about his mother’s death. He had pur­chased cows for her, and one win­ter morn­ing, Sal­ly fell while car­ing for them and had died short­ly after.

It was late after­noon when we arrived back in Danville. We were tired, but it had been a good time track­ing our native son. Lat­er, Ross sent us the link to his video, which you can access via our web­site as well as a pho­to album of some of the places we stopped on our trail. Our web­site address is danvillevthistorical.org. Ross will be the main speak­er at the unveil­ing of the Thad­deus Stevens por­trait on Octo­ber 30. He is an ener­getic pro­po­nent for Thad­deus. We hope you will join us!

For a pho­to album of the tour, click here.

For a video cre­at­ed by Ross Het­rick of the tour, click here.

 

 

 

 

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