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.

February 1862, Forts Fall, Rumsellers Revolt, and Grant Earns His Nickname

February 27, 2012Posted inHistorical events, Historical people, NSM articles
Ulysses S. Grant, the “butch­er”

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The North Star report­ed that things were look­ing up for the North. The Union Navy secured anoth­er vic­to­ry and a beard­ed, soft-spo­ken small man from the West appeared on the scene to accom­plish what elud­ed the Union gen­er­als who came before. In addi­tion there is a sto­ry of “boys being boys” in Brat­tle­boro and Cap­tain R. W. Laird mak­ing a trip back home to Danville.

North Star February 1. 1862

Sword Pre­sen­ta­tion

Capt. R. W. Laird of Com­pa­ny H., 4th Reg­i­ment Ver­mont Vol­un­teers, was pre­sent­ed with a splen­did sword, at Camp Grif­fin, VA on Jan 20th, as a slight token of high esteem in which he is held by the men of his com­mand, for his ener­gy and untir­ing zeal in their behalf.

Cap­tain Laird returned to his home in West Danville, last week Thurs­day. We under­stand that he has returned with recruit­ing orders, and will enlist recruits for the Ver­mont Brigade.

The Greenbank’s Hollow Historic Park Site Nears Completion

December 28, 2011Posted inHistorical events, Historical sites, South Danville

By Sharon Lakey

Hol­lis Pri­or and David Hous­ton shep­herd­ed the project through sev­en years of work.

On a rainy Octo­ber day, 2011, Dave Hous­ton and Hol­lis Pri­or, com­mit­tee heads for the Greenbank’s Hol­low His­tor­i­cal Park, met a bus­load of Danville sec­ond graders at the cov­ered bridge. The chil­dren lined both sides under cov­er of the bridge, eat­ing bagged lunch­es, and lis­ten­ing to the con­stant rush of water rolling down Joe’s Brook. After­wards, they trekked up the hill after David and Hol­lis to the old school site where the new kiosk stands.

One of the chil­dren exclaimed, “My dad­dy gave the wood for this.” The impres­sive struc­ture was new­ly up by the efforts of the Danville road crew, the area groomed and land­scaped, sur­round­ed by the foun­da­tion stones of the old school. No infor­ma­tion was on the kiosk yet, but the whole idea of group of chil­dren stand­ing in the mid­dle of the school­house site was his­toric in itself. After some con­ver­sa­tion and ques­tions about its his­to­ry, the group again fell in behind David and Hol­lis and moved down to the bridge. There they stood on the spot, imag­in­ing the huge five-sto­ry woolen mill that used to stand next to the lit­tle bridge.

Prognostications for the New Year–January 1862

December 28, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, Historical events, Historical people

Prognostications for the New Year, Money Finds Its Way Back Home, and the Panorama of War Comes to Danville

By Gary Far­row, mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Union­ist Cap­tain Lyon, who was in charge of guard­ing a US artillery sta­tion in the slave state of Missouri.

The troops set­tled in for the first full month of win­ter. Restrict­ed move­ment meant that major bat­tles in many parts of the coun­try would have to wait for spring, so the news turned to the more mun­dane aspects of the war. And, as tech­no­log­i­cal changes (such as the tele­graph) sped news to Danville, the town would see and expe­ri­ence a new, rich­er and more vivid medi­um that told the sto­ry of their age.

Grandiose prog­nos­ti­ca­tions short­change peo­ple and their sto­ries. This was nev­er truer than in the bor­der states of Mis­souri and West Vir­ginia, which were, in their own unique way, micro­cosms of the larg­er conflict.

Trailing Thaddeus Stevens

October 10, 2011Posted inHistorical people, Historical sites

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.

News from the Civil War: The Spigot Starts to Open

October 10, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, Historical events

By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Jour­nal­ists, prob­a­bly from the New York Her­ald, are on-site, report­ing on the war through use of the telegraph.

Pri­or to the Civ­il War, rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy remade the news­pa­per busi­ness so that infor­ma­tion could be deliv­ered from far­away places faster and cheap­er than ever before. The Octo­ber ‘61 edi­tions of the North Star brought home opin­ion from a Boston Jour­nal cor­re­spon­dent, the sen­ti­ments of a Danville sol­dier at the Vir­ginia front, and news of mil­i­tary activ­i­ties on the Gulf Coast,

North Star October 5, 1861

The Gen­er­al who would­n’t fight. A draw­ing of Gen­er­al McClel­lan and his staff. The Gen­er­al is stand­ing on the left with his hand in his jacket.

Why McClellan Holds On

The Wash­ing­ton Cor­re­spon­dent of the Boston Jour­nal writes… It has been two months since the advance of the Fed­er­al troops from Bull Run to Washington.…the peo­ple are anx­ious to have some­thing done by the large army to blot out the dis­agree­able part of that affair…

…It was sup­posed that every­thing would be in readi­ness by the first of Sep­tem­ber and that by the present time we should have made a tri­umphant march towards the very heart of seces­sion, but instead here we are throw­ing up entrench­ments with rebels flaunt­ing their hate­ful burn­ing in our face with the great dome of the cap­i­tal in full view of their work at Munson’s. It is pro­vok­ing to the blood…

…But the beau­ty of his [McClellan’s] hang­ing on… He has, by remain­ing qui­et com­plete­ly frus­trat­ed the plans of the rebels. They intend to attack us, but found we are get­ting very strong… They have con­quered all in vain… When he sees that the prop­er time has come to let go, I am con­fi­dent that he will do it in a man­ner that will win admiration.