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.

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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.

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Thaddeus Stevens: “Old Commoner”

October 9, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical events, Historical people
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.

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Janet’s new calendar

September 24, 2011Posted inUncategorized
A Local's Perspective By Sharon Lakey Last year, Janet Carson, one of Danville's excellent photographers, put out her first calendar. For everyone that was lucky enough to get one, they…

Worth the Wait?

September 24, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical events, NSM articles

Route 2: Pain now–Payback later

The green is a con­fus­ing mess at the moment.

By Sharon Lakey

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…

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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.

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Romance and Reality, Dissension and Dollars: The War News Trickles In

September 23, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, Historical events
A pho­to of a Civ­il War ambu­lance crew.
By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

 

Sep­tem­ber of 1861, the Civ­il War was page two. It wasn’t all that unusu­al for the North Star to have no Civ­il War head­lines on the front page.

There was one item with polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions nation­al­ly. A Union Gen­er­al had tak­en it upon him­self to issue a procla­ma­tion about slav­ery. There was also a let­ter by a Ver­mont POW and a report about the Danville Com­pa­ny. That month, the read­er could also learn about what vol­un­teers were get­ting for pay.

North Star Sep­tem­ber 7, 1861

The Vermont Prisoners at Richmond

Let­ter from Cap­tain Drew
Rich­mond, VA Aug 19, 1861
 Edi­tors of the Free Press:

I am per­mit­ted by Gen­er­al Winders, the humane and oblig­ing com­man­der of this post to write you, giv­ing a list of Vt boys con­fined here, and some infor­ma­tion as to our cap­ture. For sev­er­al days before the bat­tle, I had been sick and on “Sun­day the 21st” [A ref­er­ence to the Bat­tle of Bull Run and its date July 21] was hard­ly able to move.

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