August 28 Lamplight Service
To see a photo album of the Old Home Day service in July, click here. Photos by Paul Chouinard. August 28—LAMPLIGHT SERVICE AND HYMN SING Host Church: 1st Congregational Church, St. Johnsbury…
Project Show and Tell
By Patricia Houghton Conly Time is precious when it comes to preserving your family history and memories. Old photographs and documents provide clues about our past and what life was…
Born to Command
Addison W. Preston’s Call to Arms
By Mark R. Moore
Vermont Associate and archivist at the Danville VT Historical Society
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…
Addison”
A Visit to Aspet
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sometimes known as the American Michelangelo, was among the foremost sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He arrived in Cornish in 1885. He rented an old inn for the summer and over time he adapted the house to his needs and converted the barn into a studio. He ultimately purchased the property and continued to summer there until 1892, when it became his year-round home. Over the years he transformed the property into a center for artists and intellectuals of the period, who formed what has become known as the “Cornish Colony.” The Colony included: painters Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Dewing, George de Forest Bush, Lucia Fuller, and Kenyon Cox; dramatist Percy Mac-Kaye; American novelist Winston Churchill; architect Charles Platt; and sculptors Paul Manship, Herbert Adams, and Louis Saint- Gaudens, brother of Augustus. They created a dynamic social environment, centered around Saint-Gaudens.
All Hell Breaks Loose: Vermonters Get Down to the Business
By Gary Farrow, Member of the Danville VT Historical Society
One hundred and fifty years ago this month saw the Union reeling from the first major battle of the Civil War; rioting over secessionists in New England; and a spate of activity in Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom devoted to marshaling the troops.
The outcome of Bull Run, fought Sunday July 21, shook everyone from their naive slumber. General McDowell’s 30,000 Union troops marched the 30 miles west of Washington DC to attack an equal number of Confederate troops. Some government dignitaries decided to make a day of it and go and see the battle for themselves.
Through A Glass Darkly
How glass plate technology met high Tech
By Mark R. Moore
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.
In Search of House Roots–The Varney House
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.
Looking for Danville’s oldest citizens
By Sharon LakeyDirector, Danville Historical Society I always look forward to getting my hair cut once a month at Janet Carson’s Country Styles across the street from my house. We…
War Becomes a Reality
Going to See the Elephant, July 1861
By Paul Chouinard, President of the Danville Historical Society
Editor’s Note: “Going to see the elephant” was an expression used by enlistees to the Union Army describing the experience of country boys going off to war where they would experience life in ways they could not have imagined.
According to Susannah Clifford in Village In the Hills: “There was at least one family in Danville that had relatives fighting on both sides of the battle lines, but in this particular case kinship proved stronger than patriotism. James Davis, son of Bliss Davis, was the only known Danville soldier to see the war from the Confederate side. James went west at age eighteen to live with his uncle in Ohio and then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to study medicine. When the war broke out in 1861, he joined the Confederate service as an assistant surgeon of the Seventh Louisiana Regiment and later became full surgeon. He served throughout the war and was present at all the major battles in northern Virginia. James cousin, Alexander, who was with the Union army, was wounded at the battle at Savage’s Station, captured by the Confederate army and sent to Andersonville Prison. While in prison, Alexander learned that his cousin was in Richmond, and he wrote to James to let him know of his situation. James immediately set to getting Alexander exchanged and even furnished him with transportation back to his regiment.”
On the home front, local farmers and horse breeders in Danville helped furnish the cavalry with fine horses. Danville’s Merino Sheep and Greenbank’s woolen mill contributed to the war effort, as did most other textile mills in New England, by providing woolen broadcloth for the production of blankets and uniforms. In the autumn of 1861, Greenbank’s mill received federal contracts to manufacture woolen broadcloth for uniforms.
Early in 1861, with the city of Washington in grave danger, the official standard weights of the United States Government were moved to St. Johnsbury for safekeeping. E. and T. Fairbanks and Co. began the manufacture of brass stirrups and brass trimmings for the Northern cavalry, as well as of artillery harness irons and curb bits. In addition the officials of the New York branch of E. and T. Fairbanks helped Governor Erastus Fairbanks secure supplies for both infantry and cavalry of the Vermont regiments.
THE NORTH STAR, July 13, 1861
THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
It recommends that Congress provide, by legal means, for “making this contest a short and decisive one;” and the President asks that body to pass an act to raise 400,000 men, and $400,000,000. to prosecute the work. Should Congress grant it, we trust the great power thus conferred, will be wisely used, in crushing rebellion, and giving to this mighty conflict a strictly national and Union-restoring character.