USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Tamworth > The Tamworth narrative (New Hampshire) > Part 21
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When Admiral Byrd proposed his first expedition to the Antarctic, Walden though beyond the age considered maxi- mum, was in a fever to go. He took the train with Chinook to Boston to see Byrd and came back in charge of all dogs and dog-driving for the expedition. Three young men, in order to go with him, volunteered to spend the winter in tents on the intervale learning dogs and winter techniques. Some hundred dogs were prepared and went from the Walden Kennels on that first expedition. On recent expeditions it has been thought better to take only a few dogs for polar pur- poses, most carefully selected and trained, and in spite of to- day's tractors and helicopters, a nucleus of dogs is still indis- pensable.
This first time a famous driver A. A. ("Scotty") Allen, winner of Alaska Sweepstakes, brought down Malemutes to Wonalancet, and through another driver, Leonard Seppala, Siberian huskies were added. Some dogs were offered by owners, and some were of Walden's raising. All were as- sembled in the kennels in back of the Farm and were an ear- splitting circumstance. Many remember the great bonfire staged by the intervale as a send-off before the dog section left by train for Norfolk.
Admiral Byrd's book Little America, published after this first expedition, is studded with admiring references to Wal- den, though privately the two men were not altogether com- patible:
A moment later Walden's heavily loaded sledge nearly went to the bottom of the sea through a slush hole in the ice, and Walden came within a hair's breadth of falling in while trying to save the sledge. . . .
Had it not been for the dogs, our attempts to conquer the Antarctic by air must have ended in failure. On Janu- ary 17th Walden's single team of thirteen dogs moved 3,500 pounds of supplies from ship to base, a distance of 16 miles each trip, in two journeys. Walden's team was the back- bone of our transport. Seeing him rush his heavy loads
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along the trail, outstripping the younger men, it was difficult to believe that he was an old man. He was 58 years old, but he had the determination and strength of youth. . . .
The first sledge cleared the crevasse in a flurry of snow, but none too quickly, at that. As the front end rose slightly on the distant side, the rear runners dipped down and broke a hole through. One by one, three other sledges made the rush without mishap. Walden, who brought up the rear guard, had the heaviest sledge of all. Just as he cleared the edge, the sledge veered violently and tipped over, pinning him underneath. He fell on the brink of a drop into a sec- ond crevasse, saving himself by clutching hold of the sledge. Without a word he scrambled clear, righted the sledge, started the dogs and resumed his steady trot. ...
I cannot speak too highly of the dog drivers - Walden, Goodale, Crockett, Vaughn [these last three had trained in the intervale], Bursey and Blackburn. It is they who have borne the burden of transport from the beginning; and for the past week they have worked like demons. The trail is very soft and dangerous, with opens pools of water, yet they have performed as efficiently as ever.
The death of Chinook during the polar winter received much publicity. Chinook of the unmatched intelligence and absolute devotion who as leader in harness knew the answers without being told; who in a city would watch and obey the gestures of a traffic cop, and saved many a bad situation by quick deduction and quicker action on his own - Chinook disappeared. Probably the brief tribute by Admiral Byrd is the best to use here.
An incident, perhaps the saddest during our whole stay in the Antarctic, was the loss of Walden's famous lead dog, Chinook. Chinook was Walden's pride, and there was no doubting the fact that he was a great dog. He was old when brought to the Antarctic, too old for hard, continuous labor, and Walden used him as a kind of shock troop, throwing him into a team when the going turned very hard. Then the gallant heart of the old dog would rise above the years
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and pull with the glorious strength of a three-year-old. The affection between him and Walden was a beautiful thing to see: one sensed that each knew and understood the other perfectly, and it was Walden's rare boast that he never need- ed to give Chinook an order: the dog knew exactly what had to be done. A few days after his twelfth birthday, Chi- nook disappeared. We searched the camp for him, without success; in the trampled snow about the ship, it was im- possible to find his tracks. ... Whether he walked out alone to die, because his days of service were done is something I cannot vouch for: this was the romantic theory advanced by several of the men. At any rate, his body was never found. A clew to his disappearance was suggested in the following spring when Davies, during the course of a scientific in- vestigation of the crevasses in the vicinity of Little America came across the marks of a dog's feet on the shelf of a cre- vasse, something thirty feet below the Barrier surface, about half a mile to the eastward. The traces were half covered by falling crystals, but Davies believed that the dog lived there for several days. The walls of the crevasses were scored by small furrows, such as might have been made by a dog scratching, and some of these reached as high as a man's shoulder. Whether these were made by Chinook or another dog, we never learned. All this was a deep disappointment to Walden, who wanted to bury Chinook in his harness.
When Arthur Walden returned home he was greeted by a welcoming committee of townsfolk and a great celebra- tion in Tamworth village. Among expressions of apprecia- tion was the proposal to name the road from Tamworth to Wonalancet the Walden Highway. He begged off from this honor, but said they might name the road for Chinook if they wished. The state concurred and took over maintenance of Chinook Trail thenceforth.
Mrs. Walden had already retired from the management of the Farm, and they now took up residence in "Brook Wal- den" with the rustic fence smothered in rugosa roses, formerly Dr. Treadwell Walden's summer home. During Walden's
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absence Milton Seeley had been handling the kennels as his partner. He had been a teacher of chemistry at both Michi- gan and Oregon Universities, and then had a chemical busi- ness in New York. His health had brought him to Wona- lancet and outdoor life. His wife Eva was a graduate in physical education, had also taught at the University of Ore- gon, and always been active in sports and with animals. Charmed with Chinook, she collaborated on a book for young people, Chinook and His Family. Through previous labora- tory experience Seeley evolved a superlative dog-food formula, which saved the lives of the Antarctic dogs on the First Byrd Expedition. It was cabled to New Zealand after they had been attacked by illness on the voyage out.
The Waldens sold the kennels to Milton Seeley, who re-established them on a large tract of land between the high- road and the brook, formerly Walden property, where the Electric Company had its powerhouse, now also Seeley's. There he built log-cabin-type buildings and model kennels. The dogs entered upon a new and even more public phase of their history when the Seeleys began seriously their busi- ness of raising sled dogs.
For some years Julia Lombard who owned property in the intervale had some of the Chinook dogs and continued to inbreed them to preserve the strain of the famous ancestor. Ultimately she sold her small kennels and they were moved to Maine, the Seeleys remaining the only dog breeders in Wonalancet.
Walden now returned to writing. Leading a Dog's Life, purporting to be Shirley's memoirs, gives much information about the intervale of his own youth and life before the sum- mer people set in, interspersed with characteristic stories of escapades and scrapes. One further book he called Harness and Pack. This was in a small edition known to few, a serious and scholarly work which discussed every kind of animal transport in America from earliest times, including the horse, the mule, oxen, donkey, even reindeer, and finally dogs. The
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CHINOOK TEAM, showing gang-hitch and harnessing (about 1913).
ARTHUR WALDEN, answering the Government call to till more acreage for food crops in 1914, is deep-ploughing Wonalancet intervale after seventy years of hay.
WESLEY TEWKSBURY delivers hay.
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harness, the saddles, the gear, the vehicle, the methods of handling, are all described in detail. Great care was used on the copious line drawings, that every detail might be clear and accurate. The book was for boys, but it is fascinating at any age. And it contains his own account of Chinook's end, so far as could be known.
Every enterprise of Arthur Walden's was to carry out some theory of his own devising. He would work relentlessly until he had completed that thing, after which he could lounge and yarn, better than most. The yarns were in great variety. There was one about an extra heavy sweater his wife had knitted him. He thought it had been stolen, couldn't find it anywhere. This part of the story could be embroidered ad lib. He went on a five weeks' trip in the Antarctic, and when he got back to camp he found he had it on. There was no way of telling, he said.
Among his successive interests, some were various pro- jects in farming or building. He tore down the old barn and built a new and much larger one, chiefly by his own labor. This was in Shirley's time, for an observer who helped on the roof tells us that Shirley climbed up the ladder and joined them there. In 1914 with the war demand for food Arthur deep-plowed the intervale after its seventy years' history of hay. "I expect he plowed eighteen to twenty inches deep," said Jesse Ambrose. Four yoke of oxen hauled the plow while he grasped the handles. People came from far and near to witness the spectacle.
The Antlers log cabin next door to the Farm was one of his achievements. For this he used his memory of the log houses in Circle City, a technique little known then in New Hamp- shire, with heavy logs rounded all but on the inside, mortised at the corners. It was a two-story building with a notable fireplace and a separate kitchen, and for long years housed Winifred Alexander's popular summer Tea Room and Gift Shop, as well as the Post Office and her home. It is now the residence of Vice-Admiral Ainsworth retired, Arthur Wal-
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den's only nephew and heir. After Arthur's death the Admiral and his sister Gladys Salisbury conferred on the New England Sled Dog Club by deed of gift in his memory a distinguished trophy on which the best picture of Chinook was reproduced by etching on brass. This has been raced for, every year since.
Obliged always to be making something, in the last part of his life Arthur dug a system of connecting ponds to raise fish. He had a workshop with electric lathes and turned out small wheelbarrows of a size for women, besides furniture and such things. He had the first tractor in Wonalancet. "Walden spent a lot of money for nothing," says an old countryman now. "I helped him saw when he used that windmill that was on top of the old barn. That old windmill would squeak. And I helped him plow. We always got along all right. He never did learn how to drive cattle." Cattle would have been far too slow for him.
He went once more to Alaska, invited by someone who wanted to bring back features for Sportmen's Shows. He was soon back: Alaska was disgustingly civilized now. What he did bring down was an Eskimo boy with four reindeer to look after; these were parked for some weeks in a corral in the intervale. Both reindeer and Eskimo became intractable but not before all the neighborhood had had thrills. Oddly enough one of Walden's last interests was to get the history of Wonalancet written. His death at seventy-six was in the burning of "Brook Walden" on a stormy March morning. He rescued his wife, but in returning to fight the fire could not save himself. She lingered for two years not realizing what had occurred. They are buried either side a granite boulder on the small lawn of the Chapel: Arthur Treadwell Walden and Katherine Sleeper Walden.
One of the last recollections of them is when they had joined one of the square dances, revived in the music room at Seven Hearths. Both remembered the figures from early intervale days, spanning the period of the square dances' extinction. Arthur danced with his usual unsurpassed gusto.
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In spite of Kate's bad foot broken in an accident, and in her long dress of a previous period, with white hair wisping over the twinkling ever-blue eyes, she footed the dances more featly than anyone. She loved life. She forgave it all its unkind- nesses. She left a great legacy.
During the fifteen years until his death Milton Seeley carried on the electric plant and expanded the service. Ul- timately its lines and subscribers were absorbed into the state- wide public utility. He became a scientific producer and trainer of sled dogs, discerning, quiet, and humane. His wife also learned to drive a dog team, and took over the rearing of puppies under formulas worked out by Milton. Under them the Siberians and Malemutes came to predominate at the kennels as best for the multiple uses developing: racing teams, pets, and breeding purposes.
Hardly had the Seeleys established their new base than the second Antarctic expedition came up, and Admiral Byrd assigned to Milton the organization and direction of the sledge-dog division, with drivers; 185 dogs were sent this time. In all, the dogs for four Antarctic expeditions have been assembled in the Wonalancet area, both dogs and drivers trained here. During the last war the kennels were also the assembly point for dogs for the U.S. Army, under the Search and Rescue Division.
The third expedition was the first organized by the Gov- ernment. Army officers were in charge at the kennels and they were at fever pitch. A spectacular incident took place when movie men from five firms had arrived, and among the stunts put on for them was a seventy-three dog hitch. A neighbor wrote at the time:
We have been through these pre-Expedition spasms before, but never anything equal to this. Here came a dog-team around the bend as usual, but instead of three or four pair behind a leader, it kept coming, a long woolly procession with tails in air, ending at last in the big Army truck with half a dozen grinning men clinging to the outside of the cab.
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Seventy-three dogs in one hitch by actual count, in perfect formation and discipline, just trotting along up the hill pulling the big truck without a murmur. They seemed to know it was some kind of a test, and they must produce. Dick Moulton who is going to the Pole with the first boat- load sat on the hood some 200 feet back of the lead-dog Waska who was used to having him right behind. What mostly thrilled the boys was her perfect performance. Waska expects Haw usually at the chapel bend, but Dick shouted Gee and she was irresolute no more than a second. She quietly wheeled to the right, curved the whole train of them around after her and no questions asked. Waska weighs 43 pounds and is in her fourth year of leadership.
I appealed to Milton to know what weight that long team had actually pulled. "Well, each dog pulls twice his weight. Their weight averages 70 pounds. And there were seventy-three of them. The truck weighs about 3,500, doesn't it, Dutch?" Dutch was the Army truck driver. "And you can add the weight of about six men. That seems to leave the dogs quite a margin of unused power."
Milton's death during the War at the age of fifty-two was a deeply sensed loss extending far outside the dog-raising industry. To quote from an obituary notice :
The community will never know how much it owed to him, because of his reticent modesty. When he took something up with higher authorities, the very strength of his integrity caused him to be listened to. His mind was on the other fellow's rights, not on his own - on getting an opportunity for some young person, on clearing up a misunderstanding or stopping an injurious rumor, on opening the roads to justice, on making things easier for people.
In spite of weakening health, no night was too stormy, no cold too intense, for him to start out when a tree crashed over a wire or there was emergency in the hydro plant. He had to "keep the lights burning, all the lights." His grave in the little Jewell burying ground against the mountain was dug by no one but his neighbors. Ten or twelve went up and
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mowed the old grass and straightened up the fallen tomb- stones. His wife "Short" eventually took over the kennels from young Richard Moulton who had been almost brought up there, and she has carried on since. For many years she drove her team in the New England races. She also partici- pated in demonstration dog races at the Olympics at Lake Placid in 1932, the only woman driver to receive this honor. The Carroll County Kennel Club, founded by her, has an annual point show at North Conway. Her sled dogs (now registered in the American Kennel Club) have appeared widely at Dog Shows and Sportsmen's Shows across the coun- try and on television.
For the current and most ambitious South Polar expedi- tion, known as the Geophysical Year (Operation Deepfreeze, Task Force 43) the U. S. Navy established itself at Chinook Kennels during months of intensive training and equipment preparations. (Local talent was used wherever possible. Ches- ter Bickford down the road, a highly skilled cabinetmaker, fashioned by hand many freight sledges. In polar work these must be put together with great care, wholly by means of pegs and thongs; no screws or metal may be used.) The public was not denied the interest of watching the professional ani- mals who were learning their job, and some thousands of visitors came, including children by hundreds from camps. The kennels remain one of New Hampshire's stable tourist attractions. The plaque on a rock in the compound placed after the second expedition, reads :
Admiral Byrd Memorial
to All Noble Dogs whose lives were given on dog treks
during the two Expeditions to Little America, Antarctic
to further science and discovery 1928-1930 1933-1935
dedicated October 8, 1935
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Two Tamworth men not now connected with the kennels have Antarctic records. Richard Moulton, trained by Milton Seeley, had the dogs in charge on the third expedition. They remained more than a year and traveled some forty thousand essential miles moving freight. After returning to Chinook Kennels the same dogs went to the Arctic, where Moulton was head of Army Search and Rescue on Baffin Island. With eleven men he set up one of four weather stations in the ice wastelands. During the War he remained with Search and Rescue, in Europe and in various western posts, and traveled in America and Canada buying up sled dogs for the Govern- ment.
Edward Moody was trained as dog driver by Arthur Walden, and had his own kennels with his father Lester Moody who also drove and entered the races. Ed was a mem- ber of the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition, as well as the Search and Rescue work for twenty-two months in Greenland. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor, and a further incident was a medal from the Maternity Society for keeping the cow alive at Little America. This was the only cow in the Antarctic, and Ed was selected as nursemaid no doubt be- cause of a farming background.
Wonalancet had some interesting summer or year-round homes. The Kerrison house had been Dan Tilton's farm- house. Moved uphill to its present location where the view is, its interesting additions and sunken garden are augmented by a large log cabin beautifully built on the Walden principle of construction, hidden in woods. Mrs. Kerrison was an ar- dent craft worker; seven old looms were in the house when it became the Sturtevants'. Dr. Roy Sturtevant had been brought to "Miss Sleeper's" first as a boy, and is probably the oldest continuous summer visitor here.
Professor Clarence Child from the University of Pennsyl- vania took an ancient brookside shack, and summer by sum- mer with a correspondence school manual in one hand and
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a tool or so in the other, converted it into an ingenious cottage. Edward V. McKey, a Scotsman, built by the road as it enters the intervale. His daughter Ellen (Nell) operated for many years a charming summer camp for little girls, with buildings in the woods by the brook. These little girls became mountain climbers, campers, bird-watchers, and nature students mature for their age, through the diversity of interests of their leader. The property is now the summer home of the writers Edgar Ansel Mowrer and Lilian Mowrer from Washington.
Hobart Winkley and his wife from Boston in the old Sanford Gilman place at the uppermost end of the Currier Road were a picturesque riding and driving couple, supporters of all intervale works. "I can still hear," writes Ernest Walker, brother to Walter Walker, "the sure tread of Mr. Winkley's fine horse and the soft slap of finely dressed leather, as that grand old man hailed me when we met on the various trails."
Mrs. Gane's Seven Hearths was built a large house with- out intention, but its music room of perfect acoustics opening on three sides into the woods brought together a surprising number of musicians on Friday mornings for many years. The family were introduced to the intervale from Chicago by their cousin Miss Octavia Dupee, a picturesque character whose cottage was the first for which Miss Sleeper sold land after settling on her farm. Afterward Seward Collins, retired editor of literary magazines, and his wife Dorothea Brande, the writer, brought their library of some thirty-five thousand vol- umes to Seven Hearths with them. After their deaths the property was bought in by a New York book expert, Herbert Goodkind.
From New York also Mrs. Julia Lombard was one of the first to move here and become integrated with the life. She bought the Elbridge Tilton farm after the Tiltons both died, and Ira Tilton's property also became hers after the house burned. Various retired professors or teachers built summer places: Alice Walton, Emily Briggs, the Dwight sis- ters, Stanley and Edith Harkness, Alberta Beall and others.
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An English couple, the Norman Simpsons, retired here. An- other Englishman Walter Jones with his wife took over Wona- lancet Farm after the Waldens had gone from it. Cabins of one sort and another were built inconspicuously in the woods. Ernest Major, a well-known Boston painter, spent long sum- mers in his. The portrait painter Elmer Greene was his stu- dent and worked here with him. William McHenry not only remained in his, but retired here permanently. Ernest Walker lived many years in one of several he built. His daughter raised a family in another. A distinguished entomologist still comes to his.
Of those who remained after the war to become perma- nent features up to today are Whipple Farnum, son of Mrs. Herbert Farnum of Rhode Island who bought the farm of Fred Bickford, now the James Breasted summer home. Whip- ple subsequently acquired the whole Walden intervale land on which to do practical farming. Another war veteran to become a permanent farmer was "Ned" Behr, his mother also perma- nent in Tamworth. Richard Read and his wife from Cam- bridge settled into the old Hannah Wiggin place and brought up a family there, contributing much to the welfare and in- terests of the town. Wonalancet's efficient little Fire Depart- ment is due to "Buzz" Read's initiative.
All these people were but grafts upon the growth that was Wonalancet. The main stock, in spite of the wholesale emigrations of seventy to a hundred years ago and the inevi- table filtering away which still goes on, was strong enough to have kept the poulation indicator reasonably steady all its life. The intervale retains a firm hold upon all, old and new. Of the older can only be noted a few as they stand out in memory.
For instance, Walter Walker was an unforgettable part of everyone's life about the intervale for some fifty years. For twenty-two years he drove the mail, and this in itself tells a story, for he never lost a trip nor got the mail in late. Once when a horse fell in deep snow, he finished the trip with the
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mail on his back. Another time he brought it the six miles from Tamworth on snowshoes. No one's woodlot, well, pipes, roofs, screens, or peculiar housekeeping arrangements were alien to him. He had great ability in all these primary mat- ters. He hauled, dug, secured and mended, sawed and chopped his way into every household, and his opinion was an oracle with his clients. Unlike the typical taciturn Tamworthy his reputation as a voluble talker was second only to his re- putation as the person to send for. Many would testify that in the days of Walter Walker's prime they could hardly have lived a season through without him. His daughter Lillian Bowles has been Wonalancet's faithful postmaster for twenty years.
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