USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 1
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Gc 974.302 R59L 1838640
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 3172
HISTORY -
OF THE TOWN OF
ROCKINGHAM VERMONT
INCLUDING THE VILLAGES OF
BELLOWS FALLS, SAXTONS RIVER, ROCKINGHAM, CAMBRIDGEPORT AND BARTONSVILLE
1907-1957
WITH
FAMILY GENEALOGIES
By MRS. FRANCES STOCKWELL LOVELL and MR. LEVERETT C. LOVELL
AM
E
R
O TOWN MEETING HOUSE -178;
M
R
ONT
·
SET
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T
N.
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PUBLISHED BY THE TOWN BELLOWS FALLS, VERMONT
1958
Copyright, 1958 by FRANCES S. and LEVERETT C. LOVELL and the TOWN OF ROCKINGHAM, VT. All rights reserved.
1838640
To all who have helped to write this book; to their children and my children and all who come after them; to the people of Rockingham; this book is dedicated.
Foreword
The choice of Frances Stockwell Lovell as the second his- torian for the Town of Rockingham was a good one. Not only is she one of Vermont's best known writers but a native and life-long resident. Her interest in history and the family trees of Rockingham's oldest families has made this new history of the Town of Rockingham, bringing up to date that written by Lyman S. Hayes and published in 1907, a fascinating book that will be read avidly by present inhabitants and handed down through future generations. The author devoted the past five years to gathering the many details that in some cases will surprise readers and in all cases hold their interest.
A few words of introduction to the author are in order since her modesty prevented her from including an account of herself in this book. Friends know her as a close observer of the world about her and many know her best through her weekly column, "The Country Woman" which has been published by the Vt. Newspaper Corporation for the past 15 years. Her wonder at the beauties of nature, her unquenchable enthusiasm for all things great and small, her interest in sharing her experi- ences, have made her comments on her life in Rockingham a history in themselves.
The author is most widely known as a poet and it was from a rock on Oak Hill, with the village at her feet, that she com- posed her first poems as a girl. After she began selling her verse, she broadened out with short stories, juveniles and fea- ture articles and in the past 30 years has sold hundreds to maga- zines and newspapers, a field in which she is still very active. She has written several one-act plays for local production and her writing remains fresh and up-to-the-minute in interest. On the other extreme, she has done many humorous articles for the Boston Globe. Among other publications in which her stores, articles and poems have appeared are the New York Herald-Tribune, Christian Herald, American Home, Christian Science Monitor, Vermont History, Yankee Magazine, New England Homestead and Catholic Home Journal. In 1940 she represented Vermont at the New York World's Fair with her poem APPLE WOOD. At various times she has won state, national and international honors.
She is a member of the Vermont Historical Society, National League of American Pen Women, charter member of the League of Vermont Writers and an organizer of the Poetry Society of
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Vermont. She graduated from Bellows Falls High School, Class of '15, taught school and studied creative writing at the University of New Hampshire summer school.
We commend this book to you, the citizens of Rockingham, as a part of your heritage. Use it for the valuable information it contains and the relaxation it will provide as you relive "the good old days."
Roland W. Belknap
There is something special and authentic about a genuinely local product, whether it is wine, cheese or a piece of writing, which cannot be imitated by an outsider trying, be it ever so cleverly, to get the same flavor. All through her successful years of writing as an author, Frances Lovell has written about her neighbors, whose life stories she has felt as if they were her own. And for years the neighbors and friends have enjoyed the inimitable "quality" of her work, coming, as it does, from her closeness to them and her first-hand knowledge of the perspective of life as she and they know it. Their own lives have become more interesting to them because of her sharing neighborliness.
What a pity it is that so many facile story tellers do not follow her example but waste their efforts on themes which neither they nor their readers can really feel! The huge, feature- less public they are trying to reach is longing for the savory flavor distilled from personal experience. If such a distillation were to be met with more often in newly published books, well, our huge, scattered and alas, occasionally flat life, would become greatly the richer.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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Introduction
When I married and came to this house to live in 1918, I found that I was living on hallowed ground. Never especially interested in local history, I found that I was sitting on top of it, on land settled by my husband's pioneer ancestors. Across the road from my house was a log cabin, probably the last one in town. In the lot at the foot of Sand Hill, north of today's Liquidometer plant, were once "house Lotts" 1 and 2 in the town of Rockingham, alloted to Michael (Mical) Lovell, grantee, about 1756 who also owned and operated the first saw mill in town. This land was Lovell land in the beginning and while it has been in and out of the family, it is again Lovell land, the land of pioneers in spite of drive-in moves and lumber mills but which lies today under the shadow of a great Thruway across its fields.
History was all about me and I early discovered the thrill of standing by old cellar holes and on brush-grown roads. Years later I found a hand-blown glass inkwell in the rubble of Michael's log cabin which had later become a steam saw mill, which we carted away the cellar rocks to make mowing and corn fields. Could this crude piece of glass have been used at the proprietors' meetings here so long ago? I put it on my desk. The homes of the five brothers who came up from Massachusetts with Michael, were built through the woods on what is now the main highway. We always call them the Elijah Lovell place, the Oliver Lovell place, etc., no matter who lives there now. This land has always fascinated me. Perhaps that is why I agreed to write this book. But without the help of my husband, who did the statistical research; his patience in hearing me read each chapter, his suggestions and corrections, his "remember- ings" of other days, this work would have been almost impossible.
Several interesting tales of people and places were gathered by members of the social science class of Miss Elizabeth Hunt at high school who all wanted to help. My thanks goes to them and to the many, many people who patiently answered ques- tions, looked up data and "remembered" things. It is im- possible to list them all but each one, each organization, has had a share in the writing of this history which covers, broadly, the past fifty years. Important events, not covered by Mr. Hayes in his book, have been included when pertinent to other subjects. All material, unless otherwise designated, has been taken from
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the files of the Bellows Falls Times and those of the late L. S. Hayes, from stories and data furnished by individuals or from the author's own experience. The card file and historical scrapbooks in the town clerk's office, the world of Mrs. Imogene Parker Downing and Mrs. Alice Cady, have been of great help. A committee consisting of Walter Hadley and Mrs. B. P. O'Connor assisted in the selection of pictures to be used.
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Table of Contents
Page
CHAPTER I PEOPLE OF ROCKINGHAM: Home Life and Standards of Living; Racial Backgrounds; Population; Progress. 1
CHAPTER II TIME LINE OF HALF A CENTURY : A Record of Local Events Collated with State, National and World Happen- ings; The Centennial, 1953. 15
CHAPTER III INDUSTRIES AND FINANCE. 46
CHAPTER IV RETAIL BUSINESS: Merchants and Tradesmen, their Interests and Activities. 88
CHAPTER V TOWN, VILLAGE AND FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS AND
DEPARTMENTS. 115
CHAPTER VI ORGANIZATIONS 140
CHAPTER VII SCHOOLS AND EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS. 171
CHAPTER VIII AMUSEMENTS AND RECREATIONS OF HALF A
CENTURY. 193
CHAPTER IX TRAVEL :Roads, Bridges, Railroads and Airplanes. 215
CHAPTER X CHURCH HISTORIES. 239
CHAPTER XI OTHER VILLAGES IN THE TOWN OF ROCKINGHAM. 255 CHAPTER XII DISASTERS: Floods, Fires, Earthquakes, Hurri- canes. 293
CHAPTER XIII CREATIVE ARTS. 316
CHAPTER XIV AGRICULTURE. 340
CHAPTER XV Two WORLD WARS AND A COLD WAR. 357
CHAPTER XVI MISCELLANEOUS. 391
CHAPTER XVII TOWN OFFICERS: THE PROFESSIONS. 417
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INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
PRECEDING PAGE 1 Mrs. Frances Stockwell Lovell, Co-Author Leverett C. Lovell, Co-Author J. Emerson Kennedy, Chairman, Board of Selectmen Loren L. Davis, Selectman Earl E. Osgood, Selectman Cecil A. Bissonnette, Municipal Manager Almon I. Bolles Dr. James Sutcliffe Hill
PRECEDING PAGE 17 Justice Warner A. Graham Judge T. E. O'Brien P. B. Leen B. P. O'Connor Charles N. Vilas
PRECEDING PAGE 49 Lieutenant Colonel Donald A. Brown Mr. and Mrs. L. T. Lovell
George F. Kent Stephen J. Cray Walter B. Glynn Log Jam at Bellows Falls
PRECEDING PAGE 65
Vermont Farm Machine Company Building Vermont News Corporation, Bellows Falls Times Building
Saxtons River Inn
Saxtons River Woolen Mill
Warner Home-Saxtons River
Vermont Academy Athletic Field
Street Railway Station Saxtons River Fire Station
PRECEDING PAGE 81 Old Morgan House School Street Connecticut River 1927 Flood (2) 1936 Flood (3)
PRECEDING PAGE 97 Thanksgiving Bazaar Stone Mill at Cambridgeport 1936 Flood September, 1938 Hurricane (2) Main Street, Saxtons River Wheeler Band Bellows Falls High School Team
PRECEDING PAGE 129 Dwelling at Lovell Park L. T. Lovell & Son, Office Winter Street Railway Scene Atkinson Street Henry and Atkinson Streets Bellows Falls Fair Bellows Falls Firemen
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PRECEDING PAGE 145 Early Bellows Falls Square Bellows Falls Square 1957 Armory Barber Park (4) Liquidometer
PRECEDING PAGE 177 Recent Aerial View of Bellows Falls Early View of Bellows Falls Saxtons River School Before Addition Former Atkinson Street School Central Elementary School
PRECEDING PAGE 193 Postal Employees U. S. Post Office Bellows Falls Creamery Rockingham Hospital Mrs. Hetty Green Residence of Hetty Green New Rockingham Swimming ICenter Minards Pond
PRECEDING PAGE 305 Bellows Falls High School St. Charles School Saxtons River School With Addition
Bellows Falls Country Club Masonic Temple Bartonsville Covered Bridge Warroll Covered Bridge
PRECEDING PAGE 321 Rockingham Depot Covered Bridge Hall Covered Bridge Jones Covered Bridge Arch Bridge Saxtons River Winter Scene
Tucker Toll Bridge New Bridge at Saxtons River
PRECEDING PAGE 401 Rockingham Meeting House Old South Meeting House Mennonite Church Baptist Church Episcopal Church Christian Science Society Congregational Church, Cambridgepor t United Church
PRECEDING PAGE 417 Catholic Church at Saxtons River Universalist Church Sacred Heart Catholic Church St. Charles Catholic Church Christ's Church at Saxtons River Congregational Church at Saxtons River Rockingham Town Library Town Hall
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MRS. FRANCES STOCKWELL LOVELL Co-Author of Town History
LEVERETT C. LOVELL Co-Author of Town History
J EMERSON KENNEDY Chairman Board of Selectmen
LOREN L. DAVIS Selectman
EARL E. OSGOOD Selectman
CECIL A. BISSONNETTE Town Manager
ALMON I. BOLLES
DR. JAMES S. HILL
History of Rockingham 1907-1957
CHAPTER I
PEOPLE OF ROCKINGHAM; HOME LIFE AND STANDARDS OF LIVING; RACIAL BACKGROUNDS; POPULATION; PROGRESS
It would be difficult to describe the passage of fifty years with all the changes which have taken place, in this town or any town. The story of the town itself will have to do that, as it spins out in a long ribbon over the years, a ribbon comprised of old books and diaries, old papers and records and the remi- niscences of people who "remember when." To those who were young, fifty years ago, it is easy to recall when Rockingham was a horse and buggy town, when buckboards and surreys raised clouds of dust on summer roads, went hub-deep into spring mud and were exchanged for sleighs hung with buffalo robes for five months of the year.
It was a day of family life around the piano instead of television; of picnics on the hill with clam chowder cooked beside the brook; of trips made "shank's mare" or buggy rides into nearby woods instead of long-distance automobile trips; of vacations with a surrey and two horses. It was a day when good movies were a once-a-year occasion and everyone bought tickets to Howe's Moving Pictures in the Opera House which always included Vesuvius in action and, "by special request," ended with a runaway train and you on it which crashed into the station accompanied by a pistol shot behind the scenes. Fathers may have had peptic ulcers then as now but they prob- ably did not last as long. Youth stayed at home and read more books. The "funny papers" on Sunday were really funny, not malicious or salacious. Life was slower and while "the good old days" had their drawbacks, they also laid claim to quite a few advantages.
In fifty years, the standards of living have changed ex- tensively, influenced by the fluctuation of the dollar bill and by modern science. A hundred years ago it was suggested that the United States Patent Office be closed because people thought that nothing more could ever be invented. Today about 168 patents are granted on new inventions every twenty-four hours,
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HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM
inventions which make the life of mankind still easier. It would doubtless be interesting to be around here in another hundred years.
At the turn of the century, a phrase which may become over-worked in this book, housecleaning was a twice-a-year chore with the house turned upside down and the men staying downtown for dinner at the Hotel Rockingham or at Mrs. Willis' Restaurant and Oyster Saloon on Canal Street. Mother and the hired girl had the pictures and sofa cushions all out on the front porch and the lace curtains on the stretchers in the back yard, brooms and turkey-wing dusters raised a fog of dust like a forest fire. Mattresses were carried downstairs on un- willing male backs and beaten on the front lawn.
Then came the carpet men, two Civil War Veterans, Burn- ham and Smith. O. E. Burnham was tall and Smith was short and lame. Between them, they took care of most of the carpets in town, carrying them over to the mill lot, now Williams Street and where once a sluiceway carried logs from the river to the saw mill. They laid the carpets flat on the grass and beat them with long poles. The women hung them over clotheslines for this smothering operation. The men charged sixty cents for putting down a "carpet and tacks" according to an old bill for three carpets for a dollar and half including "cleaning papers," which price included whacking the carpet on the mill lot. These ubiquitious gentlemen also shoveled snow from your porch for ten cents or a big snow for a quarter.
Fifty years ago people were reading such magazines as Munsey, Argosy, Pearson's, The Designer, Frank Leslie's Monthly and Lippincott's with young folks perusing St. Nicholas and The Youth's Companion. There were a few like Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly which have survived the years. In 1912 people found their big excitement in traveling shows at the Opera House where Billy the Boy Artist came to life and the musical extravanganza of the Crystal Ball was on the boards for April. The TIMES carried as much fiction as fact with George Barr Mccutcheon's stories running in serial form. It also carried a page for boys and girls and one labeled "Literary News," endeavoring to keep the minds of the community on a high level with Kipling and Ellis Parker Butler. Mary E. Spring, a local woman, did a parody on Kipling's FEMALE OF THE SPECIE which was entirely derogative to the male.
It was the day of the Glenwood Range at George Albee's plumbing store, that big square-built kitchen stove with a hot water tank attached to the back and a warming oven which reached halfway to the ceiling and worked with a sliding door. This lacked the curlicues and ornamentation of the old McGee Range but with either of them, grandma had chilblains all winter unless-and sometimes IF- she sat with her feet in the
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HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM
oven. Bodine's ran a close second with the Crawford Range which held a hod of coal and one of ashes at the same time.
Men wore "fast-dyed" derby hats which probably would not run in the rain if their owners did and three-inch collars to hold up their chins. Parlors had begun to go out of style forty years ago but every sitting room was still hung with stiff lace curtains and now fitted up with mission or "fumed oak" furni- ture as it was also called, that sturdy stuff built on square lines and guaranteed to outlast several generations of children. The Victorian marble-topped tables and heavy dressers were fading from the scene (to be rehabilitated forty years later). Bead portieres were “ A brownish "oatmeal" wallpaper become popular-and practical if you had children. People took Scott's Emulsion for tuberculosis and for neuralgia they relied upon Sloan's Liniment-and still do. Children wore Educator shoes in 1910 and Buster Brown collars, those over- sized starched affairs which held up the defenseless throat of the wearer in a vice-like grip. Buster, the hero of the Sunday papers, also gave his name, like Davy Crockett, to other utili- tarian things like long black stockings which were worn all the year around. There was skating on Morgan's Field where you screwed clamp skates to your shoes and stumbled around on frozen feet.
Ladies wore pillow muffs and water-proof traveling coats which had "snap, dash and go," and petticoats furbished with yards of "hamburg" embroidery including a dust ruffle and hung with ribbon bows. Little girls balanced precariously, the Merry Widow hats of their betters, crowded with ribbons, buckles, bows, flowers and feathers, as like as not, all on one head piece. By 1912 smart people were fashioning their own hats from "in- triguing shapes" or buying them from a pile stacked up like so many lampshades which they resembled in more ways than one. A lady could choose her own ribbon decoration to adorn her chapeau but she was always likely to meet herself around every corner.
Ivory pyralin was the smart thing in toilet sets in 1915 and it was smarter yet to have them monogrammed. That they would turn yellow in course of time, was not mentioned by the Corner Drug Store which also sold Dr. Humphrey's Homeopathic remedies These little round bottles went by numbers and there was a number for every ailment of the human race. Few families dared to go through the winter without No. 7 for "coughs, colds and bronchitis." Even with the new Perfection Oil Stove, everyone had colds although ladies' skirts clung to their ankles exposing no whit of their rainbow colored hosiery. Ruf- fles glamorized their hips and hats were cart wheels, an impedi- ment to those behind you at the "moving pictures."
By 1918 men were wearing fur driving coats which became
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HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM
the popular raccoon coats of the college football games. It was in the daring pre-Nineteenth Amendment days, as women began to toss off the yoke, that a few brave souls walked into barber shops-probably by the back door-and had their hair bobbed in the "Castle Clip," the accepted mode of Irene, the dancer. In the 20's, many a young lady still heated a curling iron over a lamp chimney, especially if she lived in the country, or used an electric iron to twist the wash-boardy waves into her hair. Permanent waves had come in twenty years before but the price, $250, was prohibitive and the torture eight hours long. Hair was also long and the waving gadgets looked like Blue Beard's Chamber when Charles Nessler invented the Nestle Wave in 1905 after noticing how a wet clothesline curled up when it dried. As the price came down, kid curlers, rags and even chicken bone curlers, went out the door. But it was a long time until 1930 and the cold wave from which today's home permanents derive. (McCall's Magazine, May, 1955.)
Along with cloche hats in 1924, came the new brain-twister, the crossword puzzle. The hats, it is said, were copied from grandma's glass dome on her parlor table under which reposed her precious waxworks, artificial flowers or stuffed birds. The crossword probably derived from a mind with an I. Q. like the Empire State building. The sugar bucket hats helped if you didn't have time to comb your hair before you went shopping; nothing showed but a spit curl pasted alluringly on one cheek. Dresses were long but lost their fullness until the hobble skirt had to be slit up the front so that one could walk at all. Women wore Dorothy Dodd shoes, built, like those of her husbands' Heywood boots, on long, sleek greyhound lines. Goodnow, Jewett & Bishop could sell you your whole wardrobe and gave away a free article with everything you bought.
Oil stoves were swiftly coming into their own. Women suddenly looked askance at the kitchen behemoth which threw out pulsating waves of heat all summer. Bodine's Perfection had a fast rival in Fenton & Hennessey's Florence stove as cooler cooking became the watchword even in the summer kitchen which took the heat from one room and put it out in the back shed. Everyone burned Socony kerosene in their stoves and Socony gasoline in their cars.
It was 1926 before ice boxes began to be electrified, literally, for Bodine's first venture in the Frigidaire business was to advertise to change over your old ice chest to an electric box. The good old Glenwood came out with a gas attachment and the Hoosier kitchen cabinet appeared on the market, a boon to housewives with cold pantries or "butt'ries."
When the Depression years approached in '28 with a short- age of everything including cloth, women's skirts climbed up to their knees as they did again in the '40's as a war-time measure
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HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM
although some insist that the brief skirts were intended to in- crease the birth rate. Radios were here to stay which seemed the epitome of miracles since air ships now actually remained up in the air after those abortive attempts of a couple of brothers named Wright in 1905 when half an hour off the ground spelled success.
Fifty years ago spring meant the hand organ man and his monkey who collected pennies in his red cap from the children who danced to the gay tunes. It meant the scissors grinder who also mended umbrellas, ringing his bell through the streets- although of course it might have been the auction bell of Frank Phelps as he advertised a sale at his secondhand shop on School St. It meant O. M. Baker and his tin cart hung with brooms and pails and double boilers and eager women running out with their bulging rag bags to exchange for his wares. It meant arbutus beside the Pond Road in April and chestnuts in the same place in October. The gates on the road had to be carefully closed behind you or someone's cows would get out.
Today parking meters, not cows and gates, are one of the chief problems of the town fathers. There are never enough no matter how many are added. Forty-five years ago the Board of Trade was urged to put in more hitching posts so that every farmer or out-of-towner would not have to patronize the livery stables which were expensive. Local people evidently "lit and tied" at the granite posts, a problem which has its prototype with meters today. Many people used to tie their horses in the old sheds behind the several churches, the Congregational sheds being the most popular as nearest to the Square. These were on churchland but owned by various individuals most of whom were no longer on earth. In a state of disrepair, it was suggested by J. C. Day that perhaps those who wished to use them, might be willing to contribute toward their upkeep and that he was ready to accept contributions. But the increasing use of cars evidently put an end to the old horse sheds and the question involved. However, additional hitching posts were erected in 1919 and long after they had all been removed, one post was kept intact in front of Howard Hardware for use of the occasional horse. Chief patron of this was Arthur Wells of Cold River, farmer and engineer, who could never be induced to exchange his nag for the unpredictable "gasoline buggy." In 1936 the first parking laws went into effect.
Parking meters came next, going to work on May 8, 1948, the opening day, as it happened, of the annual convention of the Vermont Federation of Women's Clubs which took place in Bellows Falls that year. It made for general confusion as the town fathers had not figured out a method of making allowances for convention visitors and several of the ladies, perhaps who had never met a meter before or who had been on the lecture
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HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM
platform, found tickets on their cars and took a walk around the corner to the police station. It had a dampening effect on the convention.
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