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Stories of Old
Bradford
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Gc 974. 302 B72g 1918841
750 YTF
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00055 6420
Vermont
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
1
Marguerite E Grow
Bradford, Vermont in 1857 from the Town Clock on Saddle Back. (From a lithograph by H. P. Moore of Concord, N. H.)
Stories of Old
Bradford
Marguerite Grow
1918841
Copyright, 1955, by Marguerite Grow Bradford, Vermont
Printed in the United States of America
xing qc-LI-3 - 96190% -OS'L $
To
HOPE ROGERS KJELLERUP
who suggested this book and made it possible by furnishing the ingredients of inspiration, interest, helpful advice and faith in the author
To all of you who helped me to make this book, thank you!
The following people contributed legends or anecdotes upon which some of the stories were based : Mrs. Albert Bailey, Mrs. Fred Doe, Miss Maude Wilson, Mrs. Edward Osgood and Mr. Angier Grow. Four other fine citizens who helped to make this book by contributing anecdotes and who have since slipped away from us were Mrs. Mary Ball, Mr. Harry Everett, Mr. Edward Munn and Mr. Horace Eastman. Their deaths have deprived Bradford of valuable sources of information con- cerning earlier times. Mr. Eastman's ability as a story teller, his remarkable memory, his seemingly inexhaustible fund of information, and his keen sense of humor were invaluable to me in preparing the stories "A Neighborhood Squabble" and "Fun in Great Grandfather's Day", although others also con- tributed to the latter story.
Other people contributed much to the book by generous- ly loaning treasured old pictures. Those who loaned pictures were : Mr. and Mrs. William Spencer, Mrs. Albert Bailey, Mrs. Edward Osgood, Mrs. Eva Waterman, and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Heath. The Vermont Historical Society kindly loaned cut of the Oregon.
I also wish to thank Mrs. Robert Kjellerup for advice, Miss Laura Dickey for help in the library, and the reference librarians of Bellows Falls, St. Johnsbury and the Vermont Historical Society for supplying requested information. Miss Grace McDuffee of Brattleboro, Mrs. Edward Osgood, and Mrs. William Spencer furnished additional information con- cerning their respective families. Mrs. Maitland Jenkins gave information concerning the exact location of the first Method- ist Church.
Many people kindly gave permission to the author to use their names or the names of relatives or ancestors in these stories.
Mr. Clarence Davis of Bradford and Mr. Clifford Patch of Randolph did excellent work in copying very old pictures to send to the engravers.
TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS WHO READ THIS BOOK
Did you ever stop to think what your town and its people were like way back in the days when Bradford was young? These facts and stories of old times interested me so much that I thought some of them might interest you. So I wrote this book in the hope that you might have as much fun in reading it as I have had in writing it for you.
HOW WAITS RIVER WAS NAMED
A hunter staggered out of the woods and slipped and crawled down the banks toward the river that lay south of him. He thought it was the Connecticut River and that he had lost his sense of direction in the woods. But when he had stum- bled down the bank he saw the Connecticut farther over to the east, just where he had thought it should be. The other river came out of the woods from the southwest and flowed toward the Connecticut. This, then, was another river that he hadn't known about before!
The man was very tired and so weak from hunger that he could scarcely walk. He walked humped over and leaning for- ward because that way the hunger pains and cramps in his stomach didn't hurt so much. For an hour now he had been saying to himself, "I will make myself walk to that pine tree over there." When he had reached it he leaned against it, his breath coming in quick, hard gasps that tore at his lungs, as if he had been running a race. After a moment or two he had said to himself, "I will make myself go to that clump of hem- locks" and later "to that clump of willows." He had dragged himself on from one goal to the next saying over and over, "Just one foot before the other." Sometimes he had rested, leaning against his musket. He never sat down. He was afraid if he did he wouldn't have the strength or willpower to get up and go on again. Sometimes he had tripped and fallen from weak- ness. Then he had crawled along for a way on his hands and knees before pulling himself upright again by a tree or bush. He had been in the woods for nearly a month now with nothing much to eat but roots which he had dug from the ground.
It was a bleak, raw day in late October, and the cold wind waved the tatters of the man's faded green, buckskin suit and bit cruelly at the bare skin that showed here and there through the tears and rags of what had once been a fine uni- form. But although he had been numb with cold for days now and had slept night after night in wet, half-frozen clothing, the
* Bibliography - "Northwest Passage", Kenneth Roberts; "History of Bradford", McKeen; "History of Vermont", Collins.
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STORIES OF
man was no longer cold. He was burning up with fever. He would leave the woods where he had hoped to find a deer and go down to the river for a long cool drink, he told himself. Per- haps, too, the water would relieve the cramps.
It was the year 1759. That was six years before any white man had ever settled in what is now Bradford and about eleven years before a village was started here. Except for the land along the Connecticut River which we now refer to as the "meadows" and land here and there that had been cleared by the Indians for growing corn and beans, the town of Bradford and the surrounding towns were still unclaimed wilderness. The nearest settlement was Fort Number 4, where Charles- town, New Hampshire, now stands, about sixty miles to the south.
The man was tall and thin. At a glance one would not have guessed that he was young, scarcely more than a boy. The scratched, hollowed face was covered by several weeks' growth of beard. There were premature streaks of white in the matted dark hair. The sunken, bloodshot eyes that looked dully from their deep, cavernous sockets were the eyes of an old man who has seen and suffered much.
He had come out of the woods and down over the bank from near where Mr. Arthur Peters' house now stands, and he was heading toward the place where Waits River flows into the Connecticut. Only a light powdering of new-fallen snow covered the long tawny grass, but the ground was frozen. The young man's wavering, unsteady feet kept stumbling on the hard, uneven surface. Suddenly he doubled up in a spasm of hunger cramps, stumbled again, and fell. For a long time he lay doubled up on the cold, hard ground while chills and pains wracked his feverish body. Then with fingers blue with cold, he reached for some willow sprouts and tried to pull himself up. Halfway up he fell back again. He just hadn't the strength to rise. He knew he ought to try again, that if he lay there much longer what strength he had left would ebb away and he would probably freeze. He thought of what his leader, Ma- jor Rogers, had said, "A man don't actually need much fodder to keep him agoin'; you kin always go lots further than you think you kin. All you need is to keep up your courage and wanta keep goin'." Other similar things that Rogers had said
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OLD BRADFORD
to prod them on swam around in the youth's tired mind mix- ing together, not making much sense. What did it matter? Nothing mattered. He didn't want to keep going. He just wanted to rest. Even freezing was better than starving. All he wanted was to sink into a deep, endless sleep that would end this horrible nightmare he had been living through for nearly a month.
A month and a half before, he had left Crown Point, an English fort near the foot of Lake Champlain, not far from Lake George, in what is now New York State. He had been a gay, laughing, bragging boy then, wearing gracefully the new bright green buckskin uniform. The Ranger's cocky little green wool Scotch cap with its dangling ribbons had been perched rakishly on his sleek, dark hair. He had enlisted with the English who were trying to drive the French out of the Ohio River Valley.
Both the French and English, who were the ancestors of most of the people who live here now, claimed that land. The French had explored most of the rivers first and built forts along the Ohio and the St. Lawrence. The English had built settlements and cleared the land for farming. The English wanted to keep their homes. But their homes, even down in what is now Massachusetts were not safe because the French kept sending their Indian friends down the St. Lawrence and Connecticut Rivers to destroy them. The French had been kinder and more friendly to the Indians than the English had, so the French had more friends among the Indians, especially among the Algonquins. The Indians came swooping unexpec- tedly down from the French Fort of St. Francis, which was on the St. Lawrence River in what we now call Canada, to burn the Massachusetts villages. The Indians tortured and scalped many men, women, and children. They also captured some of the people, especially women and children, and took them back to their camps as prisoners, often making them walk for a hundred miles through the woods. The French paid the Indi- ans so much for each American or English scalp or head.
Waite, for that was the young soldier's name, had thought it more exciting and adventurous to join the Rangers than to join the regular English army. The English generals had not been trained to fight in the Indian way. Most of them had been
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STORIES OF
trained in England and sent over here by the English King to help the American colonies who were then owned by England. They had been taught to make spendid marches and drills, to form into even lines, battalions, and companies to fight. They looked very grand in their handsome red uniforms, but they were easy targets for the Indians in the surrounding woods. Because they did not understand how to fight Indian fashion, even the best generals often made stupid blunders and lost many men and much land to the French and Indians. So Major Rogers raised several companies of volunteer Ameri- can-born scouts. These brave young men knew how to fight the Indian way, creeping out upon the enemies from behind rocks and trees and surrounding them. They were willing to take long, hard hikes through the woods during which they endured many hardships and discomforts. They often risked their lives in order to spy upon the French and Indians to find out what the French were doing and where they planned to attack the English next. Then the English and American could prepare to defend themselves. Rogers called these scouts or spies "Rangers" which means "wanderers" or "a body of mounted troops who range over a region or patrol tracts of forest."
Waite and his two best friends, Jack and Pete, had joined the Rangers just as they were setting out for Fort St. Francis. In the twenty-two days it had taken them to go through the woods from Crown Point to St. Francis, the boys found out why most men preferred to enlist in the regular British army and stay in camp to dig trenches and ditches or drill. Before they reached St. Francis their feet were blistered, they were exhausted from lack of sleep, and they ached in every muscle. They knew what it was like to wander lost in a big swamp for nine days, to swim rivers, to sleep on the cold ground in wet clothes, to be roused early in the morning before daylight and start marching while they were still numb, sore, and stiff with sleep.
After the burning of St. Francis in which hundreds of French and Indians were killed, the Rangers and their prison- ers started their trip back by way of Lake Memphremagog and the Connecticut River. They could not return the easier path
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OLD BRADFORD
by which they had come because the French were blocking it and lying in wait for them.
Waite learned now what real hardship was. Now they were running away from the French and the Indians who had many more men and were angry because they had lost their fort. The Rangers must find their way through the pathless woods to the Connecticut River and follow the river south to Fort Number 4, a distance of about two hundred miles. There was an old Indian trail on the New Hampshire side of the riv- er, but the Rangers did not dare to follow that because the In- dians would be watching for them there. So they stayed on the pathless Vermont side.
They had nothing to eat each day but a few kernels of corn. It would take them nearly a month to reach Fort No. 4. Some of the men became so hungry that they ate more corn than was rationed for each day so that by the fifth day they had no food left for the rest of their long journey. During the first part of the trip, they could not shoot game or build a fire to cook meat or fish because the Indians would see the smoke from the fire. The French had sent bands. of Indians all through the woods to hunt for them. There were as many as four hundred Indians in one of these bands. If the Rangers tried to eat raw meat, they might become sick and die. Later on, when it seemed safer to risk building a fire the men could not find any game. The Indians had killed or driven it all away. They tried to eat squirrels and owls. But the owls were mostly head and bone. It took more squirrels and owls than they could find to give each of the one hundred and forty-one persons who started out even a bite apiece. The men finally be- came so weak from hunger that they could not even hold their muskets steady to shoot a squirrel. Weeks passed and they never even saw a deer. Once some of them killed a moose, but the Indians heard the shot and captured both the moose and the men who had killed it.
At last the men decided to divide into little groups to see if they would have better luck hunting. Many of the Rangers never reached home. Some of them, including Waite's two friends, Jack and Pete, were killed by the Indians. One group had gone off in another direction and no one knew what had become of it. Two or three had, one at a time, gone crazy
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from suffering and had run away alone into the dark woods to be swallowed up forever. Only those who had stayed in Rog- ers' group had arrived thus far.
"Robert Rogers surely was a wonderful leader!" Waite thought. Had it not been for him, they would all have given up long ago and lain down to starve or freeze. But Rogers, though he was as hungry and miserable as any of them, just wouldn't let them. He made them keep moving. "If you ain't got strength enough left to walk, crawl then, but keep mov- ing !" Waite remembered Rogers saying. When they couldn't find anything else to eat and were about to give up trying, Rogers had made them dig roots for food. He'd shown them how to cook rock tripe and eat it. Rock tripe is the greenish gray crust that you have often seen growing on rock's and ledges. When it is boiled it smells bad. It tastes sickish like stale paste. Waite and his companions had been living on "stuff" like that for days now. It made Waite sick to think of that rock tripe even now.
Lying cold and half-dreaming on the frozen ground, Waite laughed hysterically (the first time he'd laughed for weeks) as fragments of things Rogers had said to them drifted hazily through his numbed mind.
"Oh, 'tain't much farther," Rogers had said in answer to a question. "Just a hundred an' ten miles or so, way the crow flies."
But Rogers was kind and friendly only when the men were straining every muscle to reach the goal. If any of them started to give up, Rogers' eyes flashed fire.
"Come on! Stand up and act like men !"
"I'm just as hungry and tired as the rest of you, but while I got a breath left I aim to keep crawlin'. I promised to get you to Fort Number 4 and I'm agoin' to. When a Rogers gives his word, he means it."
"Stop snivelling there and get to work diggin'. Ain't nobody gonna starve with the ground full o' roots."
"What you fellows got to gripe about ? I said I'd get you there alive, and by gorry, I will! I ain't promised you nuthin'
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OLD BRADFORD
yet I ain't done, have I? But you gotta do your part, too! You gotta brace up and act like Rangers. Anybody who can't act like a man and fight to live ain't gonna stay one of my Rangers long."
One time Rogers had made them think of all the people they'd ever heard of who had gone without food for a long time. Somebody told about the fast ceremony that Indian boys have to go through before they can be considered men and In- dian soldiers or warriors. Somebody said he'd seen Indian boys go ten days without eating. Somebody else said he'd known of Indian children who lived for long times without much to eat except snails and buds and little snakes. Rogers said he thought he had heard that there were people who lived way back in Bible times who went for long times without eating anything at all. Somebody, who had read the Bible a lot, had told the other men about a man in the Bible who had gone without eating or drinking anything for forty days and nights. Rogers had gotten quite excited and happy about that. Waite couldn't think what the fellow's name was who had gone for so long without eating. Forty days! That man surely must have been tough ! Waite didn't believe he could last much long- er without anything at all.
By the sheer force of his personality, grit, and will power, Rogers had gotten them as far as the Wells and the Ammo- noosuc Rivers (where Wells River and Woodsville now stand). They'd been promised that here a big supply of food would be waiting for them. It was to be sent up by canoe from Fort Number 4. So feeble that they could hardly crawl, Waite and his companions had tottered out of the woods after Rogers, their mouths watering at the thought of the approaching feast. But there had been no feast. Not even a trace of food ! Nothing but the dying embers of a campfire, which had been lighted by the men who had brought the food. The cowardly leader of these men had heard Rogers' men stumbling through the woods. He had not believed it possible that any of Rogers' men could still be alive after all this time. He had thought it was Indians coming through the woods. Without waiting to see, the men had jumped back into their canoe and paddled furi- ously down the river, carrying the food with them. When the Rangers reached the campfire, the canoe had gone out of sight.
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STORIES OF
The shots which Rogers fired for distress signals had made the men in the canoe hurry all the faster. They thought the Indians were chasing them!
Waite wondered if any one would ever see Rogers again. The last time Waite had seen him, he and two of his Rangers and a little Indian boy who was too sick from hunger to even sit up were starting down the river on a flimsy little raft. Like the other men who watched from shore, Waite had expected to see the weak make-shift raft fall apart as soon as it got into the current.
The Rangers had worked hard to make this raft, but they had been too tired and weak to make a good one. Not one of them, not even Rogers, had had strength enough left to chop down even small trees. So Rogers had burned the trees down by making fires around the bases of the trees he wanted. In those days there were no matches as matches had not been in- vented, so the Rangers made fire as the Indians did. When the trees were down, they burned them into the needed lengths. They had no nails and no rope, so they tied the trees together with a cord which they had made by breaking off young hazel shoots and weaving them together. It did not seem to Waite that even if such a poor raft should ever reach the great White River falls (at White River Junction) it could possibly shoot the falls and hold together. Then farther down there was another big falls. Even if they planned to walk around these falls, they would never be able to get the raft out of the cur- rent in time to avoid its being sucked into the swirling waters. By this time they were all drowned. Waite was sure of that.
Rogers had promised that he would be back with food in ten days. He had ordered the men left behind to keep on dig- ging roots and hunting. He had promised, and Rogers always kept his promises. That was one thing that made his Rangers love and trust him enough to follow him into any dangers. But even Rogers couldn't always go on keeping promises when there was no way to keep them, and when he was ready to col- lapse himself. After all, Rogers wasn't God. He was human, even if he did seem like a superman at times. No, Rogers would never be back.
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Waite did not know that, even though the first raft had been broken to pieces on the White River Falls, as he had guessed, Rogers had made another raft. At the second falls, the men had let the raft down over the falls and swum ashore, while Rogers, though doubled up with hunger cramps, had swum through the icy, raging water and rescued the raft at the foot of the falls. But it would not have helped much if Waite had known that Rogers and his two men were still safe. He and some of the other men were too far gone to last until Rog- ers could get food back up the river. Every day they dragged themselves out to hunt, but it was no use. They never saw any- thing to shoot. Even the squirrels had run away. In a last des- perate effort to find food, Waite had wandered farther away than usual from the others this morning. He knew he hadn't strength enough left to get back to the others. But after think- ing about Rogers all this time, he couldn't just lie here and die ! Rogers couldn't stand a quitter. As long as Rogers had a breath left he would keep on trying. All right he, Waite, was one of Rogers' Rangers, wasn't he? Slowly Waite inched his way along the frozen ground. The first requirement of a Ranger was loyalty. Waite found his musket where he had dropped it and tried to lift it. It seemed too heavy to lift. The best way a Ranger could show his loyalty was to copy the courage and bravery of his leader. Painfully he dragged himself to his knees, lifting the musket.
Just then he saw a slight movement among the young wil- low trees by the edge of the river. Waite rubbed his eyes un- believingly. Slowly, gracefully, a deer glided out of the willow thicket and began to drink from the river. Where the deer had come from, how long it had been there. Waite didn't know. Was this just a part of his dream, his nightmare? Was he just "seeing things". the way thirsty people sometimes thought they saw a pond in the burning wastes of a desert?
The deer moved, and the sunlight glinted on its smooth, sleek body. The sight of those splendid curving antlers, and rippling warm brown body sent a trembling thrill through Waite's own numb body. Slowly, scarcely breathing. he lifted the musket in his weak trembling hands and took aim. Nothing seemed real. He was living in a dream.
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Suddenly a loud bang broke the unreal stillness. It echoed up and down the frosty river valley carrying hope to starving men. The deer started, turned, crumpled swiftly. Waite knelt, holding the smoking musket in his hands, unable to move. Then he fired a quick volley of signals to his listening friends.
They found him skinning the dead deer. Some of them sobbed with joy. After they had eaten what they needed and divided some for their packs, Waite hung the rest of the deer up on a tree beside the river.
"Even if Rogers comes back and brings food, the other party of men may not find their way back to that food or get there in time. If they should happen to come this way they will find the deer meat."
It happened that later on the other men did come this way. They had given up hope. The meat saved their lives. Carved into the bark of the tree upon which the deer hung, they found the name "Waite". Gratefully they named the riv- er "Waits River."
Later, when people began to think of settling here, they named the land Waitstown.
Years later, the name was changed to Bradford, but Waits River still bears the brave Ranger's name.
INDIAN STORIES
The Oxbow
"Did Indians really once live where we do?" Patsy in- quired of the kindly old man who was their neighbor.
"Yes. The Indians were here long before white men. After the old French War, they still came here during the summer to grow corn and beans on the meadow. They especially liked the Oxbow meadow in Newbury.
"There's a story, too, about how the white men came to get the Oxbow. A Mr. Johnson lived near the Bradford-New- bury line then. He was quite friendly with the Indian Chief. Mr. Johnson had a yoke of oxen. He was mighty proud of those oxen, too.
"One day the Indian chief came to Mr. Johnson and said, 'Mr. Johnson, I had an awful dream last night !'
" 'Yes? What did you dream?' asked Mr. Johnson.
" 'I dreamed you gave me one of your oxen, so that my starving people could have meat.'
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