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THE VALLEY O THE KEDRON
MARY GRACE CANFIELD
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THE VALLEY OF
THE KEDRON
Istock Jo. W
Ver mont
MARY GRACE CANFIELD
The Valley of
the Kedron
THE STORY OF THE SOUTH PARISH, WOODSTOCK, VERMONT
Drawings by Muriel A. Thomas
PUBLISHED BY KEDRON ASSOCIATES SOUTH WOODSTOCK, VT.
Copyright 1940 by Kedron Associates
Manufactured in the U.S.A. by H. Wolff, New York
Goodspeed - $5.00
Foreword
1206095
YEARS AGO I rode down into the Valley of the Kedron, through high hills, with great thunder-clouds rearing over the mountain pastures. Babs was with me on her white pony, and the collie paced beside us; we had ridden up from Cape Cod, looking at farms, but all the time we knew we were heading for Woodstock. Friends had told us about it, though they had never mentioned "South Village"; we did not know it existed. In a week it was to become our home.
The thunderheads were purple now, and lined with silver. We stopped and stared. What a valley! What a view! Down we rode, passing farms with their red barns, then turning into the little village of South Woodstock. A stream babbled, coming in from meadows and running beside the houses, the sun suddenly went under a cloud, and everything darkened; but ahead of us was an old, arching stone bridge-and the Kedron Tavern! welcome sight. Its whitewashed barn, with a row of brilliant nas- turtiums climbing up its front, sat across a plot of grass; we bolted in at the barn door just as the rain came down in torrents.
The host ran to greet us, there were stalls for weary beasts; for a whole week we stayed at the Tavern and never
V
vi
Foreword
in Woodstock at all. The Valley was too lovely. And a mile back in the hills we found our farm.
It was perfect riding-country; a sweet country to live in. One never tired of it. The hills are the homelike sort. There are clear brooks and wild, woodland or upland roads-with traces of lilacs and maples, of old stone walls, marking the site of early habitations. The earth of the back roads is brown and rich and looks as if one should grow radishes in it. Never were such sweet peas as we raised in our garden that summer; we ate meals on the terrace, lis- tened to birds, watched the stars and the moonrise, for there was hardly a mosquito. On a rare, breathless after- noon we sometimes brought one or two up the hill with us, on our horses' stomachs! but we were very indignant when that happened.
The wooded hills curved down to the valley. Even doing an errand in our village was a pleasure. We followed the bend of our little brook; it soon joined a larger one and took us down with it, via views of meadow, spire, and roof, to the bowered red-and-white of the village. We left the stone bridge and rode on-past the Grange Hall, the white-trimmed houses with their small gardens, to the vil- lage store. There the mail would be awaiting us; or, if one were merely riding, different roads branched from the ends of the village street.
Alluring roads! high up over the hills, with views quite as glorious as the one of the Valley we had first fallen in love with: friendly little farms, endless variety of roadside and roadside flowers, of woodland with moss and ferns; of far, far prospect with blue hills rimming it-often with Ascutney lifting its great purple bump intimately before
vii
Foreword
you. (Ascutney is our nearest mountain.) From some of the hilltops, from our favorite ridge road, we saw the Killington range. Our own pasture-top gave us White Mountains, pale blue in the east, Killington and Pico under the sunset.
We often rode there, camping on the way-at any season, even in nippy autumn, a glorious trip; as Babs wrote, in her poem "Riding Home at Dark"-
Warmed by leaping flame, Cooled by dim, dark valleys- A fiery planet over dark trees, The smell of frozen flowers- Ah, my hills! Never the same, never forgot.
A grand life for a child. Babs grew up sturdy and strong, training ponies in summer, riding in winter on the packed snow-for winter, in our Valley, is beautiful beyond belief. A lone elm in a snowy field, tinted with sunset, ice-storms glittering under the moon; rosy dawn on the snowy pas- tures-the convenient winter dawn that you're up in time to see.
Autumns are splendid, anywhere in Vermont; to us there was nothing lovelier than the way our own trees turned, or the melody of the Village under its shower of gold and scarlet. It was always different; and in spring the shad- bloom was white upon the hills, beside the purple of birch- twigs, the red, the pinkish-rose and yellow of the maple- blossoms. A surprising lot of color; and when the blood- root came, in woods and pastures!
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Foreword
Little cups of white, Prodding your way Out of the brown, snow-flattened grass, I blessed you, For you gave hope Of the melting of the snows.
To make you possible The brooks roared, And the hills turned blue, The wood-tops pink and thick, The hot sun shone, And I rode about with joy in my heart, On that April day.
Presently the last drift went from cold, shady spots on the hillsides, and the miracle, the pageant of tiny leaf began; the great rushing of the brooks. As we listened to it one evening, Babs called it "The Spring Break-Up at Night":
It is all so big, No words of mine Can catch its tender tranquillity. . . her poem begins.
It seemed as if it couldn't be as lovely anywhere else; as we often said, returning from a riding-trip, "Isn't it nice to come back and find that it's just as lovely at home?"
It was. And that was one of the reasons why we loved South Woodstock. Not only for what it has patiently done, in past days, but for what it inherently, livably is-in hill- side and valley. It deserves to have its History written: I . am thrilled, for instance, to find (what I never knew be- fore) that our farmhouse was built in 1783! Mrs. Canfield
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Foreword
has spent much time and research on this History, going over every one of the town Records, and giving us, there- fore, an account that is not only graphic and readable, but accurate. We are most grateful to have it.
ANNE BOSWORTH GREENE April 18, 1940.
٠,
Contents
Foreword PAGE
V
I Some Reasons for this Book 3
II It Did Not Happen 9
III Creation of Woodstock 18
IV Early Roads and Homes 50
V The Literary Fraternity 116
VI Woodstock Social Library 131
VII Social Life and Other Items 140
VIII South Parish Schools 160
IX The Green Mountain Liberal Institute 172
X Churches in the South Parish 198
XI Items of Interest 220
XII Industries of the South Parish 254
XIII Family Portraits 274
XIV A Final Word 314
xi
List of Illustrations
PAGE
Kedron River Bend-in Village
7
Main Street, South Woodstock
13
A Kedron Village Landscape
21
Act of Confiscation
facing page 24
Deed to Jonathan Farnsworth land
facing page 26
Ruth Tilden Wood
62
House built by Jabez Cottle
65
The Kedron Tavern
71
Photo of Kedron Tavern
facing page
72
House built by Jabez Cottle
75
Uncle Carleton Morgan
77
Kedron Tavern
83
Melvin Holt, Owner of Tavern
facing page 84
Home built by Richard Ransom
85
Jar from South Woodstock Pottery
87
Brick House built in the 1850S
89
The Tom Boyd House
93
Gaius Perkins, Otis Wood and Nellie Kenyon
facing page 96
Gaius Perkins' Home
105
Congregational Meeting House-built 1792
xiii 107
xiv
List of Illustrations
PAGE
Old Court House of Woodstock and The West Meeting House 109
Title page of the Constitution
facing page 116
Part of the Constitution and Signers of The Literary Fraternity
facing page 118
Members of The Literary Fraternity
facing page 122
Compact of the Woodstock Social Library
facing page 132
The Kendall Hoadley Home
141
Doorway of an Old Farm House
143
The Perkins Green Mountain Institute
177
Photo of Green Mountain Institute
facing page 196
Once a Ransom Store, then the Green Vestry 209
The Universalist Chapel 213
Universalist Chapel Society
facing page 216
Chapel Society List of Rules and Donations
between pages 219 and 220
Pond which Covered the Meadow 255
Old Flour Mill on the Kedron
257
Stone Bridge, South Village
259
An Ancient Sawmill
The Third Store built by the Ransoms, 1822 269
271
The Kingsley Home 281
Home of Dr. Drew: Pioneer Physician
285
Mary Grace Canfield 310
Stone Bridge over the Kedron 312
House built by Warren Cottle 317
A Village Stairway 319
CHAPTER I
Some Reasons for This Book
TWO HISTORIES of the town of Woodstock published in the 1880's have been written by the late Swan Dana. Only a few copies of the first one were printed but that is the one which contains the most valuable information about the South Parish. It is large and unwieldy in size but important historically. When the decision was reached that several family trees of the North Parish people should be included in the book, many an important item of the South Parish was omitted. Had there been two volumes printed instead of one, all of these facts could have been preserved. I have read with care two books of that first edition which have written on many margins the word "Omit," and most of this omitting, in the second printing, affected our South Parish and its history.
It is the prime purpose of this book to preserve as far as possible the names of the early settlers, to show their ways of life and to make the region really live. Old diaries, scrapbooks, family records, reports of the town meetings beginning with 1772, records of deeds from 1779, road surveys from the same time, old account books, some of them beginning with June 1792, newspaper files, docu- ments saved by careful families, all these have been grist
3
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The Valley of the Kedron
to my mill. I have interviewed every available person in the community whose ancestors settled in the South Par- ish and have written dozens of letters to descendants far away. For many months the search has gone on and I know only too well that the result is not complete and while again and again I have tried to verify names and dates, I make no claim for perfection. This job of digging into the past is not easy. Many people know only the names of fathers and mothers and their grandparents and not always do they know from whence they came.
In addition to the reading of all the town records men- tioned and the old newspapers, I have read Hiland Hall's "History of Vermont," B. H. Hall's "The History of Eastern Vermont," Slade's "State Papers," Wardner's "The Birth Place of Vermont," Thompson's old "Gazetteers," the three volume "History of Vermont" by the late Professor Walter Crocket of the University of Vermont, Child's "Gazetteer of Windsor County," the "Windsor County History," the rec- ords of the Academy, of the Universalist Chapel, minutes of the various organizations which once flourished in the South Parish, and have also read multitudes of articles which careful people have preserved. I found the reading of the old town records a difficult task, being often compelled to use a magnifying glass. I have tramped abandoned roads to find the cellar holes of the homes of pioneers, for I want to have a clear understanding of their habitations. The many graveyards in the South Parish have yielded their information for I have read the names on all the stones. For one year I have given my waking hours to research and writing and have dreamed of it all, many a night. I have been so utterly absorbed in it, that the reading of the
5
Some Reasons for this Book
daily papers and the books I like to read have been utterly pushed aside. The South Parish and its history have been with me all the time. I have gathered much information which cannot be used in this book. Many note books fairly bulge with facts which are full of interest.
The pen-and-ink drawings by Miss Muriel Thomas of England, which appear, showing some of the fine archi- tectural constructions of the buildings, add greatly to the value of the book. The photographic reproductions of a few men and women are also of value, as are the maps.
The men of the South Parish helped to organize this town, they held all sorts of offices from Moderator to State Senator. They helped to organize the school system, they built churches, they had their literary organizations and their library. They sent many boys to college. The records of graveyards and tomb societies are unique and revealing. The sturdy group of men protesting worn-out creeds a hundred and twenty-five years ago, is significant that they were thinking. The building of the Liberal Institute is a tale of heroism and devotion to fine ideals.
When we came to Woodstock in August 1902 my hus- band preached once in two weeks in the Universalist Chapel in the South Parish and at the same time preached every Sunday in the North Chapel. This he continued to do for nearly fourteen years. The audience then South was made up largely of men and women who had been students of the Institute. They had vivid memories of the teachers and students and they showed in their thinking and conversation the intellectual stimulus under which they had been brought up. They were keen listeners of the minister's messages, they liked to talk over the ser-
6
The Valley of the Kedron
mons. All this attentiveness on their part had a stimulating and inspiring effect on their pastor.
In quotations from the old records I have kept the capital letters, observed their lack of punctuation, and followed the spelling which is not like ours of today. I have not always used quotation marks when quoting, trusting the intelligence of the reader to be discriminat- ing and understanding. So when words are misspelled, well, that is the way they were spelt by the early fathers and when capitals dance all over the page, again remem- ber the fathers and their ways which are not our ways. This book is their history and its purpose is to reveal them. The hope is deep in my heart that they may become much alive to all who read. All these months of research have made them real persons to me. Were I to meet them I think I should know them.
To their descendants who still bear some of their names, I am deeply indebted for generous help; the Woods, the Kendalls, the Thomases, the Hoadleys, the Kingsleys, the Ralphs, the Jaquiths, the Fletchers, the Fullertons, the Farnsworths by other names, the Slaytons, the Ransoms, the Cowdrys.
I also owe much to later arrivals, people who have bought the old farms with their stone walls, who have restored the decaying houses, who love the land with their rocks and trees and who wish to preserve the traditions of pioneer endeavor and to keep alive for generations yet to be, the love of freedom, the open mind and the sturdy independence of those who created this State. My father frequently used a word not in the dictionaries. I suspect he got it from his Scotch forbears, it was "Independlum."
Kedron River Bend-in Village
A
8
The Valley of the Kedron
He held it before us as a guide to independent thinking and courage of conviction. There was something of the granite hills in that word and if the pioneers here in Ver- mont and elsewhere over this broad land knew not that specific word, they certainly lived under the spell of its significance. All honor to them.
CHAPTER II
It Did Not Happen
WHEN ONE BEGINS to gather historical data concerning a neighborhood, its people and its physical aspects, it is quite amazing the amount of information which is passed on as history. Tradition becomes a fact and one is expected to receive that dressed-up tradition as absolute truth, though there are plenty of evidences that the statements lack historical accuracy.
In collecting the material for this book, "The Kedron Valley and South Woodstock," the statement has been made definitely many times that the South part of the town was settled first. James Sanderson who brought the beginnings of his family here in 1769 and erected a shack on the north face of Blake Hill, and after various wan- derings in and out of the town, finally settled down on Dunham Hill in 1784, is called our first real settler. His location was north of the South Parish and not in it. He probably built the house which still stands and which was painted red for many years and is now white. Here he died in 1794. His picturesque son, Benjamin, lived out his years in this house and a grand-daughter, Mrs. John Carey, and her family also occupied it. They belonged to the Kedron Valley Section.
9
10
The Valley of the Kedron
Those of us who watch the cavorting of the Kedron, Brook when the waters are high, know that the bed through which it flows at the base of the last range of hills in this valley, was not the original bed in all of that particular section. Going from the Green towards South Woodstock, at the point where the first hill road turns off to the left, the present channel by the foothills for the length of Mr. Fay's meadow northward and the southern part of the meadow now used for the Golf Course, was dug in 1818 under the direction of Job Lyman for the purpose of redeeming this land which was swampy in the extreme.
The old bed is plainly seen at all seasons, except when under snow, on the meadow owned by Mr. Fay. It winds and twists across that field and comes close to the present highway near the boundary line between his property and the Golf Course. A little distance north of that line, the old bed turned rather sharply east, then a little north, and sought the foot of the hills. This section once showed very plainly but the extreme levelling for the Golf Course has removed nearly all traces, but on Mr. Fay's meadow the old bed is plainly seen and in times of high water it always is full. There are men living in Woodstock who recall that when they were boys, they fished in the old bed from the big rock which is in that meadow. Fifty years ago, the bed was deeper and both water and fish were there all the time. Twenty-five years ago high waters broke through the bank by the hill road and great cakes of ice and much debris followed the old channel. Mr. Otis Waite who then owned this property, had a tremendous task clearing the land.
The tale is told that in early days the South Road passed
11
It Did Not Happen
on the west side of the house now owned by Mr. George Aycrigg. It had to do so because the brook came close to the house on the east side. The brook never went that far north. I have told where it turned off to the east. The old surveys of that road indicate many changes all the way from the Green to the South Village. I have read many of them. The exact bed for the road over that early swamp without doubt varied but let us look a few facts in the face. This stone house was built in 1857; a brick house was torn down to make a place for the stone one. A small frame house had preceded the brick one. Several surveys had been made across this swamp and some sort of road fol- lowed practically the present course. In the chapter on roads and their surveys some more things will be told about this road. Possibly in the 1770's and 80's a sort of trail clung to the west hills. Such a trail was on the east range of hills. -
While we are writing about the South branch, let us follow it to the Quechee River. It never flowed over the Common. Its course through the present village is prac- tically what it was in early times. The record of mills on its banks indicate that decidedly. It had a larger volume of water and there were frequent floods in those far off days.' Where the stone houses stand, the land was often under water as was the land south of it. At Pleasant Street the brook turned northwest and made a bend to the east in what is now Mrs. William Jones' back yard. Back of the former Mackenzie Green houses was a very high bank, on which was located Woodstock's first graveyard. The brook entered the river just below this bank. The great
12
The Valley of the Kedron
flood of 1811 undermined the bank and nearly wrecked the graveyard. Dr. Stephen Powers had a little child buried there; grave and stone were washed away. Months after the stone was recovered and was set up in the Cushing graveyard. Where the brook made that curve near Mrs. Jones' before the flood, there stood a mill. The flood de- stroyed it and changed the course of the brook to its pres- ent bed. Even today there is an underground drain through a portion of this old brook bed to care for the water which persists in going that way.
And now we come to Timothy Knox, that hunter and trapper squatter of the Kedron Valley who, according to Dana's history, came to the Valley in 1765 and was the only person in the town for a period of three years. The D. A. R. have put up a marker in the vicinity of his hut and on each Decoration Day they place a flag by it. Dana's Woodstock History tells a romantic tale about this squatter coming into the wilderness, that he was a Harvard student who had been disappointed in love and sought this remote spot in order to escape the beguilements of the fair sex. In preparation for this book I wrote Harvard Library asking for information about Timothy as a student there. This reply came :-
Harvard College Library Archives Division.
"The records of Harvard have been searched carefully from 1750 to 1770 and the name of Timothy Knox does not appear. Does the Knox genealogy have any data about him, that might help solve the problem?" The Boston Historical Library and the Vermont one both investigated the Knox family tree but no Timothy hung on its branches even precariously.
Main Street, South Woodstock
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The Valley of the Kedron
I wrote again to the Archives Division of Harvard Library and quoted them from our town history where Timothy is reported to have said, "That all the good a college course ever did him was to save him from being impressed in the British Navy. While in College a press gang made an inroad upon Cambridge and carried off several young men. He was one of them, but was released, so soon as it was known that he belonged to the college." I received the following answer to this, "There is no record of any college students being carried off or even being attacked by press gangs. In the 1700's Cambridge was almost an infant town, the one carriage road to Boston being seven miles in length, while the short way was by ferry to Charlestown and then by bridge to Boston. Neither of these ways were convenient for press gangs to use. I wish you success in finding Timothy."
In the spring of 1937 I was so fortunate as to have the use of many of Swan Dana's notes, which are preserved in the first edition of his history and here I found this about Timothy, that he had been expelled from Yale because of drunkenness. I at once wrote Mr. Keogh, Yale's Librarian, who replied that Timothy was not on their records and since Yale Library had catalogues of all the early New England Schools, he had all of them searched, and no Timothy in any of them. All these replies make one wonder if Timothy was an escape from justice, living under an assumed name or a potential poet or dramatist, dreaming his parts and doomed to be unknown and, like the poet's rose, blush unseen. Where did he get his gun powder, did he use flints? What did he do with his furs? He had neighbors during these years in Hartland, Hart-
15
It Did Not Happen
ford and Springfield. There were forts at the present Charleston, N. H., and Brattleboro. The Vernon Indians were passing frequently up and down the Connecticut, so it is a fair presumption that Timothy had some contacts with people.
In the summer of 1935 a woman came to Woodstock who said she was a descendant of Knox and wished to visit the D. A. R. house. By some strange fluke she did not get in and there was no attempt to learn her name or resi- dence. If Timothy's early history is unknown, the records of Woodstock have considerable about him. He eventually married a girl named Abigail Dike and the report is that they had the usual large family of that period. She must have been the daughter of Ebenezer Dike who made the first census of Woodstock in 1771 for the State of New York. He was chosen because he had some degree of educa- tion. On the Hartland hill road is a ledge still called Knox's ledge and here Timothy and his Abigail lived. His boy Timothy was bound out to a Dana of Pomfret and he ran away. Dana offered one cent reward for his return. This was the usual price offered for runaways in those days, but a man who lost his watch offered a reward of $50. Watches were scarce and boys were too numerous.
The town history emphasizes Timothy's poverty but in the year 1787 the assessed value of his property was twenty- three pounds, a very excellent amount for that period. Only a few men possessed more, but misfortune dogged his footsteps and in May 1798, a guardian was appointed for him. His son John made desperate efforts to save his father's property. The Woodstock town records and the deeds give concise reports of several transactions. Poor
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