USA > Vermont > A history of Vermont : with geological and geographical notes, bibliography, chronology, maps, and illustrations > Part 13
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Bass viol, psalm book, and pitch pipe were the usual requisites of the choir, and occasionally a flute or clarinet
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
added strength and guidance to the voices. Hymns were " lined," and singing was general, the entire con- gregation joining in hearty and somewhat tuneful phrase in each line after it had been read aloud by pastor or pre- centor. More "minors" were rendered than our genera- "tion is inclined to be doleful over; but some of the old tunes bid fair to outlast the jingle of their modern rivals.
HUSKING CORN AND PARING APPLES
Churchgoing might be all very well in summer, when voices of birds and the drowsy hum of insects floated in through the open doors and windows; but it makes us shiver a little, even now, to think what it must have been in winter, in an unwarmed church where foot pans, brought with live coals, furnished the only means of warmth.
In the autumn the harvest ! Then, amid the chang- ing red and gold and brown and russet of the forest, the
I
205
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
work of full fruitage went on. It was done by hand, - reaping, threshing, husking, shelling, - but it was labor lightened by good cheer as neighbors changed work, or met beneath the rafters of the barns to strip the ears of corn, or in the low-posted kitchen at a paring bee. On the next day after the paring bee the younger genera- tion would meet and string the apples before they were hung aloft in long festoons for drying. Dried apple, apple sauce, and apple butter were an unfailing re- source of the thrifty housewife.
There was rhythm in all this life, whether you seek it in the al- ternating strokes of the flails on the threshing floor as the threshers beat WONDROUS MECHANISMS WERE IMPROVISED AS CORN SHELLERS out the golden grain, or in the low, continuous rustle of the husks as nimble fingers stripped the ears of corn.
Corn shelling was a task for boys, and the occupa- tion gave a splendid opportunity to the inventiveness of youth, wondrous mechanisms being improvised as corn shellers. Corn was the source of much pleasure and pain. The golden kernels served as counters in many games of checkers and fox and geese, which served to while away long evening hours before the fireplace in
206
HISTORY OF VERMONT
winter. This Indian grain was for years a staple article of diet in various forms whose names - hominy, samp, succotash-bespeak Indian ways of preparing it, taught to the early settlers.
In the fall, too, butchering was done, and then came the time for souse and sau- sage, smoking hams and dry- ing beef, making mince pies and candle dipping.
The work of the women was as important as that of the men. Into their custody went the wool and flax for spinning and weaving. It was no small task to keep clothed from head to feet the throng of sturdy boys and girls who made up old- fashioned families. In days when cloth production was part of the industry of every household, flax and wool demanded much attention. THE PRETTY FOOT WHEEL - A RELIC OF OLDEN TIMES Now there is left in our homes scarcely a trace of the former textile art. About the only reminders we possess are the pretty foot wheels for spinning, which are sought after in old attics and brought down into modern parlors as relics of olden time. Few farmers raise flax now, and few wives would know what to do with it if they did. Home spinning and home weaving
207
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
are gone, and knitting will soon be among the lost arts of New England housewives.
Until the advent of the carding mill, the wool was carded by hand, after being cleaned and greased. This made the fibers parallel and ready to roll into fleecy rolls for the spinning wheel. Spinning was a fine art, but was practiced in every household. The quick back -. ward and forward steps of the spinner would have counted miles in a day, while her flexile, alert, and supple movements of arms and body gave natural grace, poise, and dignity of carriage which . all the artifices of physical culture can but poorly rival.
After spinning came weaving.
WOOL CARDS
The presence of looms was not so universal as that of spinning wheels; there were consequently in every town professional weavers who would take in yarn and thread to weave at stated prices per yard, or would if desired go out weaving by the day. In such ways itinerant craftsmen began to have their day. The cobbler was another familiar example.
Fine patterns were sometimes made of woven goods; while from the flax skillful weavers made beautiful linens for sheets and coverlets, tablecloths and napkins, many of which have long outlasted their makers.
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
The dyeing of the cloth was also a home process at first, and flowers of the field and the bark of various trees were used in ways we never think of. The bark of the red oak or hickory furnished pretty shades of brown and yellow; sassafras bark was used for dyeing yellow and orange; field sorrel boiled with woolen was the first process in making black, which was finished by the use of logwood or copperas. The golden-rod, pressed of its
A RAG CARPET ON THE LOOM
juices, yielded material for a beautiful green when mixed with indigo and alum; and the flower-de-luce furnished from June meadows a purple tinge for white wool.
In all our social and economic life. to-day the most striking factor is cooperation. Its forms vary, but its force is ever present. All products of our markets are made and distributed by it. All societies, labor organi- zations, religious and political institutions are standing illustrations of the principle. Now, if we look at the
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR 209
life we have just portrayed, we may see this same element permeating it all.
Industrially, you find it in this fact : combined effort in the form of mutual assistance takes the place of divi- sion of labor. It also saves "hired help," and makes casily possible tasks which would otherwise have been performed with hardship. This is an economic explana- tion of the " bees " which were so common, -the logging bees, stone-piling bees, clearing bees, raisings, stump pulling and wall building, road breaking, haying, harvest- ing, and husking. There is in them a cooperative element of distinct economic value.
And now notice their second value : they have an important bearing on the life of the times. Social rela- tions and social ethics were based on these same inci- dents to a large degree. Hard and exhausting labor is made easy by the hearty cheeriness of the neighbor. This neighborliness forced out of our early society all social stratification and made Vermont as purely a democratic state as one could easily find. Caste was unknown, because all people did the same things. The neighborhood was the social unit.
The women had their cooperative work as well as the men. It took the form of quilting bees, house cleaning, preserving, and other forms of domestic economy, of which we have still a vanishing trace in sewing circles, ladies' aid societies, church suppers, and other activities which now take the form of public charities rather than of private industry. The young people also had common interests in mixed parties at the huskings and paring bees as well as in more purely social forms.
210
HISTORY OF VERMONT
TRANSITION
A. General Features
Having traced in outline the conditions prevailing at the middle of the last century we must at once remem- ber that those conditions did not remain fixed. You will find in history that the height of advance of one genera-
ONE-HORSE CHAISE
tion is usually - not always - the foundation on which the next one builds. For example, in one generation a city has omnibuses ; the next sees horse cars running on fixed tracks ; the next decade, perhaps, finds the horse cars supplanted by the electric trolley. The former methods which in their day were a distinct advance are no longer wanted, but are old-fashioned, wasteful, obsolete.
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2II
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
In a similar way in the history of Vermont we must pass from stagecoach to railroad, from the hand card to the modern woolen mill. The change comes in the period we are now studying.
From 1830 to the time of the Civil War the rough edges of pioneer life were being rounded off. Little by little new industries began to creep in and transforma- tions to occur in our simple communities. The little cabins of logs gave way to the low, wide houses with the
AN OLD TURNPIKE TAVERN
great brick chimneys and fireplaces. The old hill roads, "stage roads" as they are still called in the vernacular, were the lines of busiest thoroughfare only until the rail- road came. The industries of the valleys grew more and more felt ; the more level if less scenic river roads made their appearance ; and some of the old hill towns passed the climax of their glory and began to decline.
Not a few towns in the state had a larger population in 1810 or 1820 than they had in 1850 or 1860, or have even to-day, and three entire counties - Orange, Wind- ham, and Windsor -declined between the census of 1810
212
HISTORY OF VERMONT
and that of 1900. Addison County had a larger popula- tion in 1830 than in 1900. The population of the entire state remained practically stationary from 1850 to 1860. In fact, if you look at the census tables you will find that the decade between 1820 and 1830 was the last one that shows any marked increase of percentage in the population of the state.
The explanation of this is not that the state as a whole had become stagnant, or any particular sections of it gone to seed. Its explanation is found in the general conditions of the country at large. It is one of the signs of the enterprise and adventurous spirit of Vermonters that they have sought new fields of activity wherever they opened, and have carried the leaven of the Green Mountain State into many new commonwealths and to all quarters of the globe. The opening up of the North- west and Indiana territories - Ohio, Indiana, Illinois -- and, after the Louisiana purchase, the opening up of the territory west of the Mississippi, drew heavily on the East. When cotton and woolen factories began to rise in Massachusetts and Rhode Island many of the girls and boys began to feel that farm life was drudgery, and that the city had something better for them ; and so they went, for better or for worse. Then, just at the middle of the century, the discoveries of gold in Cali- fornia sent a fever for sudden wealth into every town and hamlet of the East, and men went to the Pacific slope to make slaves of themselves for gold and dross. If we should undertake to write the history of the people of Vermont from this point, it would take us into almost every state and territory of the Union, into the mining
BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT, THE PAINTER, BRATTLEBORO
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR 213
camps of the West, to the seas, and to the lands that lie beyond the seas. So for the remainder of this chapter we must limit our story strictly to the geographical boundaries of the state, and note only what went on therein in a few lines of development.
B. Agriculture
Vermont remained primarily an agricultural state, and of her agricultural interests the production of wool was by far the most important single item up to the Civil War. We have already spoken of the textile arts prac- ticed in every home, and have indicated the changes which had begun, even before the War of 1812, in the manufacture of cotton and woolen. When every home was a woolen mill in embryo, every farmer was naturally a shepherd ; and sheep breeding did not cease to be an important industry when the process of manufacture changed, - the market for wool remained.
The first sheep commonly bred here were a hardy breed of English sheep, raised both for mutton and wool, although not especially good for either. Their wool was long and coarse, but as there were then no great aspirations for fine-wool clothing it did very well. With the perfection of the process of making really fine cloth, however, there came a demand for a finer staple. Fortunately the demand was met in a way which made Vermont a leader in the production of fine wool.
William Jarvis of Weathersfield was United States con- sul to Portugal early in the last century. Just before the War of 1812 he succeeded in sending to this country a large importation of Spanish merinos. Apparently
214
HISTORY OF VERMONT
the first importation did not attract much attention, being scattered about, but the stock was being intro- duced and herds of merinos built up. In 1828 Congress passed the "tariff of abominations," which, among other things, had the effect of sending up the price of wool. This fact and the increasing interest in merinos boomed sheep raising in Vermont. The price of merino wool was one dollar a pound in 1807; it rose to two dollars, then to two dollars and fifty cents during the war. No wonder that farmers went ex- clusively into the business of wool growing, or that manufactories went up on al- most every stream that had water CHEESE BASKET WITH LADDERS enough to run the machinery.
Of course that state of things was too artificial to last ; yet there was enough real economic foundation under the wool business to make it a leading agricultural fea- ture for years. The fabulous prices which had once obtained for merinos fell off, but that only served to allow their good qualities to be spread more widely, since it enabled men of moderate means to own supe- rior flocks of sheep. At home and abroad the fineness of Vermont fleeces gained an enviable reputation, and her merinos were sought after as foundations for herds the world over.
215
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
The relative importance of wool growing at the middle of the century is shown by the fact that there were then more than twice as many sheep kept as all other farm stock put together, -horses, swine, mules and asses, dairy cows and other neat cattle. There were then over a million sheep within the state. In 1840 there had been 1,681,819. In that year there were 3,699,235 pounds of wool produced. Wool was the great market product.
There were, to be sure, other things sold from the farms in large amounts. Exports of horses, cattle, and swine, as well as sheep, were im- portant. Morgan horses were a well- known type, fa- CHEESE PRESS mous for nerve, endurance, and toughness. More than two million dollars' worth of dairy products were produced in 1840. This amount seems all the more important when we remember that dairying was hardly made a specialty in Vermont farming until after 1830; that butter and cheese were made mostly for home con- sumption, and that up to 1840 butter seldom brought over ten cents a pound.
The cheese-factory system originated about the mid- dle of the century, but it hardly seems to have held its
7
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
own beside the development of butter making. In some farm homes to-day the old, laborious process of cheese making may be seen. Associated dairying began about the time of the Civil War, so it hardly falls within this period of our study ; but the improvement of dairy stock had already begun by the introduction of strains of Ayrshire, Holstein, and Jersey blood. The type of cow began to change from that of the beef animal to that of the dairy animal.
The history of the improvement of farm implements would be an interesting study in itself. We find it almost impossible to understand how our forefathers got along with the kind of tools they had. Yet the change to better forms was not always easy to make. For example, in 1825 a plow with a cast-iron mold- board was offered for sale in Poultney for the first time. It had already been introduced in New York and the Middle States, and was gradually working its way into use. But the farmers of Poultney would not buy it. They were afraid it would break; and they were sure it would not work among the rocks and stones of Vermont. Besides, the old plow was good enough. Any one could do the woodwork on it, and a third-rate blacksmith could put on straps of iron. But finally one farmer after another was induced to try the new plow ; they found it did not break but did better work than the old plows; and by 1840 the wooden plow was a thing of the past.
So, little by little, old things were laid aside and new things took their places. In 1860 there were thirty- two establishments in the state making agricultural implements. Although their annual product was not
217
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
large when compared with other manufacturing indus- tries, nevertheless it was significant of the transition which was taking place in the conduct of agriculture as in all else.
C. Transportation
At the close of the War of 1812 the means of trans- portation were still primitive enough so that bulky crops could not be taken to distant markets. This determined the nature of farming to the extent that grain was still fed to pork which was carried to Boston in the annual winter trip from every town; that cattle were driven on hoof to market; and that potatoes were turned into starch and whisky. The new land furnished a sure crop of potatoes, and usually a heavy one; the starch factories and the potato distilleries furnished a sure market ; both contributed to sap the life of many a splendid old hill farm and leave only a sickly crop of wiry, worthless grass as its inheritance.
About 1820 the Champlain canal opened communi- cation between the lake and New York by way of the Hudson River, and brought a better market for the lumber of the valley than Quebec had been. From that time until about 1843 the lumber trade turned thither. The old Quebec raftsmen clung to their for- mer methods of rafting their lumber to market; but the new companies took modern craft, canal boat and schooner. After our native timber was exhausted, Bur- lington remained a center for the trade in lumber, which now, reversing the former course of its history, began to come from Canada to us.
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HISTORY OF VERMONT
The western part of the state had in its water route through the lake and canal and river a more econom- ical access to New York markets than the eastern part .ever had to the Boston market till the railroad came. After the opening of the Connecticut and Passumpsic Railroad to Boston the eastern portion of the state was greatly stimulated. The affiliation of the western part of the state with New York and the eastern part with Boston, as centers of trade and news, remains to this day.
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF, BURLINGTON HALF A CENTURY AGO
In the carly part of the century the separate states had done something for themselves in the way of better- ing their roads, canals, rivers, and harbors ; and as the surplus in the national treasury grew, politicians began to talk about a federal scheme of internal improve- ments as a way to spend the money. Jefferson was quite carried away with the idea. But the War of 1812 interrupted the conversation, the surplus vanished, and the whole scheme disappeared, though it left the subject of internal improvements in the air. The Erie Canal
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1
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR 219
was opened in 1825, and its success turned attention to this particular form of improvement. Considerable interest was roused in this state, and plans were dis- cussed for the construction of canals. The Hudson River and Champlain Canal was an undoubted benefit. A canal board was appointed, and projects were con- sidered for the construction of a canal between lakes
1
BIRTHPLACE OF LEVI P. MORTON, 1824, AT SHOREIIAM
Memphremagog and Champlain, also for navigating the Connecticut. Some surveys were made, but nothing in the way of construction was attempted ; and presently railroads superseded canals in public estimation and from 1830 became the topic of the time.
Before the railroads were built some attempts were made to navigate the. Connecticut by steamboats. In 1827 a boat called the Barnet was built, which succeeded
220
HISTORY OF VERMONT
in going as far up the river as Bellows Falls ; but it was taken back to Hartford and broken up, as its exploit did not warrant repetition. Two years later two boats were built to run between Bellows Falls and Barnet ; but there were too many obstacles to be overcome, and their history was limited to a few experimental trips.
The talk about railroads went on from 1830 to 1840. Surveys were made along the valleys of the Connecti- cut and Passumpsic rivers to the Canada line, near Lake Memphremagog ; from Burlington along the Winooski Valley to the Connecticut ; from Bennington to Brattle- boro ; from Rutland to Whitehall, and elsewhere. Com- panies were incorporated as early as 1835. But hard times came on, a financial cataclysm swept the coun- try, and the beginning of the enterprises was deferred for some years.
In 1843 another railroad was incorporated, stock was subscribed for, and the Vermont Central began work in 1847. In the following year the first passenger train was run, from White River Junction to Bethel. One hundred and seventeen miles of road were opened, from Windsor to Burlington. Between 1848 and 1851 the Vermont and Canada road laid fifty-three miles of rails, from Rouse's Point to Burlington. Still the work went on. Within a few years a road was built from Essex Junction to Rouse's Point, and from Rutland to Ben- nington, to Whitehall, New York, and to Troy, New York. The Connecticut and Passumpsic Railroad was extended to St. Johnsbury, and pushed through to New- port in 1862. Laws had provided for the construction of telegraph lines before the railroads were in operation.
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RAILROAD MAP OF VERMONT
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221
FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
The coming of the railroads marked an era in the history of Vermont as it has in every other state. Rail- roads could fetch and carry ; they created new markets and transformed country life. The lumbering industry took a new lease of life, and sawmills whose business had been limited to local needs now found a wider demand for their products. All crops could now be marketed, and the slow, tedious trips by horse teams to Portland and Boston were no longer necessary. The business of the country store expanded, and a host of middlemen arose to take the butter, cheese, eggs, wool, and other products of the farm. Ready money became more plentiful, and store goods began to take the place of homespun.
D. Manufacturing and Business
We cannot hope to cover the history of manufactur- ing during half a century in the brief space here allotted; but perhaps we can cite enough important enterprises to illustrate the kind of change which was going on in Ver- mont's manufacturing and commercial work. To begin with, we ought to notice that although there was an important growth of manufacturing previous to 1860, and especially in the decade just preceding that date, there was not proportionately a large amount of Ver- mont wealth invested in manufacturing industries, or of Vermont people engaged in conducting them.
A few figures will make this plain. The total value of farm property in 1860 was $114, 196,989. There were at that date probably over thirty thousand farms in cultivation. There were, however, all told, only
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