USA > Vermont > Washington County > Waterbury > History of Waterbury, Vermont, 1763-1915 > Part 24
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In the spring of 1822 Amasa Pride's large tavern at Stowe and Main streets burned. This was the site of the tavern kept by George Kennan at an earlier day. Mr. Pride rebuilt without delay and the new tavern was presided over by Sayles Hawley as host, remaining as a house of call or public house until after the coming of the railroad.
In 1834 the tan shops of M. and J. H. Lathrop were burned and never rebuilt.
In 1838 a factory of Thompson & Seabury, at Mill Village, was burned and never rebuilt.
In the early 40's a store of J. B. Christy was destroyed by fire and again one owned by J. G. Stimson in 1856. These were partly covered by insurance and were rebuilt. The largest and most destructive fire prior to the breaking out of the Civil War occurred in October, 1858, when was burned the large hotel of E. and W. Moody, in one wing of which was housed the bank of Waterbury; stores of William Wells, D. M. Knights and I. C. & S. Brown were destroyed, also the livery stables of Bruce & Ladd. The total loss was $30,000
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and was partially covered by insurance. D. Adams' foundry and the railway station burned about 1870.
Other fires in later years were: C. C. Warren's Tannery, November 18, 1899; Perkins Block, Main Street, June, 1907; Moody Block, Stowe Street, December 16, 1907; G. W. Randall's barn, October 18, 1908; Mrs. A. Spencer's barn, March 1, 1898; Vermont State Hospital, November, 1909; Winooski Valley Creamery, Winooski Street, March 22, 1912; Perry Granite Company's building, December 14, 1914; Moody Saw Mill, August 3, 1908; John Williams' Livery Stable, Stowe Street, October 21, 1912; Consolidated Com- pany's Transformer House, August 27, 1908; creamery build- ing, Randall Avenue, March 31, 1915.
A laudable effort was made, September 6, 1915, at giving a historical pageant on the schoolhouse grounds under the auspices of the Lecture and Entertainment Bureau, a sub- committee of the local Board of Trade. The pageant scenes were designed to reproduce, in appropriate settings, important episodes and incidents of the town's history. The scenes included an Indian encampment before the white man's arrival; the first settler, James Marsh, alone in the wilderness; arrival of the Marsh family with the first cow ever brought to Waterbury; arrival of Ezra Butler and bride, with their household possessions; first town meeting, March 31, 1790; noontime at a barn-raising and dance; company of recruits ready to march to the front at the outbreak of the Civil War, the drummer "boy" being Mr. Franklin Carpenter, who, fifty-four years ago, marched away with the volunteers in the same capacity. Concluded with singing "America."
Those taking part in the pageant were: Robert J. Burnham, Max G. Ayers, Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Le Baron, Mr. and Mrs. Mark H. Moody, H. F. Hill, A. A. Newcomb, M. E. Hutchins, E. E. Campbell, C. B. Adams, H. P. Robinson, D. C. Jones, A. J. Kelly, E. J. Foster, A. H. Bailey, Raymond Buzzell, Miss Mary Guptil, Alton G. Wheeler, S. R. Dady, Franklin Carpenter, D. D. Grout, M. D., E. G. Miller and W. B. Clark.
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The soldiers' monument, a gift to Waterbury of the late Franklin Sylvester Henry, formerly of Cleveland, Ohio, and Waterbury, was unveiled with appropriate ceremony Memo- rial Day, May 30, 1914. There was a procession, marshaled by General W. W. Henry of Burlington, of the various local orders, the Veterans of Stetson and Dillingham Posts, G. A. R., Modern Woodmen of America, members of Mentor Lodge, I. O. O. F., Woman's Relief Corps, members of Marquis de Lafayette Chapter, D. A. R., representatives from the Hypatia and Pierian clubs, Queen Esther Chapter, O. E. S., Emerald Rebekah Lodge, and teachers and pupils of the public schools. The unveiling exercises were had at 2.30 p. m. at the monument site, which is on the western slope of the lawn of the high school grounds. The southern face of the monu- ment presents a bronze tablet containing these words:
THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY FRANKLIN SYLVESTER HENRY MAY 30, 1914. IN MEMORY OF THE MEN FROM WATERBURY, VERMONT WHO FOUGHT TO PRESERVE THE INTEGRITY OF THE UNION IN THE CIVIL WAR OF 1861-1865
DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI
The western exposure's tablet bears the names of the commissioned officers and the northern and eastern tablets give the names of the non-commissioned officers and privates from Waterbury participating in the Civil War. The names of all officers and men who were killed in action, or died in service, are indicated on the tablets. The monument is executed in excellent taste and was designed by W. H. B. Perry, then of the Perry Granite Company. It consists of a square die of Barre granite, with a base of the same mate- rial; the capstone is surmounted by carved cannon balls.
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Seated on the platform at the unveiling exercises were the members of the monument commission, General Henry, Senator William P. Dillingham, Harry C. Whitehill and O. A. Seabury. The act of unveiling was performed by Miss Gladys Henry and Fred B. Henry, Jr. The formal presenta- tion speech was made by General W. W. Henry in behalf of the trustees. The monument was accepted for the town by Carroll C. Robinson, chairman of the board of selectmen. Members of the Henry family present were: Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Sylvester Henry and daughter, Miss Gladys of Cleveland, Ohio; Robert Henry of Waltham, Massachusetts; Mrs. Franklin Sylvester Henry of New York City; Miss Frances Elizabeth Henry of Cleveland, Ohio, and Mrs. Albert Spencer of Waterbury.
Allusion has already been made to the panegyric delivered on this occasion by Senator Dillingham; this will be found reprinted in full in the appendix to this book.
In concluding this volume it seems appropriate to say that a superficial view of what a town's history consists is largely held. This is, that unless each day furnishes its peculiar thrill, there is nothing in the town's life worth recording. The obvious answer is that events are purely relative; when one speaks of "eventful happenings," he means "relatively" eventful. If Waterbury had no other claim upon the world's attention as a maker of history than was furnished by her in the years 1861 to 1865 inclusive, the town still would remain entitled to a very proud place in that regard.
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COMMISSIONED OFFICERS
SOLDIERS' MONUMENT Unveiled May 20, 1914
APPENDIX
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
Delivered by Senator William P. Dillingham, May 30, 1914, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Soldiers' Monument, the gift of Franklin Sylvester Henry to the Town of Waterbury.
Upon the tablets of the monument which we have met today to dedicate, there appear in imperishable bronze the names of those who, in the great struggle for the maintenance of the Federal Union, entered the military service of the United States from Waterbury; all of them to serve, and some of them to die that, in the language of the immortal Lincoln, "the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth." In all succeeding centuries generations unnumbered will scan this list with an earnest desire to trace descent from men whose names are here recorded, realizing the proud distinction which attaches to one in whose veins runs the blood of those who had honorable part in the greatest war of the nine- teenth century, and the result of which has demonstrated to the world the ability of a free people to maintain free institutions upon a scale so gigantic as to challenge the wonder and admiration of all nations.
This was not a war between nations, nor one in which one people were arrayed against those of another race. It was a war in which the slave states were arrayed against the free states of the North; it was an attempt on their part to withdraw from the Union and establish in the South a government, the cornerstone of which was declared by Alexander H. Stevens, vice-president of the Confederacy, to be human slavery.
Speaking of the Confederate government and its constitution, he said: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new govern- ment, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
The denial by the government of the United States of the right of any state to secede from the Union, either for that or any other reason, inaug- urated a conflict of states against states, of a brave people against an equally brave people, a conflict which shook the very foundations upon which free institutions are established and that upon which the oppressed of all nations had builded their hopes. It was a conflict intensified and made bitter by years of agitation over the question of human slavery which, firmly estab- lished in the South, was seeking to extend its blighting sway over the free territory of our great northwest; a movement which had shocked the moral
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sense of the North and which had been resisted as one which, if successful, would turn the wheels of human progress back a thousand years! It was a conflict which extended over a territory greater than all continental Europe outside of Russia. It was one in which the numbers engaged were larger than the entire population of the United States at the time when the constitution was adopted; one in which battles were fought greater in number than those of any one of the modern wars of Europe and in which the army of the dead alone was four times greater in number than the stand- ing army of the United States today, when we are apparently upon the eve of a war with Mexico.
It was a conflict which called to battle the flower of American manhood, and one which brought sorrow to countless homes, both North and South. But these sacrifices were not in vain: Slavery as an institution has been abolished; its blighting curse upon the conscience of the nation has been removed; a new birth in liberty has been accomplished in the nation, and, most remarkable of all, there has been established an indissoluble Union representing a present population exceeding one hundred million souls, in the full enjoyment of liberty under law, and in whose hearts loyalty to the old flag burns with renewed strength and whose devotion to constitutional liberty is as uniform as it is deep and abiding.
Today with thankful hearts we make acknowledgment to Almighty God because that in the fullness of time He has delivered this great people from the last vestige of the absolutism of the past; because He has enabled them to throw off the shackles of arbitrary power, to establish a government which recognizes no sovereign save God, one whose civilization stands as proof that right is stronger than might, that truth is more powerful than error and that light always drives darkness before it.
Whence came the qualities which actuated these men; from which their distinguished gallantry sprung and which led them to strive even unto death for the great principles involved? Were they qualities inherited from generations of liberty-loving men who had participated in the great movement toward the goal of human freedom and which has appealed to every succeeding generation for three centuries of time?
In answering this question we must remember that they were in the main "descendants of the sturdy Barons and Commons who demanded and obtained Magna Charta from King John and developed an independ- ent Parliament to direct the Lords and curb the King and who, during the absolutism of the Tudors, considered well the lessons of the times and who, during the last three centuries, have succeeded in stripping royalty of every- thing but its fiction and who have established the sovereignty of England in the House of Commons forever."
The oppression which centuries of absolutism imposed upon the human race cannot be adequately described. True it is that Christianity existed, but its principles had been overshadowed by the idea of authority which all the world had inherited from the dark ages. Down to the occurrence of the great intellectual movement of the sixteenth century the history of
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the world had been one of war and conquest with, as Mr. Bancroft says, "hardly a sound principle or a grand sentiment to justify the slaughter. Arbitrary power had been the only principle of government and force its only instrument." The ignorance which absolutism imposed upon the com- mon people was inconceivable, and we have it upon the authority of Mr. Macaulay that as late as the fourteenth century not one out of five hundred of the country gentlemen of England could spell out one of David's Psalms. Under such conditions, he tells us, there was little general exercise of the intellectual faculties, no considerable indulgence of the speculative powers; imagination was confined mostly to the senses and the people had little conception of the sublime either in thought, morals or nature.
The elements which marked the beginnings of the twentieth century were found in the Great Movement, so called, of the sixteenth century, when the intellect of Europe was stirred and quickened as never before to a profound consideration of the question of the rights of man, socially, religiously and politically. The century of conflict which followed, between arbitrary power on the one hand and the assertion of the natural right and privileges of the English people on the other, marks a period which did more to destroy absolutism and to establish constitutional government in Europe than any other single period in all history, and in it were laid the broad foundations for free institutions on this continent.
During the reign of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James, a period covering the sixteenth and extending into the seventeenth century, the effort of the English government was to crush out any exercise of individual rights. Death was decreed alike to the Catholic who denied the king's supremacy and to the Protestant who denied his creed. James, whose reign covered the early part of the seventeenth century, declared: "I will have none of this liberty of conscience, I will have one doctrine, one religion in substance and in form." Charles I, who followed him, was the embodiment of absolutism, boldly declaring that the throne, not the people, was the fountain head of all power; that the laws which he permitted to pass through Parliament were only streams flowing from this kingly source.
With the marvelous expansion of intellect among the masses to which I have alluded, life, under such conditions, became intolerable; a desire for something better was created and grew with each succeeding generation until it became irresistible. A self-consciousness of power was developed among the people and boldly asserted. Old bonds were broken, old systems were destroyed and England took her place among the nations as a government which had been compelled to recognize the people as represented in Parliament.
The result of the century's work is well stated by Scott in his History of the Development of Constitutional Liberty in the Colonies, where he says:
"The forces of society acted only in violence and in violence which sent England reeling to the ground. When the conflict ended and men paused
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to take breath and look around them, marvelous were the changes wrought. In religion, freedom of conscience held the ground; and intolerance, or the doctrine that the civil power was at the service of the ecclesiastical in prescribing faith, in regulating doctrine and in extirpating heresy, had sheathed its sword. Absolutism the world over had never recovered from the shock. Modern England dates from its extirpation, and with it ended an heroic page. Politically, it was the revolt of the middle class; intellectually and spiritually, it was a violent, uncontrollable expansion of the mind and soul; historically, it was the latest popular development of free inquiry in the British Isles. Taking it altogether, it was a convulsive effort toward freedom. The middle class wanted representation in the government. The intellectual class, whose field had been broadened by free inquiry, would no longer stay pent up within the schools; and the religious class, stimulated by the sight of the open Bible and frantic from the stings of intolerance, insisted upon absolute freedom of conscience. All three got what they wanted."
In this great movement we find the foundations laid for free institutions in America. Before this grand achievement of their brethren in the mother country was fully accomplished, a large number of this new and best element in English life had established themselves and made homes in the new world. Between 1630 and 1641 two hundred emigrant ships crossed the Atlantic, and more than twenty thousand liberty-loving English people found a refuge in New England. Green, the English historian, says: "They were in great part men of the professional and middle classes. Some of them of large landed estate, some men like Cotton, Hooker and Roger Williams, some shrewd London lawyers or young scholars from Oxford. The bulk were God-fearing farmers from Lincolnshire and the eastern counties. They desired, in fact, only the best as sharers in their enterprise; men driven forth from their fatherland, not by earthly want, or by the greed for gold, or by the lust for power, but by the fear of God and the zeal of godly worship." Our American historian, Fiske, tells us that in all history there has been no such instance of colonization so exclusively affected by picked and chosen men. In it there were as many graduates of Cambridge and Oxford as could be found in any population of similar size in the mother country.
Desiring that the colony they were forming should be governed upon principles diametrically opposed to those of all existing governments; that the laws should be formulated by the people and for the people, and that every citizen should become a living and potent factor in the affairs of the state, they realized that every person should become intelligent as well as virtuous; and to this end and with an inspired vision of the results which were to be attained, one of their first undertakings was to establish a system of elementary schools at public expense, a system then absolutely new to the world, but which has since expanded until it has become the policy of states and nations.
In the establishment of New England homes, which all agree were
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sanctuaries of morality; in their churches, in which reverence was incul- cated; in their town meetings and other gatherings, where citizenship was recognized and in which every man became an active factor; in their pro- pensity for debate upon all questions religious, social and political, and in their flaming love of liberty which supplemented all, there was created a citizenship never before seen nor conceived of.
The effect of this colonial life was to make good thinkers of the masses; it developed self-respect and individuality; the people learned not only to act individually but collectively, and they mastered the art of self-govern- ment. Their leaders were statesmen in the strongest and best sense of the word; the system thus inaugurated was founded upon public intellectual culture. The difference between such conditions and those existing in the mother country has been pointed out by Professor Draper, who, calling attention to the European system where enlightenment was furnished to certain classes only, not to the masses, says that the people were left to grope about in political darkness, not knowing whither they were going and afraid to look into the future; while, on the other hand, "in America the sentiment of manifest destiny to imperial greatness gave everyone a determinate direction and an energetic life."
During the century and a half of their splendid colonial life, there was built up in our colonies a constructive democracy, the essential elements of which are embalmed in the Declaration of Independence, and the com- bined wisdom of which found expression in the state constitutions and that of the United States.
It was from this stock, imbued with all its heroic qualities and actuated by its lofty motives, that Vermont was settled. It was their sturdy inde- pendence which led them to oppose the aggression of the crown, and it was at the Westminster massacre as early as March, 1775, that William French was killed and the first blood in the momentous contest which gave birth to a nation was shed upon Vermont soil. It was this independence and zeal for liberty which led the Green Mountain Boys, two months later, foreseeing the coming struggle, to make the night assault upon Ticonderoga, and through their commander, Ethan Allen, demand and receive the surrender of that fortress in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Con- tinental Congress. It was their instinct for self-government which led them in 1777 in the courthouse at Westminster, where William French had been slain, to adopt that immortal declaration that they would at all times consider themselves a free and independent state, capable of regulat- ing their internal police, and that the people had the sole and exclusive and inherent right of ruling and governing themselves in such manner and form as in their own wisdom they should think proper. And it was the quality of this early citizenship of Vermont that led them, in the adoption of their constitution in July of the same year, to become the first of all the states to forever prohibit slavery within her territory-an act which, had it been adopted by the other states, would have prevented the perpetration of that great wrong whose cancerous growth affected the very vitals of a
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nation dedicated to the rights of man, and would have left no opportunity for the conflict which shook the foundations of the government, with all the sacrifices, the sorrows and the sufferings which it entailed, and of which we are so vividly reminded today. It was this inheritance which enabled the people of Vermont, although repulsed by the Continental Congress in every attempt it made to become a member of the Federal Union, to main- tain an independent government throughout the War of the Revolution, and which also enabled them to defend even by force of arms the titles to their homes against the claims of the state of New York. And it was the same sturdy sense of independence and the same capacity for self-govern- ment which enabled them during a period of eight years following the achievement of independence by the thirteen original states, to maintain "the Republic of the Green Mountains" independent of the government of the United States or that of Great Britain or any other power or poten- tate. They exercised all the functions of a government of sovereign powers; they established a standard of weights and measures; coined money and regulated the value thereof; established a postal service and appointed a postmaster-general, and in various other ways exercised the functions of absolute independence, and it was not until 1791 that Vermont surrendered such sovereignty and became a member of the Federal Union.
And it was from this sturdy, intelligent and self-respecting type of citizen- ship that Waterbury derived her early settlers. It is well to remember that its first settler, James Marsh, came in 1783, that the first clerk of the town, Ezra Butler, came in 1785, and that it was not until 1790 that the town was fully organized and embarked upon its history of progress and honor. Has it occurred to you that during all these years none of these men were citizens of the United States, either under the confederation or constitu- tion? It is a significant fact that although they had fought for independ- ence side by side with the citizens of the thirteen states, they were citizens only of the state of Vermont-"the Republic of the Green Mountains"- and it was not until the year after the organization of the town that the state became the first admitted member of the Union and her people citizens of the United States.
Among the first settlers and early inhabitants of Waterbury, those who in the American Revolution had carried arms to establish freedom in this land of promise, were Ezra Butler, Paul Dillingham, Sr., David Towne, John Gregg, Stephen Jones, John Hudson, Joseph Ayer, Moses Nelson, A. Wilder, James Green, George Kennan, Thomas Eddy, and doubtless others whose names I have been unable to discover, and, besides these, many others of the same rugged stock-and these were typical of all.
Did the stock hold good? Did the sons and the grandsons of such sires maintain the characteristics and the principles of those from whom they sprung, in their devotion to free institutions? Did they, in upholding free institutions, make sacrifices equal to those required in establishing liberty upon this continent? Did they have part in the grand record which Ver- mont made in the war for the maintenance of the Union? Fortunately for
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