USA > Vermont > Lamoille County > Johnson > History of the town of Johnson, Vt. 1784-1904 > Part 6
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Beyond the Hotel, to the corner, and down Railroad St. to the Warren house, was the Hotel orchard and garden, enclosed by a board fence. One small chestnut tree which grew in it was a great wonder to our childish eyes, it being the only one we had ever seen.
The Warren house was the old Hosmer house, and in the L part Marshall Hosmer and his father made chairs for many years. The tenement part of Mrs. Morgan's house stood where it does now, then came the Hickey house, occupied by Nathan Jones, blacksmith,
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and no more buildings on that side of the street, to the Waterman brick house. Across the bridge was the Hunt house, now occupied by Geo. Goozey, and nothing else over there. No railroad then to disturb the quiet of this valley, nor of any other hereabouts, for that matter.
The present arch bridge was built in 1839 to replace one carried out by ice and high water in February of that year. Mr. Samuel Merriam was driving across it at the time, and only by whipping up his horse did he barely escape being carried away with the bridge. The "Lamoille Visitor" of that week, our town paper, in speaking of the heavy damages wrought by the flood elsewhere, for it was very widespread, said, "We were fortunate in only losing three bridges- all we had !"
The old Merriam house where Mr. Thomas lives, and the Doane house, now owned by Mrs. Pierce, were the only ones on that side of the street, till the yellow school-house was built on the level between the Pierce and Minott houses. From the school-house to the Moses Morse store, on the corner now occupied by Nye, was only the blacksmith shop. The store there at that time was the one now oc- cupied by Nellie Hunt, moved across the street to make way for the present large one.
What is now the town clerk's office was a tin-shop operated by Paul T. Sweet and years later by Alexander Riddle. Where the Post- Office is, was a building which had been occupied variously as a shoe- shop and a furniture shop, not to mention that the Academy in its in- cipient stage, was located there. The Austin house was the Levi Reed house, and back in the yard beyond was an old, red house, one of the oldest on this side of the Branch, with nothing between that and the Allen hotel-stand, next the bridge, except Patch's grocery building, built by Samuel Morgan for a hat-shop below and dwelling above.
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A wooden bridge spanned the Branch, in place of the present iron one, and below the bridge, about opposite Mr. Conger's was a small tenement house, built in the bank, its upper story opening on the street, its lower one, at the back, on the meadow. At each spring freshet more or less water came into the lower floor, so that the oc- cupants had to move up stairs. Then every boy and girl in the village, no matter how good their home, envied the children in that house who could sail in wash-tubs in their kitchen. Such a swarm of small boys as used to hang around that house in time of spring rains, and ice going out of the Branch.
There were only four houses below the turn where the point of rock makes out into the road. The Lease house, now the Baptist parsonage, was the only one on that side of the street; there was a small, old house which Mr. Rogers owns, the Ellwood house, half the size it is now, occupied by P. T. Sweet, and the Vernon Patch house where Chas. Scott lived.
Retracing our steps, the Chamberlain and Hebb houses were much as now, the latter being the Chesamore place, but where Mr. Conger's is was a small ruined building bearing an old sign, "Hat factory," where Morgan and Sheldon once operated the hat-making industry. The two-story dwelling just above the bridge was then on the other side of the Branch, Chesamore's shoe-shop. It was moved across, after a small store and tailor's shop standing on the east side, was burned. The house Mr. Farrell lives in was occupied by the Ormsbees, and the Holmes house, a small, one-story building then, was the Lynde house. Mrs. Maria Davis' house was occupied by Mr. Beardsley. Previously Mr. Sheldon lived there, and made hats in the lower front room. Mrs. Andrews's house was the Moses Morse place, one of the "stately mansions" of the village. Where the Ful- lington house stands was the store occupied by Merriam & Lynde. It was burned in 1849, and Mr. Merriam, some years afterward, built the
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brick house. Before that he lived in what is now Edmund Perkins' house on Railroad St. It stood where the Stevens house is. The Boyles store was the Post Office for several years, with J. B. Dow- ner as postmaster. S. S. Pike, who was town clerk for a great many years, had his office in that building also.
The two cottages in the rear of the store were one dwelling, stand- ing where the McFarland house stands, and occupied by Salmon Wires. All between that and the Hunt house, then Mr. Joseph Wa- terman's, was one big garden and orchard with a high picket fence through which we could see the rows of fine vegetables, the fruit and flowers, a grape-vine running luxuriantly over the rock, and a well- curb with the traditional "old oaken bucket." The Waterman starch- factory, a low one-story building, is part of the E. E. Holmes shop, and across the street, about where the end of the Baptist church sheds is, was an old house used as a tenement, two stories in front, sloping to one at the rear.
The bridges over the Gihon were open ones in those days. We are told that the first bridge over it, here in the village, was built above the mill-dam, about where the creamery stands. That bridge, we gather from the records, was carried off by the breaking away of Eden Pond, in April 1805. Thomas H. Parker and Jeduthem Stone of Eden had erected mills at the outlet of the pond and their dam being insecure, it broke away, carrying off their mills, and working destruc- tion as the water passed down the valleys. It is said that it carried off acres of heavy timber, and even huge rocks were torn from their beds. Sixteen feet of water rolled nearly perpendicular.
A man on a fleet horse warned the few dwellers in this village of what was coming, so they had a little time to prepare for it. Araunah Waterman's house stood near where the widow Heath's house now stands, their barns being the other side of the branch, and they had a foot-bridge across. It was towards night, and the big boys, Thomas,
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Joseph and Azariah, seized the milk pails, ran across the bridge, milked the cows and turned them off on to the hills, then hurried back, pulling up the planks of their bridge to save them from being swept away. Meanwhile the others had gathered what things they could well carry with them, and they all took to the hills. The flood came and washed out part of their cellar wall, carrying off the pork-barrel and general cellar stores, and leaving the house tipped down at one corner.
People all along the stream suffered more or less loss, and they brought a suit against Parker and Stone for damages. The suit ran for a number of years, as such things are prone to do, and at length the judge told the Johnson people that they had not brought the suit against the right party. It was the work of the Supreme Being. Each one paid his own costs, and the case ended.
Pearl St. was the one first built up, and the road then followed. the windings of the Gihon, and came out below Mr. Hebb's. Candor compels me to state, that there being no Pearls in town in the early '40's, that street had not its present aristocratic title, but was known as Pollywog street, from the frog-pond near the grist-mill.
The shed part of I. L. Pearl's house stood where his house now stands, was occupied by various principals of the Academy, in turn, and was considered a good house in those times. Between that and the branch was waste land with some old apple-trees scattered about, and the river-bank bordered with all sorts of wild stuff that grows in neglected spots, cicuta being prominent. The old well belonging to the Araunah Waterman house was in use for many years after the house was torn down, and furnished water for that part of the street.
When O. & A. H. Buck were building the store now occupied by Harry Maxfield, in digging out earth to lay the foundation walls,
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the workmen accidentally loosened stones in one side of the well, so that the water ran out, and the well collapsed.
The old house owned by Almon Whiting was the only other building on that side of the street, till you went up the hill, and away along the road to the top of the hill below Geo. Whiting's house. There stood the mill where Dexter Whiting ground bark for his tannery, situated at the head of the little meadow below the road. Quite a pond in the basin at the top of the hill furnished the power for running the bark-mill. The Pollywog street school-house stood just beyond Geo. Whiting's house, and above that were only three dwellings, the Ellin- wood house, recently occupied by Jason French, the Fowler place, lately known as the Barton house, and two small, old houses on the Chase place, where Mr. Sherwin's big, square house stands.
Near where Carlos Oakes lives was the Baptist church; some of its timbers were used in building the present one. At the foot of the hill were the house lately purchased by Herbert Scott, and the Rush- ford house, then occupied by Andrew Dow, with gardens in the rear, but all the hills and meadows beyond, where the Graded School build- ing and Mr. Waters' house stands, School St. itself and all, were included in the Geo. W. Hill farm, until 1870, when another bridge was built over the Gihon near the site of the present electric power plant and School St. was opened leading to it. Mr. Hill lived in a low, rambling, old-fashioned house, about where Barrows' store stands. It was the earliest hotel in the village, and near it was the Common, where June training and other outdoor public functions were held.
In 1812, while the youth of the town were having a Fourth of July jollification on this Common, the cannon they were firing exploded, and one young man was literally blown to pieces, so that his brains were scattered over the low roof of the Hotel. He was buried in the cemetery on Stearns St., and you can read this inscription on his tomb- stone :
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"In memory of Stephen
B. Huntington Son of Christopher and Eunice Huntington Who De parted This Life July the 4 A D 1812
in the 20th year of his Age Youth don't forgit As you
Pass by you'l Turn to
lust As Well As i."
The Farnham house was originally the old Hotel barn, moved, and made over into a dwelling house. About where Mr. Ira Jones' house stands was a small building used as a cabinet shop by Dea. Robin- son. The Laraway house was occupied by the widow Sheldon, af- ter the death of her husband, the hatter. Their younger son, Charles H. is well and favorably remembered by the older inhabitants of the town, and we were as proud to hear of his election and re-election to the office of Governor of South Dakota, some twelve or more years since, as we were sad, a few years afterward, to hear of his death.
The mill-house, burned in the summer of 1906, was probably one of the oldest houses in the village, occupied then by Blake, the miller. The grist-mill was a small affair, for no Western wheat or corn was brought here then. It simply did custom-work, grinding the farmers' grain, and taking out the toll allowed by law, one-six- teenth part, to pay for grinding. From this practice arose the saying common in those times, that "you could never tell upon whose grain the miller's pig was fattened," and another, which has passed into a proverb, that "the dust from an honest miller's hat will cure sore eyes." It was scandalously asserted that a miller's right hand grew into a peculiar bent shape, from scooping too low in the grain.
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There was a miller in charge at one time who had a long, lanky son as his assistant, one of that sort of boys who do a great deal of "heavy standing around." Farmers were wont to feel, in those days, that their grain was, somehow, subjected to excessive toll, and some said it was this way:
The miller would come along to a row of bags of grain waiting to be ground, and would call out to his son :
"Hiram! have you tolled this grain?"
Without waiting for a reply, he would go on, "Of course you hain't, you lazy whelp! You never do nothin'!" and would proceed to take out the toll himself, but later developments would indicate that Hiram had attended to his work better than his father gave him credit for.
Sidewalks, as such, were practically unknown here, three score years ago. In summer we wended our way along the grassy roadside paths, but with winter snows teams and pedestrians alike kept to the highway. Most houses of any pretension whatever had their yards fenced in, a necessary precaution against hasty raids by the many village cows that were driven through the streets night and morning, all summer, to say nothing of the big droves of hundreds of cattle which were often driven through here on their way to the city markets. The door-yard fences were more or less pretentious, according to the taste and purse of the owner, and all had gates which were said to sag badly on the hinges where the marriageable daughters of the house were numerous.
We have no reason to expect that Johnson will become a metropolis, but if it may never be much larger than now, it may cer- tainly be better. It remains for every man, woman and child to show their civic pride by helping in every way possible to make the town a better place to live in, a cleaner, more pleasant, more wholesome place, better for its dwellers physically, morally and intellectually.
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