USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 45
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John H. "Jackie" Pickett, who never seemed to grow old as he went about town in his sawed-off straw hat winter and summer-he always left enough brim for a visor-was a familiar figure for many years. Of smallish stature, he climbed hills and waded ponds each spring and always appeared at the TIMES office with the first pussy willows, the first arbutus and pond lilies which he pulled from the mud in the river at the foot of Weeden's hill when the water was down. He had a weakness for alcohol but toward the end of his career, he claimed to be "on the wagon." Whether his conversion was to blame for his sudden death in 1949, has never been known but he never seemed to anyone, with his bright smile and jaunty air, to have been 75 when he left town for the last time. He was genuinely missed in Bellows Falls.
THE PLAYGROUND
The necessity of a public playground for the children of Bellows Falls had long been a moot question when, in 1914, a village meeting was held in the Opera House. This meeting made a sort of record to start off with when every vote cast for clerk of the corporation was for Edmund C. Bolles. They also voted to sprinkle the streets with a tax of 5c on the dollar for this purpose. Then 200 citizens discussed a public park, its location and the hotly contested question of a playground on the same location. For some time the Woman's Club had been working toward this end with both Dr. and Mrs. Edward Kirk- land campaigning for it. The doctor argued that the play- ground movement was expanding all over the country, that it kept the children off the streets in the summer and with 14 cases of tuberculosis in town the preceding year, it was important to their health. (It wasn't mentioned but that same week Hodg- don & Shaw advertised "Hustena, the great German remedy for lung troubles and consumption.") Three locations for a park had been considered, the Basin Farm, Morgan's Field and William's Orchard. The Playground committee was firmly in favor of the last mentioned spot with its pine grove, open spaces for a possible playground and they even dared suggest a paid instructor in the summer. Among the leaders in the opposi-
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THE OLD ROCKINGHAM MEETING HOUSE
THE "OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE"
THE NEW MENNONITE CHURCH
THE BAPTIST CHURCH IN 1953
EPISCOPAL CHURCH
NCE SOCIETY
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SOCIETY
T
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, CAMBRIDGEPORT, VT.
THE UNITED CHURCH
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tion were Henry Johnson and D. P. Thompson who reminded the village that it already had a large debt to be paid off. They also doubted that the village was READY for a playground and park. After a hot debate, the park was voted for and the trustees authorized to purchase 50 acres of land from James H. Williams for not more than $10,000 and $2,000 to improve and condition the same. The bubbling spring under the pines, long familiar to the children and to adults each spring when Minard's Pond "turned over" and they gathered with jugs and jars for drinking water, became a bubbler and today is piped across the field to the grandstand. The Playground was officially opened in 1914 when the Woman's Club staged an open air, historical pageant on Bunker Hill Day with 1,700 people watching from the grassy open space. Williams Orchard had now become the Playground and the Woman's Club helped finance the first improvements for the children and paid the first instructor, Miss Penelope Macleod.
THE SWIMMING POOL
While the Playground has been an important factor in the community for many years now, it is still without another neces- sity for its children, the long-planned-for and defeated swimming pool. Valiant efforts have been made in this direction for more than 15 years with clubs raising money toward this mirage-like project and committees working overtime toward its realiza- tion. In 1938 the trustees applied for a PWA grant for a pool and each organization in town was asked to send a representative to a meeting in the Woman's Club rooms. Town Manager Downing reported that PWA officials requested a certified copy of village approval of the $49,000 project before a Federal Grant of $22,000 could be obtained. A special meeting was called at the Armory at which 334 people voted-and defeated it by four votes. But with each summer causing drownings and accidents at the various swimming holes at Williams River, Cold River and "Little Egypt" on the Saxtons River, and with "No Swimming" signs posted at many of them because of polution during dry spells, many people were not ready to give up. A Community Committee was organized with Hardy Merrill as chairman and Morgan's Field as the potential site- as it was of every potential project for 40 years until it was turned into building lots. It watched surrounding towns build pools with donated labor, materials and money. But in 1946 plans were still being "investigated" and the children still swam in the rivers. The next year Eugene "Genie" Cray offered $1,000 toward a pool if volunteers would build it.
But the village still marked time until 1953 when the chil- dren, under the enthusiastic leadership of Natt Morrison, began clearing land at the playground for a pool. Morrison
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believed that where there's a will there's a way to do it. The trustees officially approved the site and the United Swimming Pool Organization went into delayed action. It consisted of various clubs including the Garden Club which still held in its treasury $50 raised for this purpose, the first club to put down a fixed sum toward a pool. The USPO was contacted and Mrs. Theresa Brundgardt of Brattleboro, director of the Board of Education, came up to help. All through the autumn, each Sunday afternoon saw a group of workers arrive at the Play- ground armed with saws, hatchets, axes and even butcher knives, determined to "have a safe place for the kids to swim." They cleared a swath free from brush and trees 100 x 40 ft. on their first Sunday. The young fry felt that the pool was as good as done and already were doing belly flops in the cool water on a hot summer day. Brushwood was burned after the snow came and firewood was free for the taking. Women served refresh- ments to the cold and tired workers. So eager were the young- sters that they traded their usual "trick or treat" that Hallow- e'en for pennies for the Pool Fund and turned in $137, mostly in coppers. To further aid the Fund, boxing matches were put on in the Armory by Bill Kratky of Rockingham one of which netted gross receipts of $1,078.05. The Rotary backed another at the Playground and had 3,000 tickets printed. The time was ripe and another vote was taken; it failed by six votes. The next month they tried again, sure that they must win-and lost by one vote. In 1954 there was $3,000 in the Pool Fund and those who still believed in it, including Max Miller and John Nisbet of the TIMES staff, started right in again, sure that with all the streams posted that summer, people could not refuse to see the need for a pool for the children. In June, 1955 a penny line around the Square raised $403.29 to finance the use of the pool at the Cedar Crest Motel in Rockingham with a paid in- structor three afternoons a week. The Committee of this pro- ject was headed by Max Miller and Mrs. Thelma Bronk and although the funds fell short by $400, this pool was used and is still the only approved "swimminghole" in town where Red Cross courses in swimming are still conducted each summer with about 385 children a week. Various organizations continue to raise money for a community pool and the Emblem Club, the first one to get behind the present drive, voted $100 for this purpose. A Mardi Gras was also held which swelled the Fund by $1,758.80. The Committee still believes that someday Bellows Falls will have a pool! 16
TREES
In 1915, William D. Hayes, consulting forester and son of L. S. Hayes, advocated more and better care for village trees if they were to survive. The greatest evil seemed to be the 16 See Addendum
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horses who chewed the trees while hitched to them, the patient horses of the butcher, the baker and the cottage cheese maker. Even the doctor's nag sharpened his teeth on the bark of con- venient maples. Mr. Hayes suggested an ordinance or fine for hitching horses to the village trees. So the grocer's tired nag would have to wait in the sun, wearing a straw hat and fly net- ting. Four years later the condition of the village streets was still under discussion. A. E. Tuttle announced at the village meeting that 100 shade trees recently set out were "doing poorly," being consumed "as fodder." He vetoed any motion to buy more trees until these were properly protected. But the Street Commissioner was directed to purchase 100 American elms and 50 Norway maples just the same and to properly pro- tect all young trees. In 1915, horses menaced our trees; today is insects and diseases and gas and oil fumes from cars.' So they put guards around the trees to protect them from the horses (who, after all, had to kill time someway) and the trees "ab- sorbed" the wire as they grew and aften choked to death, Mr. Hayes said, a vicious circle. On a survey of Henry, Burt, Green, School and Atkinson Streets between Burt and Williams, he counted 180 sugar maples and four other species, 121 elms, several locusts, poplars, horse chestnuts, basswoods and butter- nuts. (The tree-lined streets of Bellows Falls are still remem- bered by many people.) Of these, 119 were already too old to survive much longer and only 179 were healthy and most of these required immediate attention as they suffered from decayed branches and crotches. Time, tide and progress has eliminated most of these old trees which shaded the sidewalks as you walked to school in the spring, made "ear rings" of the maple seed pairs or scuffled through the fallen leaves of October. The trees many times fell a victim to the new world of sidewalk plows and paved walks. The village began to have better sidewalks and fewer trees. While many died a natural death, many were good for years to come and more than one person fought in vain, the removal of the great maple, the lofty elm which shaded their yards. L. S. Hayes, many years before, taking a leaf from his son's notebook and probably worried at the decimation of the trees, bought two acres of land on Oak Hill for reforestation purposes.
At the beginning of the century, at the upper end of the village beside the river, were the Four Pines, the last of many formerly along the river bank, majestic old trees beneath whose shade people sat to enjoy the breeze on a hot day and the view of Mt. Ascutney shouldering the sky. These were gone by 1910, although they were standing two years before, removed by the Rutland Railroad lest they fall on the tracks below in a storm.
A shade tree is no longer a shade tree to be enjoyed and otherwise forgotten today any more than a peach or apple tree. Pests have descended upon them like the locusts in the Bible.
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The brown tail moth appeared around here in 1913 according to A. C. Halladay at that time. Today we fight the gypsy moth on oak trees, caterpillars on fruit and maple trees in June and web worms on everything along the roadsides in late summer. In 1922 a new blight removed all the chestnut trees from the hills whose prickly crop generations of children had gathered in October. A cross of a Japanese chestnut and one from the south is reputed to be non-susceptible to the blight and a shipment of the young shoots from Japan were imported a few years ago for the experiment but most of them died on the wharves in New York during a strike of dock workers. Occasionally someone has raised a brief bearing tree of late years, like the one on the George Kenyon farm in Rockingham, but the disease is said to strike at the new growth also. The Dutch Elm Beetle seems here to stay although not as prevalent as in the western part of the state but it spells slow death to our wine-glass elms. Today high-powered equipment is used on village trees and helicopters and biplanes spray the woodlands with a mixture of fuel oil and DDT which last for ten days even with rain. In 1955 the State Forestry Department sprayed all woodland trees from the air at the cost of $1.50 an acre of which they paid one third. In 1953 the gypsy moths turned whole hillsides as dead and brown as though a fire and ripped through them. But in 1941 the DAR set out seven maples on the west end of Henry Street, following the '38 hurricane and in 1955 the town set out 35 Augustinian ascending elms around town, having set out similar ones two years before. Perhaps eventually the trees will return to Bellows Falls.
THE CASE OF ROCKINGHAM VERSUS WESTMINSTER
For many years the good people of North Westminster, the little community commonly called Gageville, have been trying to legally become a part of Rockingham or at least, the village of Bellows Falls. The subject was first brought up in 1915 and ten years later there was much excitment and some hard feelings concerning a petition carrying the names of 12 people who urgently desired to sever their connections with their town and join forces with Rockingham to which they are still bound by many ties of church, schools, stores and hospital. The Town of Westminster however, prepared a paper written by A. P. Williams and John P. Holmes, explaining the hardships which such a move would entail upon their town as a whole. It was touch and go for awhile with the residents of Gageville presenting their grievances and the benefits to be gained by the removal, in soul if not in body, to Rockingham. These included less taxes, use of such Bellows Falls services as water-Gageville relies upon wells, so many houses to a well-fire protection, lights and schools. It was said that Gageville had been working
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on this idea for 30 years and that Westminster had told the little community that since she was only an expense to them anyway, that if she would take her three bridges along with her, she could go and welcome! This statement was hotly denied in an open letter to the TIMES of January 1, 1925 by Mary S. Kim- ball. At an open meeting in Westminster, residents claimed that they could not afford to let Gageville leave them, taking, as she would, one-third of the taxes with her and leaving the town 80 miles of road and the new bridge over the river to Wal- pole which was a necessity in the near future. The letter also asserted that taxes were at the bottom of the whole business and suggested that if the town as a whole, would live within its means, high taxes would cease to be a burden.
The petition to be presented to the legislature of 1926 asked that the line between the two towns start on the Connecti- cut River south of the Dennis Drislane place, include the St. Charles Cemetery, continue to Sabins Bridge and follow the south side of the highway to the present line near the Beebe place (now owned by Albert Tidd). The petition still carried the names of the 12 signers who were John S. and Caroline Burnett, W. E. Pierce, F. H. and Jennie Mark, Franklin and Lula Newton, Waldo and Lillian Bresland, N. F. Burton, George A. Pierce and C. N. Shaw. Although the petition was not granted, a concession was made by rotating town meetings from Westminster to Gageville to Westminster West. During the legislative session of 1952 the subject again raised its head with Gageville once more trying to sever connections in West- minster and come into the fold of Rockingham. The same limits were defined but it never got to a hearing in Montpelier. It was then re-worded for the 1954-1955 session, asking that the village of Gageville be allowed to join simply the corporation of Bellows Falls, thus gaining the advantages of its water, lights and fire protection but paying property taxes in Westminster. At a meeting in Gageville, that village approved this new step in a 53-29 vote. However, at a similar meeting in Bellows Falls, the latter voted against it 63-8 as it would cost, it was figured, $2,549 annually to maintain its new addition in such things as water, sewage, street lights and fire protection. So, although the good folks of Gageville are not a part of Rocking- ham, they will continue to be neighbors "over the line.". And in 1955, after much altercation pro and con, the much-talked of merger of the village of Bellows Falls with the town of Rock- ingham, making one unit, was also voted down at a meeting in the town manager's office.
TOURIST ACCOMMODATIONS
Forty years ago, "tourist accommodations" meant a room in a farmhouse where the owners took in "paying guests," or
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a tent that the owner of a roadside dispensary of cold drinks and hamburgs set up in his field for campers. This changed to cabins as the world began moving on wheels and gas and today: the highways are landscaped with motels, cabins and eating places which bear little resemblance to the first primitive attempts to care for the touring transients. The tourist business has become one of the big industries of the country. One of the oldest tourist stands in the state was started soon after W. W. I at the top of Sand Hill by a returned sailor, Jack Barrett, who opened a hot dog stand in one small building on land belonging to Lewis C. Lovell. Other owners included W. N. Patterson who was there in 1928 and a Mr. Brooks. Patterson gave it the name of the Whip-poor-wil Tea Room, enlarged the buildings, erected a couple of cabins and advertised in the Automobile Green Book of 1927, chicken dinners and "overnight camps." The land and buildings were purchased in 1934 by Mr. and Mrs .. Arthur Edwards of South Londonderry who ran it as a tea room for several years and built new cabins. The main build- ing has recently been remodeled into a large and modern gift shop with cabins and is known as the Whip-poor-Wil Cabins. The Country Candy Shop nearby is run by Mrs. Edwards. Other accommodations include the following:
CEDAR CREST: This building when first erected in 1946 by Stanley Patch and his father, was known as the Toddle Inn eating place. Located on Route 5 on Commissary Brook, cabins were first built in 1948 and in 1952 a motel was added on the hillside. Two years later the cabins were remodeled into another motel. The brook was dammed up into a swimming pool for guests which attracts many people through the summer.
THE DUTCH OVEN on Route 103 above the Country Club was originally known as THE LILACS and was established by the Batchelders in 1933 who ran it for two years and sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Fairbanks who continue to operate the cabins.
ESTHER'S RESTAURANT was built in 1952 below the HETTY GREEN MOTEL and is run and owned by Miss Esther Barry.
THE EVERGREEN MOTOR COURT is on the site of the old Tom Thumb Golf Course and the little firs and pines now make an attractive background of large trees for the present buildings. Facing the Connecticut River, it was sold to James and Mary Russell of North Walpole and converted into cabins for automobile tourists. It was sold in 1941 to Joseph and Blanch Slomba who ran the business until 1953 when it was purchased by Stocker Enterprises as a restaurant and cabins.
THE HETTY GREEN MOTEL was erected in 1951 by the Hotel Windham Corporation, just north of the Minard's Pond Road and an annex was built in 1956. Like the Hotel, it is managed by J. Emerson Kennedy.
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THE HIGHLANDS restaurant at the junction of Routes 5 and 103 was originally the restaurant at Barber Park once run by Jack Bryant and moved to its present location by E. A. "Ned" Pierce of Bellows Falls who ran it one year under its present name. In 1932 it was sold to Rollo and Alice Brown and John Parris who sold it in 1934 to Robert and Frank Chitten- den of Springfield who erected cabins. In 1941 it was trans- ferred to Louis Lenos who in turn sold it to Peter Nicholas in 1950. For many years Mr. Nicholas provided a Thanksgiving dinner to many school children. It is now owned by Victor E. Davignon.
THE MAPLES rents cabins in Old Town and was first run by Ernest and Maude Currier and sold by them in 1945 to Edward and Elizabeth Kemp who in 1947 sold it to William W. and Agnes R. Smith. In 1949 it was again sold to John and Mary Hird from England. Russell Brown purchased the place in 1954. This place is said to have been built by "Priest" Whiting, Rockingham's first pastor, for his son when he married.
THE NORTH SHORE DINER was built by Jesse Grout in 1948 at the eastend of the Williams River Bridge on Route 5. He sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Forest Harding who in turn sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Mark Abbott in 1955. Mr. Grout retained the wide meadows behind this diner where he established the only trailer court in town which was sold in 1956 to Brian Adams.
WEATHER
It is always safe, they say, and often interesting, to talk about the weather, a commodity in Vermont which has done many odd things and yet perhaps not so odd. Some of the "good old days," especially in winter, seem on their way back. Grandfather would feel right at home at 35° below zero on a January morning. Probably he would have taken out the pung with the buffalo robes and driven matter-of-factly off to town, the frost congealing on his whiskers as his breath plumed out before him. He might have remarked, in passing, that we were having our "usual spell of weather." Today we get all steamed up about it-even at 35 below. But now comes the Burlington Weather Bureau to say that actually the winters were NOT colder when grandfather was around, at least when he was a boy; that they were REALLY cold when most of us today were youngsters. Which explains those chilly years of 1917 and 1918 when the trolley cars in Montpelier froze up and would not run at 60° below. (The author was there!)
There are those who take their weather signals seriously and plan accordingly. If the corn husks are tightly wrapped and skunks come around the buildings early; if the geese fly south ahead of time and chipmunks have thick tails-it spells cold weather and lots of it. Some folks depend on the "woolly
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bear" caterpillars for their almanac, measuring the black and orange stripes as the furry things hump along the path. Some rely on the Old Farmer's Almanac-even when it was wrong last year. Some count the butternuts and acorns on the trees; a fat harvest is to feed the wild things during a hard winter. All in all, most of us today rely upon the radio and television for they do not have to prognosticate a year ahead. The U. S. Weather Bureau, started during the Spanish-American War to worn troops of storm dangers through a hurricane warning service, says definitely, that winters are becoming warmer-but only temporarily. Then came the winter of '57 which must have been the beginning of a new cycle.
We seem to have begun having those old-fashioned winters back in 1914 when on the morning of January 13-January is the month when the weather begins to "make up"-it went down to a mean 30° below, a very mean mercury. That Decem- ber was also the coldest on record followed by the dryest March in 97 years. Then nature tipped the scales again and the winter of 1919, besides being as dry as its Volstead Act, was extremely warm with caterpillars ambling around in January, misguided geese honking north and acorns sprouting along the canal in February. June of 1954 was the wettest in 30 years but the wettest month in ten years was July of 1954 with a rain level of 9.60 inches and August, 1957, was the dryest in the 20th century! The Boston Globe came out with figures to show that January of 1954 was the dampest January since 1936 with rain instead of snow on 21 days. Gardens in Rockingham floated in ponds of water and most of them winter-killed as the first nine months of '54 had a precipitation record of 35.05 and a September rain- fall of only 3.61 as nature tried to balance itself. The radio said it was probably a record in history. Spring came on so cold and wet that gardens were planted more than once, peas rotted in their trenches and corn might as well have been fed to the birds-crows included. Then October came in with a temperature of 80° in the shade. To keep up with the record, November of 1957 was milder than much of August after a dry summer when many wells and springs went dry.
The record breaking winter of 1917-1918 brought the "flu" epidemic, taking many lives. The bitter winter of 1957-1958 started late but with a new flu bug called Asiatic flu, closing schools in many places but this time with new antibiotics with which to fight it and polio "shots" were a "must" for all children and young adults. February, 1954, was the warmest since 1925 with the ice breaking up in the Connecticut on the first day of March and Rockingham had no snow after Washington's Birthday although it was extra deep in Burlington. On the morning of March 1, 1954, it was 62 degrees at 11 a. m. but, to let us know that the millenium is not yet, nature tosses in a rip-snorter of a storm like that of 1952 with a 20-inch snowfall.
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