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 9
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So the Bellows Falls Co-operative Creamery was organized in 1920 but it did not function until the next year. Today O'Brien is still a farmer in Rockingham Village and MacLennan had the background of a Minnesota farm besides having been in the farm machine business. These men with several others including Charles Adams of Boston, were called The Intangibles of the organization, the pioneers who put the life blood into it and made the wheels turn. Among the stockholders in 1926, was Calvin Coolidge.
Thompson gave credit to MacLennan for the success of the plant for it was he who literally rang door bells in Boston to find a taker for the potential concern. It took him a week before he hit, by one of those long chances which are Providence in disguise, the John T. Connor Co., a chain of 300 grocery stores later to become the First National Stores. This led to Charles Adams coming to Bellows Falls to look over the situation to supply good milk from Vermont to the Boston market, from farm to creamery in Boston, "twenty-four hours fresher."
Since the first shipment of "the best milk that can be sold" in November, 1921, in Boston, the local plant has continued its connection with the First National Stores and the original 120 members of the creamery soon rose to 1,300. Membership slipped back to 900 in 1951 but in 1954 had about 1,000. The
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first farmer to bring his milk in to the new plant was John B. Abbott of Rockingham.
An interesting angle of the business is the fact that farm values in the region served by the creamery have increased immensely, proving that a stable milk market affects farm tax returns as well as living standards of farmers among other sociological problems. Milk production increased from 125 pounds a day in 1921 to 168 pounds in 1935 to 265 in 1950. In 1927 production had risen from 20,000 pounds of milk to 100,000 pounds and 6,000 pounds of cream daily for 50,000 quart bottles of pasteurized whole milk and 7,000 half pint bottles of cream per day.
In 1928 the plant did a $2,000,000 business. In 1937 producers were receiving more for their milk, but a milk war in Rhode Island caused trouble as that state introduced coloring matter into Vermont milk in an endeavor to prevent its entering their state. In 1932 a new addition increased the plant's capa- city 50% and a new ice machine made 125 tons per day. When the big icehouse was built at the Pond, the creamery used a lot of ice. But the ice business in Bellows Falls has passed into history and the creamery uses little ice today except in the summer that is imported from Brattleboro. Mechanical refrigeration is used in all milk cars. In 1939 additional machinery was added to the plant.
In 1943 the Edelstein Company, with a staff of 15 men, leased a portion of the building for the manufacture of cottage cheese which is shipped daily to New York City by truck. They made an addition to their plant in 1955. In 1946 the creamery opened a branch collecting office in Windsor employing five men. Since glass bottles were replaced by paper containers in 1947, after experimenting since 1941, sales increased from 90,000 quarts to 350,000 per day, five years later.
Milk delivery from farm to plant has changed considerably over the years and while a few farmers still truck their own milk to the plant, most milk is picked up today by the farmer-owned Brookside trucks from loading platforms at the farms. Once a farmer picked up any "empties" at the creamery on the basis of "first come, first served." Today he gets back his own cans. In 1921 there were 21 men working; today 75 are employed and four to seven cars of milk are shipped out each day. Local stores have milk on sale 24 hours after milking. Farmers who ship milk in to the plant come from Grafton, Springfield, Saxtons River and places in New Hampshire and milk is picked up as far north as Rutland.
Clark Bowen, present manager, took over the work in 1939 at the death of Mr. MacLennan. He knows the business from the ground up as he has been connected with the local plant from its beginning. Present officers are: President, Harold Smith, Cuttingsville; Vice President, Frank Weeden, Rocking-
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ham; Treasurer, Hugh O'Brien, Rockingham. The latter two were on the original Board of Directors which today include J. F. Frohock, Charlestown, N. H .; L. S. Ballam, Walpole, N. H .; Burton M. Stickney, Saxtons River; Harold J. Eastman, Quee- chee, Vt .; Forest Quinn, Woodstock, Vt. and Carleton Green- wood, Westminster Vt. For 14 years Donald Thomas was bacteriologist with the creamery but left to set up his own laboratory in his home, The Thomas Laboratories, in 1947, the only such privately owned laboratory in the state.
WHEELER STEAM LAUNDRY. Among the establish- ments which remained in town over many years was the laundry run by George B. Wheeler. It was one of the largest in New England with agents in all the surrounding towns. Started soon after Mr. Wheeler came to town in the 70's, Mr. Wheeler resigned in 1909 because of his long illness with asthma and handed the business over to Charles S. Howard and Mr. Wheeler's son-in-law, George F. Lovell. He retained ownership of the real estate which burned in 1911 in a $40,000 fire which raced through Canal and Rockingham Streets. It burned again in 1917 and again in January of 1920, taking with it the Grand Theater owned by the H. DeMott Perry Corporation, the Bellows Falls Garage and trapped the Andosca families in their home. As firemen did not yet have masks, they could not enter the theater in the heavy smoke and exploding film blew a hole through the wall. Thirty cars were driven from the garage but tons of water ruined thousands of dollars worth of storage batteries.
As this was the only laundry in town, it was a catastrophe besides laying 24 people out of work along with the future hopes of the new owners, George Webber and Michael Meany, who had only had it a month. It was not rebuilt this time. There was much muttering in town that the "Bolsheviki" had set the fire. Today it would probably be the Reds. In 1926, Earl R. Yates, who had a laundry in North Walpole, moved his business over here into the old paint shop on Rockingham Street where his son Donald, in 1935, succeeded him. This closed in 1949. At one time the Bellows Falls Hand Laundry also functioned in town, owned by H. F. Barnhart.
THE INER-OCEAN SHIRT FACTORY of Lincoln, Nebraska, was among the small industries which briefly raised their heads. The buildings of this company were erected by the Rockingham Building Assn., formed for this purpose, on Morgan Street in 1910, occupied later for some years by the Superset Brush Factory. It was sold in 1919 to the I. P Co. to make cores for paper rolls. The Shirt Factory manager was C. E. Buffington, well-known for owning and driving fancy horse flesh. The business was of short duration because no girls could be hired for $4 a week, but for many years, the building was always referred to as the Shirt Factory. Another concern which desired to locate here but which was evidently not received
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with open arms was the OXFORD LINEN CO. in 1907 which arrived with a high overhead of doubtful securities.
THE LOS ANGELES OLIVE GROWERS' ASSOCIA- TION was a thriving small packing plant on Williams Street forty years ago. President was Charles W. Butterfield who put up the building and managed the business for 20 years. Even- tually freight rates became too excessive to pay to ship the olives and olive oil from this eastern outlet, the plant closed and the building was leased to the DeWitt Grocery Co. of Keene, N. H. as a storage depot. Today it is owned by Stephen Belaski as a shop and apartment. And while thermostats may sound like something ultra-modern, the CRANDON MANUFACTUR- ING CO. on Bridge Street, was making thermostat heat regulators in 1910.
THE BRAGG LUMBER CORPORATION started in 1906 when Alba M. Bragg, as a small contractor, started selling ma- terials from a lumber yard near his home on Williams Terrace. By 1922 his business had expanded until he bought storage space on Hyde Street. His son Richard was in business with his father from his graduation at the University of Vermont in 1930 until his death in 1950. Mr. Bragg, president and treasurer, aged 71, retired in 1951 after half a century in the lumber busi- ness and Tauni Pajunen, a Finnish resident of Walpole, formerly in the textile business in Sweden, assumed managership and majority ownership. Mrs. Herbert Bellows was secretary and clerk for 20 years until her death the following year. Mr. Bragg died in 1954 and the Bragg Lumber Corp. was reorganized the next year with Donald Thomas of Bellows Falls, Richard Lagen- bach of Westminster and Milton Quinlar of Walpole. They are now engaged in a long-range housing development between Minard's Pond and Bramley Way.
THE OULTON DRILL CORP. was formed in Bellows Falls in 1926 to which local men, after much campaigning, subscribed about $40,000. A portion of the Vermont Farm buildings was used and enthusiasm ran high for awhile among firms who used this drill. But finances were lacking to keep the thing going and in May, 1927, the stockholders met at the Hotel Windham and the directors recommended that the assets of the company be transferred to a new organization financed by Boston brokers.
THE BELLOWS FALLS ICE COMPANY. Before 1900, a well-known figure about town was George F. Evans, ice dealer who first started the Bellows Falls Ice Co. which each winter cut the great cakes of ice on Minard's Pond until the fire of 1946. This destroyed the big icehouse and with the steady advance of iceless refrigerators, the old ice box which dripped puddles on the floor, had begun to disappear and the icehouse was never rebuilt. Gone, too, were the ice wagon and the men stooping under 50-1b. cakes on their rubber-padded backs. The Ice.
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Company ran for 60 years and 1950 was the first winter that no ice was cut on the Pond.
George Evans, they say, was a short, stocky man who rode around the winter streets in a low pung, sitting cross-legged on the floor and you could never be sure whether or not it was a runaway horse until you saw the top of his head. At his death his son George and later his daughter, Mrs. Stella Dickinson, managed the Ice Company for more than half a century where, each year, two icehouses and the barn at the Evans home were filled. Mrs. Dickinson was a familiar figure for many winters as she drove her horse and sleigh up to the Pond to supervise the work in the days when drug stores used most of the ice and it cost 25c a hundred pounds. Today it runs to 80c-if you can get it. Instead of the familiar iceman now is a magical sort of public machine which drops ice into your pail in cubes or chunk, for cold drinks or the punch bowl. Or maybe that old- fashioned freezer which runs by manpower and which is as obsolete as the iceman today.
Permission to cut ice on the Pond was given each year to Mr. Evans as evinced by an old letter signed by H. D. Ryder and David Savage, Bailiffs and Eugene Leonard and E. S. Fair- banks, water commissioners and which reads as follows: "To George F. Evans; You are hereby permitted in accordance with the provision of Section 22 of the Charter of the Bellows Falls Village Corporation, to go upon the water of Minard's Pond during the winter months of the current year for the purpose of cutting and removing ice therefrom for supplying the inhabitants of said village upon the following conditions; that all the droppings of the animals used on the ice or on the banks of the Pond and all filth of every kind occasioned by cutting and re- moving the ice from the Pond be cleared off every day and deposited below the dam of said Pond and at no other place. You are not permitted to deliver ice from said Pond to any person outside the limits of said corporation without special permission for that purpose. "
In 1921 L. W. Pike purchased the ice business and up to 1927, he and Walter Hadley seemed to take turns running it. Later it was bought by Matthews & Hatch and the company today engages mostly in lumbering. Since the big icehouse was built, it was added to several times and held up to 5,000 cakes of ice when it burned. About 130 tons per day were harvested in 1943 when war cut the crew of 85 men down to a mere 16 or 18 and the crop was four inches thicker than usual and still had to be harvested in record time or warm weather would catch up with them.
At that time the man in charge was Dennis Hennessey, a veteran of 43 years in the ice business. He started his own ice business with a cart in 1900 in North Walpole in the days when there were no rubber back pads and the icemen were soaked,
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winter and summer. In 1918 he came across the river to work for Mrs. Dickinson and in 1950 was still connected with the firm.
The old days of eight and ten teams of horses drawing sharp plows over the ice to cut it were gone by 1940 when auto-driven scrapers scooted over half of the pond at a time when the ice grew to be 14 inches thick. The rafts came down the open channel to have their loads conveyed by belt up to the icehouse, each raft ridden by a man with a hooked pole or "picayune." Needle bars broke up and separated the cakes as they were cut and the channel bar was used in the channel. And always a couple of men had to stay all night at the Pond to pull a raft up and down the channel so it wouldn't freeze over, a lonely, chilly job on a cold night.
The conveyor belt from water to icehouse removed much of the old hand labor as the 22"x30" cakes hurtled up and into one of the seven openings in the icehouse where men waited with hooks to pile them up inside. Of the 50 men once on the icehouse staff, war cut them to four workers who struggled to fill each room in the house with its 500 cakes and seal it up with sawdust insulation in walls and ceiling. Only one room was ever opened at a time. The old days of the icehouse on the farm with cakes buried in sawdust, are over since science dis- covered that ice actually melted faster that way. Ice was also cut on the river for many years to fill the icehouse of the Rutland Railroad near the Arch Bridge.
FRANK MARK'S SHOP was another industry dating almost as far back as the ice business. It was on the stairs where Frank, for more than 35 years, mended bicycles, guns, tools and machinery and sharpened skates. Nearing 80 now, Frank was a natural mechanic also a locksmith and could always "fix" anything from shot guns to baby carriages. It was one of those places without which no community can get along. All in all, the shop ran for more than 50 years and Harlan Huntoon ran it when Frank went to work in it Nov. 1, 1894. The next year he bought it for himself and ran it until 1928 when he swapped his swords, you might say, for a ploughshare and went to farming. He could doubtless mend a broken sword, too, if they had been much in use. He sold his shop to John F. Davis of Fitchburg and retired to the country where he still lives, off the Saxtons River Road.
Among other men connected with this shop were Thomas Candee and George Freeman, the latter coming to work for Frank in 1914. When the shop was sold, Mr. Freeman ran a gasoline and repair shop on Rockingham Street until 1931 when he bought the Mark shop himself but died in 1933. The last owner was Harold Cady who sold some of the machinery during the war. Today the space is occupied by Marie and Thel's dressmaking shop.
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THE AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY opened its first office in Bellows Falls in 1883 up over the depot with George Babbitt superintendent. When the depot burned in 1921, this office, which was the district accounting office, removed to the second floor of the Grey block in the Star Hotel where it occupied the south half of the floor. About 1925 it located in the Gobie block on Rockingham Street which was also the Claims Depart- ment for Vermont, New Hampshire and Quebec. It doubled its force of seven men and added five stenographers becoming one of the most important express centers in New England out- side of the large cities. The office moved to Boston in 1932 and today it is the American Railway Express located in its own building at the depot again. The American Express was once the Adams Express and whose founder, Alvin Adams, was born in Andover, Vt. Allen E. Lothrop is agent, Thomas Reynolds cashier and John Strong has driven the delivery truck since 1943 having 43 years of service in various places. He passed away while in Florida in March, 1956.
When the office closed more than 20 years ago, there was much consternation in Bellows Falls as most of the employees were moved to the Boston office where the Vermont-New Hamp- shire-Quebec district consolidated. Superintendent Johnson was transferred to Springfield, Mass. It meant a yearly loss of $30,000 to $40,000 to local business people as once the Express Company had one of the largest pay rolls in town with 125 men and women employed. Necessity for the change-over was laid to loss of business on railroads due to increase of trucking. Among the men who worked for the Express Co. over the years was J. S. Rushlow who was agent for three years until William Carney came in 1920 and who later went to Berlin, N. H., Herbert S. Dedrick took his place, retiring in 1939 after 50 years service with the company, 45 of them in Bellows Falls. He died in 1944. Paul Barnes replaced him coming from Concord, Mass. and who had been with the company for 27 years. Ded- rick first came to Bellows Falls in 1892 as spare messenger because his father, Clarence, worked here also. He saw the Express office, like the Post Office, moved all over town and ending up near where it started out. John L. Clark came to Bellows Falls in 1911 as superintendent preceded by Thomas J. Garvey and was with the company 55 years, dying here in 1935 aged 82 years. George L. Provost retired in 1927 as superintendent of this division and died in 1935 also. William Barker left the company in 1926 to join the E. L. Walker Insurance Co. W. E. Stockwell came here as clerk shortly before 1895 where Harley Foster and Provost were also clerks. He removed to Montpelier in 1917 as agent but left to enter the employ of the National Life Insurance Co. He now resides in Nashua, N. H .. George Dow was em- ployed as messenger from Burlington to Boston for 45 years.
Although the MANILA BREWING CO. of Cold River,
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N. H. can hardly be said to be in the town of Rockingham, it employed men from this town over many years including many of German descent whose families live in Bellows Falls today. From the days when beer was the big product, seventy years ago, to the days when gun powder was made there during W. W. I by the Whitcomb Manufacturing Co. which employed 50 to 60 men, the property has changed hands many times. Today only the limestone skeleton of the old brewery remains near the tourist cabins of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Sabins, standing lone- somely above two old cellar holes which had connecting doors between them.
HALLADAY THE FLORIST has occupied a busy spot on Webb Terrace since 1949 where Albert A. Halladay cleared the land and built the present dwelling house 65 years ago. At that time, about 1880, he was famous for his White Wyandotte poultry, small fruits and strawberries and he called it the Maple Dell Greenhouses and Fruit Farm. He was noted as the ori- ginator of several new varieties of tomatoes and at one time had the largest cherry orchard in southern Vermont. Always interested in fancy poultry, he owned some of the first White Langshan fowls brought into this country from Asia. His son George took over the business in 1900 as the Maple Dell Green- houses and managed them until his death in 1925 when his wife, Mary E., carried on the business. Albert E. died in 1939 and ten years later his grandsons, Dana and Nelson incorporated the business as President and Vice President with their mother as Secretary-treasurer. The only local florist, the business is flourishing and each Memorial Day the Halladay greenhouses furnish flowers for the urns and pots in the cemeteries but in 1919, after the war, it was impossible to do this because of lack of plants.
THE GREEN MANUFACTURING CO. started making boxes in Bellows Falls on Russell Street in 1918 but a few years later moved into a new factory which they built in North Wal- pole. When this burned, they rebuilt and are still in operation there.
THE SUPERSET BRUSH CO. opened in 1929 with Harry Estes, Jr., as superintendent, employing 50 to 60 men. During Roosevelt's administration, Mr. Estes was appointed by the president to be chairman of the Paint Industry Commission to study and report a new industrial plan of wages and shorter working hours. Superset Brush was leased by Pittsburgh Plate Glass for three years in 1945 and the business moved to Keene, N. H. The local plant was idle until Baltimore Brushes leased it in 1950 using 30 people to make 40,000 dozen brushes a month.
THE ROCKINGHAM FERRULE CO. opened in the Superset basement in 1934, putting $7,500 into five new machines to produce 80 ferrules a minute, the metal part of a paint brush. This company was formed by Sam Frenkel of New York City,
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Harry Estes, Jr. and William Epple of Bellows Falls to sell ferrules to Superset and other companies. After the death of Estes in 1947 the plant was operated by Mrs. Estes and Mr. Epple, employing about 100 hands. It has been closed since 1953 and the building is rented to Winslow Bros. & Smith for storage.
THE HARBRO SHOE COMPANY closed its doors in 1941 after six years of business in town. It was opened in the Vermont Farm building by three Hartwell brothers of Malden, Mass. with Benjamin Hartwell, manager and was financed by a Chamber of Commerce subscription of $12,000 and employed about 300 workers. It was the second shoe shop opened the same year in the same building, the other by George Hanf of Derry, N. H., originator of the Enna Jettick shoe. When the Harbro plant opened, it made 6,000 pairs of shoes daily with 75 people employed. But financial troubles dogged their heels and among the long line of unemployed the next year were 250 employees of the Harbro Co. who filed claims. Business picked up again in 1941 and they shipped out 12,240 pairs of shoes on one day in Jauary, employing 35 new hands who put out 2,600 pairs a day. But it was only a flare-up as they were adjudged bankrupt that same November. The same year that Harbro opened, KERSHAW MANUFACTURING CO., a wood heel finishing plant opened in the second floor of the Windham Press building, employing 25-30 hands and from which Harbro bought the heels for their shoes. Kershaw was forced out of business when Harbro closed and their machinery was sold at a sheriff's sale in November, 1941.
DIMOCK ORCHARDS. The year 1925 saw a boom in potato raising in Bellows Falls. That year Julian Dimock of Corinth was experimenting with eight different fields of potatoes under the name Dimock Orchards, Inc. A warehouse next to the Standard Paper Co. on Granger Street was erected, backed by the Merchant's Association and local people subscribed $12,000 to bring the enterprise here. One item intended to advertise the new business was unique packages of "Potatoes Grown on the Coolidge Farm." New York papers carried advertisements for these fancy spuds from the president's land which were called "Coolidge Homestead Bakers." The ad- vertisements were accompanied by pictures of the Coolidge homestead at Plymouth, Vt. This was the first experiment with fancy potatoes consisting of grading Vermont potatoes by weight and quality, wrapping and boxing them and selling at high prices to hotels, steamships and other companies which desired uniform results in baking. Dimock said that he con- ceived this new idea which graded and packaged the spuds in 15 pound sacks of five to sixteen ounce potatoes, each sack con- taining a coupon swearing that the contents were actually grown on the Coolidge farm. Maine potatoes were selling then at
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fifty cents a bushel but the Dimock potatoes sold at a price which netted the farmer $1.40 a bushel at the warehouse. The glorified Coolidge potatoes sold at $3.00 the peck.
Dimock, with eight years experience on his own farms in East Corinth, was anxious to use Bellows Falls as the focal point for shipments and had about 300 acres of potatoes under culti- vation and looked for farmers in this end of the state to come in with him, raising potatoes on their own land on a 50-50 basis, his corporation furnishing seed potatoes, fertilizer and spray.
The venture started out on a promising scale but ended disastrously in a few years when the potato market went to pieces, spuds were a drug on the market and Mr. Dimock,who had signed up to take all the potatoes raised locally, was unable to get rid of them. The venture went to pieces, money was lost and the bank took over the warehouse which was bought in 1930 by Hardy Merrill who is still in the potato business there alon8 with that of farm machinery.
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