USA > Vermont > Orange County > Bradford > Stories of old Bradford > Part 3
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At that time many people enclosed their land by high board fences. Mrs. McDuffee went out and opened the gate to let the outlaws through. Then she closed the gate, so that when the police officers arrived they had to stop to open it. The delay thus caused allowed the outlaws to escape across the river.
The officers were astonished by this good woman's ac- tions. Major May, who at that time lived where Paul Rogers lives and who led the officers, exclaimed in surprise, "What's the matter with you, Mrs. McDuffee? How does it happen that
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you, of all people, are not on the right side - the side of law and order?"
Mrs. McDuffee stood very straight. She lifted her chin proudly and fearlessly.
"Well, I can tell you why. You make liquor. Men become drunk from drinking your liquor and do harm. I think that making liquor is even more wrong than making counterfeit money. Anybody can make liquor, but it takes a smart man to make counterfeit money !"
HEROES OF MOORETOWN
The Revolutionary War was over! In the larger towns bonfires were built and churchbells rang happily. And all over the American colonies feasts were prepared, and women and children hugged each other for joy; for now, in small groups or one by one, their footsore, war-weary husbands, sons, and fathers came straggling home. Hot and thirsty and tired, they limped along woodland paths and over blazed trails until they reached even the quiet little village of Mooretown in Vermont.
Early one evening, a group of young boys ran down the narrow footpath that twisted lazily through tall grass and pink steeplejack beside the blazed trail that was Mooretown's main street. Already candlelight shone dimly from elmbark roofed cabins scattered among the pines, where a small group of young men was gathering to swap stories of their war ad- ventures.
"There's Adjutant John Putnam. He was a lifeguard to General Washington. Reckon he kept the General from being killed. Gorry! I'd sure like to have been one of Gen- eral Washington's guards !"
The bare feet paused on the pine needle strewn trail while worshipful young eyes stared at the latest arrivals.
"There's Cap'n Ellis Bliss and Benjamin Martin .* They were in the War, too," exclaimed another boy.
"Reckon Emerson Corliss had the most exciting adven- tures. He fit in the battle of Bunker Hill when he was only seventeen. Wish't the War had lasted until I was old enough so's ma'd let me go in. Bet you a keg o' rum I woulda killed a hundred o' them there Red Coats !"
"Corliss was wounded in a fight with the Injuns," inter- runted a fourth boy. "Up in Canady methinks it was. He was telling Pa all about it last night. He helped kill fifty Hessians and capture a thousand more at Trenton."
* The author is a descendent of Benjamin Martin on her mother's side."
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"Hessians? Wat'n tunket be they? Red Coats?" breath- lessly asked the little fellow who always tagged along.
"Naw, stupid! They be German soldiers the British hired to beat us."
"I'd rather been John Putnam, so's I could a been with General Washington," declared the first speaker loyally.
"Oh, Corliss was with Washington, too. He helped him fight the battle of Princeton. And then he helped General Stark win the battle of Bennington."
"Oh, I heard tell about the battle of Bennington. That was fit here in Vermont, and-"
"Listen! Corliss had seven balls shot through his coat and one through his hat in that battle and never even got wounded."
"Yes, he did, too, get wounded ! My brother said the com- mander asked for volunteers to move all the cannon to a place near the front where they was fighting the hardest, and Emer- son up and says, 'I'll go, Cap'n!', an' he rode right plumb up to the front on a cannon because he had been wounded in one leg an' couldn't walk."
The would-be bodyguard of General Washington sat up from a swift somersault. "My father says he's athinking that there young widow of Haynes Johnson was as brave as any soldiers when she up and took her baby and two little boys on her hoss and went ariding thirty miles through the woods to a place in New Hampshire where they ain't any Red Coats or Injuns. Now the War's over, she'll be acoming back some day soon, I reckon."
"There's another soldier! Never saw him before," piped one of the younger boys, pointing at a lonely-looking young man who was walking up the trail by himself.
"Oh, that's Andrew Peters. Just came to town last week." "Oh, he's a Red Coat !" exclaimed another.
"No, he's an American, but he was a Loyalist," explained an older boy, shoving the speaker aside for a better view. "He used to live here when he was just a little shaver, my father
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says, but his Pa was a Loyalist so he went to Canady and fought in the Queen's Rangers. Got to be a Colonel he did. So when Andy grew up, he just naturally joined up with the King's Navy. Commanded a ship, too, over on Lake Cham- plain. Let's go ask him about it."
"Naw! He's a Loyalist. I don't take no truck with Loyal- ists. Let's go ahuntin' some hickory nuts to eat and then go see what our own soldiers be talking about," said the boy who seemed to be the leader. Suiting his action to his words, he dived into a thicket to the left of the spotted trees that blazed the main road between Fairlee and Newbury.
"My Pa says," Andrew's champion shouted, between swoops after nuts, "that Andrew Peters was one of the best soldiers in the War. His commander spoke highly of him. Pa says he would probably been made an English admiral some day if'n he hadn't come back here."
"Then why in tunket didn't he fight with us where he belonged? What were he and his Pa doing afighting with the British ?"
"Pa says Andrew's father thought it was the right and loyal thing to do because the American rebels were overthrow- ing the government. Says a lot of the best American families were Loyalists. Says it would a been a danged sight better if the rest of us had stayed loyal and not let a lot of rough- necks overthrow the government. Says the rebels are lawless and that no good will come of-"
"I want to know !"
"Your father better not says any more !" His nearest com- panion swung himself down from a tree. "Or he'll be run out of town or find himself hanged by the neck from one of his own trees !"
"Yuh. How come your father wasn't a Loyalist, too, if he doesn't like Rebels?" challenged another, aiming a nut fiercely at a nearby tree.
"Could be your Pa wasn't brave enough to be a Loyalist? Could be he was afeared of Rebels?" taunted another boy.
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The young Loyalist flushed. "But now we have no gov- ernment -- at least not any that's strong enough to amount to anything. And people do just as they please," he protested seriously.
"But we will have a stronger government. Give them time to make it !" argued a young patriot. "Haven't you heard?"
The lonely-looking, proudly-erect young man, who had been listening to the boys' conversation with amused inter- est, stepped aside just in time to avoid being knocked to the ground as the yelling boys, ignoring him, charged almost with- out warning across the trail.
He smiled wryly as he continued up the blazed trail in the gathering dusk. "They are right! I am not one of them."
He looked down proudly at his fine English uniform. He looked far more like a soldier than those other young men in their ragged farm clothing, yet no one in all Mooretown had welcomed him as a hero. Well, the War was over, and he would discard the uniform tomorrow for homespun woolen similar to theirs. The boys were right. This was now a separate country where people were Americans and could no longer proudly boast that they were Englishmen. Yet he felt much more English than new American, for he had gone away to Canada with his Loyalist father when he was only seven and had grown up there with his American and Canadian brothers and sisters. To enlist in the King's Navy had seemed the na- tural and right thing for a young Englishman to do.
But now he had returned to his father's farm and town- a stranger. Had it been wise to return? He wondered. He had not missed the way the young rebel soldiers had turned away from him without a greeting when he had passed by. Only one person in all Mooretown had greeted him with understanding kindness-that pretty Miss Lydia Bliss. Yet people had not been as unfriendly as they might have been. Perhaps they were pleased that the small boy who had gone away with his father to live with the English Canadians had wanted to return to live with the English Americans. Perhaps it was because his Uncle General Absalom Peters had been very patriotic to the American cause. Doubtless they knew also that his grand-
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mother was a descendent of the secretary to Oliver Cromwell, that great Englishman who had led his countrymen to fight an earlier king for freedom for the people of England.
The older people of Mooretown, he thought proudly, still honored his father as one of the leaders of the town before the trouble with England had turned friends against friends. His father had been Moderator of Mooretown's first town meet- ing. John Peters had not wanted to leave Mooretown. He had settled his farm and had built a grist mill. He could remember how his father had barely touched his food and how night after night he had walked the floor, ruffling his hair, while he was trying to decide what was the right thing to do. It had not been easy for his father to remain loyal to the King. Even his own family had turned against him. He remembered the night Aunt Lydia Baldwin had burst into tears. He thought of the day when Uncle Absalom Peters had shouted furiously at his father, telling him never to darken his door again until he had changed his views. He had not understood what it was all about then, but he had sensed that his father was upset and unhappy, so he had slipped his small hand comfortingly into his father's big one. The only one who had understood had been Uncle Samuel. He was a preacher and a graduate of Yale College. Well, his father would never darken the door of any place near Mooretown again for he had died in England where he had gone on business after the War.
And now he was back to claim his father's farm. He won- dered if he had grown up in this pretty little town whether he would have felt as his father did or as his Uncle Absalom and those returning rebel soldiers felt.
In the beginning, he remembered as he neared his home at the top of the hill*, the American colonies had not wanted to be free. They simply thought that since they were Englishmen they should have as much to say about the English govern- ment-where it concerned themselves-as did people living in England. Later, they had felt that the English government was too far away ever to be able to understand their problems and needs. Then some people, his father among them, had dis- agreed and had thought that the rebels were carrying the matter too far and becoming too lawless and unreasonable in
* The ell of the present Peters house was first built on the meadow. It was moved up onto the hill because of high water by this Andrew's father, John Peters.
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their ideas and demands. His father had probably never dreamed, when he had gone farther north in the English colo- nies to be with men who thought as he did, that the rebels would actually win and that the struggle would end in the birth of a new nation.
Well, he himself did not care whether the people of Mooretown called themselves Englishmen or Americans, so long as they were law-abiding and good. He did not know whether they had been right or wrong, but they were his peo- ple and he wanted to be one of them. He hoped now that the War was over that they would soon forget that he had grown up in Canada and would accept him as a friend. He would like to become a leader of this town that he loved better than any other-as his father had once been. He would like to see Mooretown grow to be a fine big town.
He tried to picture the rough trail as a street with houses on each side of it. Trees should be set out to shade this street, not pine trees such as surrounded it now, but hardwood- possibly maples and elms.
He felt lonely as he let himself into his cabin, and his thoughts turned toward Newbury, as they often did lately. Even his horse turned that way of its own accord whenever he went riding. For Anna White, the girl he hoped some day to make his wife, lived in Newbury.
Andrew Peters had his wish, for soon he did marry Anna. But his happiness was short, for she died a year later, and then he was lonely again until he married the Lydia Bliss who had seemed kind to him when he first returned to his father's farm.
Another wish was fulfilled and John Peters, the Moore- town forefather, would have been proud of his son for the people of Mooretown soon recognized Andrew's worth and elected him Representative to the first State Legislature. The people also chose him for their town clerk and kept him in this office for forty years !
About twelve years after the Revolutionary War ended, the Congregational Church-later the village hall and still later the old Colonial theatre *- was built on the hill near Peters'
* This building is now the Odd Fellows Hall.
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house; and except for Sundays when he was ill, Mr. Peters never missed a service. Probably his many children all went to church there, too.
The Tory Uncle Samuel loved Vermont, for once he wrote to Andrew, "The reasons for your residing in Verdmont, I doubt not, are the same which induce all people in the old world to go there."
The descendents of Andrew Peters must have loved Ver- mont, too, for some of them are still here.
A GENTLEMAN SMUGGLER
Perhaps you have noticed in the old part of the Bradford cemetery two curious box-like stone monuments with heavy covers. These are the graves of Captain William Trotter and of his beloved first wife, who shared most of his many ad- ventures. Let us turn back the clock to the time when this adventuresome man walked the streets of Bradford.
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Trotter House
It was the year 1817. Two small boys raced down the pleasant, elm-shaded Bradford street.
Just then up the road came a carriage, drawn by a span of sleek, headstrong chestnut horses, their feet high-stepping, their necks arched, their short tails flying. The gentleman who owned them was holding in the prancing, check-reined horses with a careless, practiced hand. As he drove, he lifted his tall beaver hat to the right and to the left, nodding at passing pedestrians. He smiled especially at a cluster of merry girls. They were pretty in an old-fashioned way. They wore long, tight-waisted skirts with stiffly starched flowered muslin
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blouses and carried dainty pink and blue parasols. Though the man was nearly fifty years old, the girls nodded and giggled and blushed furiously at his greeting. The more adult beauty of the smartly dressed woman by his side made the girls seem childishly awkward and silly.
The boys, whose run had slowed to a walk, had eyes only for the handsome chestnut thoroughbreds.
Then Jimmy nudged his companion. "Know who that fellow is? That's Captain Trotter. Betcha he's the strongest, bravest man in the whole town of Bradford !"
Jack, his companion, looked doubtfully at the tall, slight figure of the reddish-haired man in the surrey. His glance took in everything from the light gray spatterdashes and carefully pressed trousers to the soft leather gloves, the lacy white jabot, and the high beaver hat. "He doesn't look it. Ma says he's the richest though. He's a contrabandist. Honest !" he ad- ded in a mysterious undertone.
"Huh? What's that? Conbanice ?"
"Some kind of pirate or robber, I think."
"Aw! He's a sea captain. My father said so."
"Ayer, but he usta smuggle somep'n. Gold, I think it was, outa South America. I heard the men in the tavern talking. That's why I know he's the bravest man in all Bradford."
Jimmy looked after the cloud of dust. "Maybe they're going onto the Upper Plain. Hey, let's us go !"
Meanwhile the middle-aged belle in the front seat of the smoothly-riding carriage was hearing some of Captain Trotter's exciting adventures from his own lips. She was soon to become his second wife and replace the former beautiful mistress of Trotter House, and he wanted to tell her all about himself.
He began by telling of a far off dark day when he was a small boy in Broughton, Lancashire, England. It was his tenth birthday. "But there was no birthday cake nor other birthday festivities awaiting me," he said.
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As the woman listened, she saw in the mist of the past the small boy Billy as he walked wearily up the foggy English lane to the little white-washed, thatched-roofed cottage. Over his shoulder she looked through the little clear space he had rubbed in one of the tiny, diamond-shaped panes of glass in the latticed window and saw the people within the dimly light- ed room. There was a dignified, crusty-looking whiskered old gentleman in the chimney corner wearing a long coat-like smock. That would be "Gramp." There was another man with a pleasant face and a slight, stooped figure in dusty miner's clothes. That was his stepfather, Matheson. Mother, tall, thin, and tired-looking but wearing a clean white apron and cap, was churning butter in one corner of the cellar-like kitchen. Several children, their hands grimy from potato digging and their round, rosy faces stained with whortle berries, tumbled about the floor. An older girl sat at the table near a whale-oil lanmp with a glass globe filled with water. She held the lace she was trying to make close to the globe for light.
As the boy entered, the younger man looked up in sur- prise from a bit of wood he was carving. Then he squinted suspiciously. "So! 'Tis thou! Thy ship's in port, and thou'st come home for a holiday no doubt. When I was a lad, I had no holidays to waste. Well, there's but little bread in the cup- board, thou'll find. I work hard down in the mines all day, but 'tis little enough I earn and hardly stretches to feed so many mouths." He looked resentfully at the children. "But thou're welcome to bide the night and share our humble fare, my lad. I trust thy ship is sailing soon ?" 1918841
Billy brushed past his gaping little half-brothers and sis- ters, tossed his cap on a bench, rubbed a hand across his dirt- streaked face, hitched up his dirty, coal-streaked trousers, and went to greet his mother who left her work and hurried to meet him.
"I trust thou hast been a good and hard-working cabin boy, and that thy captain has no fault to find?" she questioned worriedly. "Matheson has hard work to feed his own children. I can not ask him to keep thee, too. If thy father had lived-" She broke off suddenly and then added more crisply, "But then as thy step-father told thee a year ago, when a boy turns nine, 'tis high time he was up and out in the world earn-
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ing his own keep. But we are glad to have thee home for the night ! I'll get us a bite of supper now." She hurried to her work at the far end of the dimly lighted kitchen.
"What business brings thee here, lad? Speak out!" his step-father demanded when they were left alone.
Billy smelled the once familiar, but now strange odors, of freshly-made cheese and home-made dark bread baked by his mother in the brick fireplace oven. From the adjoining room that served as a barn, he smelled the pig and cow. He swallowed the homesick lump in his throat and hitched up his trousers again.
" "Tis only this, my father -- " "Yes? Out with it, lad !"
"The captain to whom thou bound me is often hard and unkind."
"And would thou have him mollycoddle you? Whist, lad !"
"He has even whipped me severely for no good cause. The hours are long and hard, the work dirty and disagreeable."
He looked wistfully at his younger half-brothers. "But I do not complain of the long hours or hard work, Sir," he hastened to add.
"Well, what wouldst thou have then?" his step-father asked impatiently. "Surely thou dost not expect time off to play? 'Tis right good of Captain Barr to let thee have time off to waste coming up here. 'Twas lucky I was to be able to find thee a good situation like this. Tom Briggs tried but yesterday to bind out his nine-year-old boy to a ship's captain, but nary a ship in need of a cabin boy could he find."
"I know, Father, but I've served a year's time on this ship. If thou wouldst but change me from this ship to another that might want an experienced cabin boy, perchance I might have a less cruel captain. 'Tis all I ask of thee, Sir."
Matheson looked thoughtfully back for a moment into the pleading ten-year-old eyes. Then taking out his pipe, he said
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quietly, "My lad, better it is for thee that thou servest a devil thou knowest, than to change to a man whose ways thou knowest not."*
Billy knew when he was beaten. Without a word, he picked up his cap, kissed his mother goodbye, and went out again into the foggy night and the world of sailor men.
He paused for a moment on the other side of the hedge to look back at the little slate-covered stone cottage, at the walled-in garden where early the next morning his brothers would be digging potatoes and weeding watercress, at the rough blank sides of neighboring houses and barns that form- ed an irregular wall about the cobblestone yard. He felt that he might never see any of this again. From the village green he could hear the sound of neighbor boys playing cricket, the English boys' favorite ball game. After curfew had rung and sent the younger boys indoors, older ones might come to play a rough game of football with a small empty barrel. He would never belong here again, never dance around a village bonfire or Maypole, never beat the bounds with the other boys, never take part in the Christmas frolic.
He passed Idle John's tumble down house and paused for a cold drink at his pump. Then he went on down the narrow street that twisted between and under the jutting upper- stories of a crazy jumble of small, two-story thatched-roofed shops. The outside of the basket-maker's shop was bright with the new baskets he had finished weaving that day and hung up for display. Once old Jed had given Billy and his half-sister a lesson in basket making. Sister had taken to it well. She had already woven two pretty baskets, but Billy had not liked to sit still for so long at the monotonous task. Beyond Ted's was the knife-grinder's cart. Next door lived John Graham who fashioned pretty dishes from white clav.
Billy waved to grumpy old Mr. Black. the village cob- bler, who still sat outside the door of his cottage-shon calmlv pegging shoes in the gathering twilight. From across the street came the rhythmic whine of a saw. Through the lighted win- dow. Billy could see Tom Bascom's paner carpenter's can bending over his work bench. Mr. Bascom was also the vil-
* Quotation taken from McKeen's History of Bradford.
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lage undertaker and coffin maker. All the village children loved the woodsy smell of his shop. They liked to stand about digging their bare toes into the clean, golden curls of shav- ings that carpeted the floor. The shop next door had been closed for the night. Through the slightly opened latticed win- dow, Billy could see the family bending over their supper table. Julian Bascom's work was easily guessed at by the rows of chair legs drying against the cottage rail. The village clock- maker and tinker had also retired for the night.
The Jones cottage was getting a new roof of thatch. The thatcher was trying to finish it before dark. A group of small children had gathered about the foot of his ladder and were chanting the age-old refrain that Billy had known since boy- hood,
"Thatcher, thatcher, Thatch a span. Come off your ladder And hang your man !"
Nearby stood Mrs. Jones gazing up at the smooth golden slope of roof. In a corner doorstep sat Grandma Jones making lace over a pillow that she held in her lap. She sat stiffly erect with her white starched apron billowing in the sea breeze. Her face, intent upon the lace, looked sternly out from the little lace bonnet that in turn was covered by a flowing starched white cap, but Billy knew that Grandma Jones had a kind heart despite her stern face.
Billy circled about the blacksmith's cottage to his littered backyard for one last call upon his friend. One never knew whether one would find Mr. Smith mending some housewife's leaky kettle, making a new set of farm tools, or shoeing a horse.
"Thou're leaving us again, Sailor laddie?" the black- smith paused in fitting his hot shoe to inquire. "'Tis not cour- age thou art lacking to start out for a winter's sea, and it's good luck I'm wishing thee. Thou'll be a bos'un yet and make us all proud of thee."
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"I'm going to be a captain," stated Billy. Suddenly he knew that he would be.
He knew, too, that he was a long way from being a cap- tain yet. He could barely read the easiest writing on the piece of foolscap tacked up on the cobbler's door that served as a newspaper for the village people. A captain must know how to figure, too. Not only must he be able to figure in arithmetic but in geometry. He had to work out the course or route of a ship's sailing by charts, the position of the stars, the angle of the sails. Billy could not go to school. He could only learn what the boatswain chose to teach him in his spare time. There was no great hurry to get back to the ship. Captain Barr was probably still deep in his cups at the village inn. Billy could hide in the shadows and escape arrest after the ringing of curfew warned that all children must be indoors and off the street after dark. But if he went back to the ship now, he might find time to study before he was put to work.
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