USA > Vermont > Orange County > Bradford > Stories of old Bradford > Part 8
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Chores, he often reflected, were not so bad in the sum- mer. It was pleasant to get up before the sun rose and look at the beautiful world that God had made. Then after morn- ing prayers and breakfast of unsweetened porridge, it was good to do his share at hoeing, weeding, clearing away the brush about the cabin, or working up a supply of firewood. Come winter when the snow drifted nearly to the tops of the windows and the wind whistled and moaned about the plank walls, it would be cozy to sit by the wood stove and roast apples for a treat. Right now it was fun to join his sisters in picking the wild berries that grew so plentifully right here in the clearing, that they might have sauce to eat with their bread. But it was harder to rise in the dark on frosty morn- ings and creen shivering out to the barn to milk the cows by lantern light while one blew on one's fingers to keep the numbness away. And it was almost as hard to do the night
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chores in the stinging cold of a clear starlight night. He thought of the many nights when, muffled to the chin, he had stood for what had seemed to him like hours nearly frozen to hold the lantern high for his older brothers to see to bed down the horses and cattle. Now that was Margaret's chore, and later on it would be Annis' turn.
"But I must not complain. God put us into the world to work," Silas said to himself. "Only the work leaves so little time for study, and Pa is cross when Miss Betsey reports that we do not have our lessons."
He thought often of the school that the neighborhood was planning to build in the spring since there were now enough neighborhood children to fill a schoolhouse. Then he and his brothers and the older girls and the children of their nearest neighbor would no longer go to school in his father's barn. It would be but a small shed-like building-this new school- and it would be a mile away over the hills. But little he cared about that. Oh, how gladly he would walk three times as far for the privilege of going to a real school. He could hardly wait for the glad day to come.
"I canna be sparing you from the work till the fall term," his father said when he spoke to him about it. "Summer term is for girls and wee laddies."
"Our laddie will be needing some shoes like the other lads come fall," his mother said thoughtfully, planning ahead. "Robert can wear John's outgrown shoes and David can wear Robert's."
"After shearing time I'll be able to spare the money to order the shoes," his father answered.
So all through the rest of the winter Silas worked and studied and dreamed of the shoes he would soon own. Then when the warm spring sunshine melted the snow and began to push green growing things up through the still partly froz- en earth and Sally and Jenny found the first arbutus in the damp woods, they began to build the schoolhouse. One day in early summer Silas, Robert, and David hiked over the hills between chores and found the schoolhouse nearing completion and knew that soon the smaller children and all the older
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girls who could be spared from housework would begin the summer term. But still Silas' father said nothing about going to market and getting the shoes that he had ordered when he sold the wool in the spring.
Silas worked silently until the steeplejack glowed warm- ly pink against the lush green of deep summer. Then wrig- gling his bare feet impatiently and summoning all his cour- age he asked, "How much longer do you reckon it will be, Pa, before you go to market again? Ma says I canna go bare- foot to school when the weather turns cold."
"There's time enough, Son," his father answered quietly. "I canna be sparing the time from the work yet. I don't reckon they'll start the term for the older boys till after harvesting."
So Silas waited although his impatience mounted as the corn tassled, the summer faded, the hardwood trees blazed with autumn colors, and the pumpkins yellowed.
It was after most of the crops had been gathered and the flax harvested, that Silas awoke early one morning remem- bering that today something wonderful was going to happen. Oh yes, the shoes! His father was going to market today. Tumbling out of bed and drawing on his clothes, he hurried out into the frosty dawn to the barn to saddle Ned.
"May I go with you, Pa?" he asked wistfully as his father joined him. "I won't be a mite of trouble. I won't open my mouth. I was thinking, Sir, it would be easier to fit the shoes if my feet were there."
"No, laddie," his father replied firmly. "I canna think it's best for bairns* to go to market. 'Tis nothing good you can be learning there. I measured your feet myself, and the shoes were ordered according to the measurements, so there can be no question of their fitting. 'Twould be a waste of time I'm thinking. Ned is getting older, and you are getting heavier. 'Tis enough that he bear the weight of myself the long way that I maun travel. And Ned is getting too old for the long trip. Better it is that you stay at home and work. You can help John in the grist mill until he goes to the woods to cut trees. Robert
* Bairns - Scotch for children.
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and David are going with him, so you maun stay by the house. Your mother and sisters might be needing a brawny lad like yourself to life something heavy or to scare away a prowling bear. You and Margaret shell the beans while the older lads are in the woods."
"Yes, Sir," Silas answered respectfully and turned down the path to the mill where John was already at work grind- ing corn.
All day, as he worked, Silas thought of the treat that awaited him that night when his father returned with Silas' first pair of shoes.
He was watching eagerly as Ned turned up the path, but his face fell at his father's first words.
"Well, laddie, 'tis sorry I am to tell you, but I reckon you'll have to be putting off school a bit longer. I couldna get the shoes. The shoe-maker has been ill and Bill has none your size, but he says 'tis likely the travelling shoe-maker will be along most any time and he'll get him to make some. Hoot now ! We winna have any nonsense about it. 'No blitheration', as your grandfather would have said. You are a big lad now. Help me carry these things into the house and then rub down Ned."
"Yes, Pa." Silas smiled with difficulty as he held the bridle for his father to dismount. He helped him to take in the jug of molasses and the bolt of plain gray store cloth that he had brought to Sally and Jenny as a special treat. Ma's skill- ful fingers would fashion it into best dresses for them to wear to church and to the social they were planning to have in the schoolhouse. There might even be enough left over to make a dress or a blouse for Margaret or Annis. When he was free at last, Silas fled into the woods to hide the tears that kept gathering in his eyes.
"I maunna cry. I maunna cry. Crying is for wee bairns," he said to himself fiercely, as he strode through the woods.
Next morning Silas watched bravely as Sally, Robert, and David took their slates and the lunch pail and set out for school.
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"Silas, come here," said his mother, who had been watch- ing him closely. "'Tis your feet I want to measure, before you go back to your chores. Jenny, you start the butter churning."
All that day in her spare minutes, Silas' mother sewed busily on some pieces of heavy gray homespun cloth. When Silas came in from the barn for his supper of bread and milk, she called him to her.
"Silas, I want you should try these on."
Silas laughed happily as he pulled the clumsy gray cloth moccasins onto his feet. "Why, Ma, they're the finest shoes !" he exclaimed, kissing her.
So the next morning Silas set off happily to school.
"Teacher, here's a new boy!" called one of the children ! as Silas approached the schoolhouse.
A boy pointed at Silas' feet and laughed. "What kind of shoes do you call those? Did your ma make those funny shoes, Stranger ?"
"Don't you own any real shoes?" a little girl piped at him shrilly.
"I heard tell your Pa be a praying man. Why don't he pray for some shoes if'n he be too poor to buy them?" asked another.
"I earned mine cutting wheat," put in a big mean look- ing boy, "but of course you ain't big enough to earn money."
"Them be girl's shoes. Be you awearing your sister's shoes ?" asked another.
"Oh, quit pestering him," said an older girl. "I be sorry for for him. Like as not he be smarter than any of us."
Silas hurried to the bench where the teacher told him to sit and tried to tuck his feet under him, but the pain in his blue eyes deepened.
That night he thought of leaving school. He could help Pa. Soon he would be old enough to work in the grist mill and
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saw mill without John. He could do his lessons at home. But no, he could not do that for he could think of no excuse, and. Ma would be hurt if she guessed the truth. Besides if he were ever to go to school and prepare himself for an academy, now was the time. Soon his father would say to him, as he had said to John, that he must stay at home and work in the mills. No, he would stick it out. He would not be a coward. What did he care about the jeers and sneers of a few foolish boys? The lessons were more important. He would soon show them that he could excel in books.
He was glad that he had decided that way. He was very happy a few weeks later when his father brought home his new shoes and he wore them proudly to school. Each win- ter he waded joyfully through the knee-deep snow to the little schoolhouse over the hill.
So eager was Silas to learn that when he started the sub- ject of arithmetic at the age of fifteen he finished what would now be the work of eight grades in one year.
When Silas was sixteen, his father decided that the boy was so interested in getting an education that he should not be kept at home to work. He made arrangements with John McDuffee of Bradford to teach the boy surveying.
To earn his living, Silas begin teaching school when he was seventeen. He saved all the money he could to buy books to study and to continue his education at Haverhill Academy. Because of illness he was unable to go on to Dartmouth Col- lege as he had planned. This was a great disappointment to him.
But each summer the youth returned to his father's farm and ran his father's mill. It was good, he thought, to smell again the clean, spicy odor of the pine and spruce sawdust pile heaped against his father's sawmill. And in the late sum- mer when the air was sweet with the smell of ripening grass, young Silas rolled up his sleeves and went to work in the hay- field, helping to fill his father's old silver-gray barn with the fragrant hay. Meanwhile his friend Mr. Pickles, the minister, helped young Silas with his studies.
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One Sunday when Silas sat among his young friends at the back of the church in the center of Corinth, Mr. Pickles suddenly called out, "Silas, I must ask you to come up and read my hymns for me !"
Silas did not answer but he thought in panic, "Oh, no! The church is nearly filled today. I just can't go up there and face all those people !"
A deep hush filled the little country church. Mr. Pickles was looking searchingly at his young friend and waiting. He probably thought that the experience would be good for the boy and help him to succeed later on. Then the boy, who had once continued to go to school even though the other boys had laughed at his funny cloth shoes, knew that he could not fail his older friend. He must go up and face the people. Slow- ly he rose and walked up into the pulpit.
Later on this young man became a minister himself. He was the Reverend Silas McKeen who preached in Bradford for over forty years and who wrote the "History of Bradford, Vermont."
In this book he tells about boarding, before he was mar- ried and had a home of his own, with two different families on the Lower Plain, the Clarks and the Underwoods. Both families had been among the first to settle in Bradford.
But now as he stood at the window of the' Clark cottage on the Lower Plain he was still young and his own home and the History of Bradford and all the things that fill a busy min- ister's life were yet to come. Suddenly he closed the little win- dow and went back to the littered papers on the table. He knew exactly what he was going to say next in the sermon that he was writing. The memory of the little boy who had wanted his first shoes so that he could get an education helped him now.
THE DUEL*
"Gee, Dad, people certainly had queer ways of settling their quarrels back in the early part of the nineteenth cen- tury !" Junior declared, as he carelessly tossed his cap and school books onto a chair.
"Umm? Why so?" his father asked, looking up absently from his newspaper and turning down the radio.
"Why in school today we learned that in 1804 Aaron Burr, who had just been a candidate for the office of presi- dent of the United States shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel because they disagreed over politics. And Alexander Hamilton had been Secretary of the Treasury !"
"Aren't there laws against dueling?" his sister asked in- terestedly.
"I don't recall when dueling became outlawed in the United States," their father answered. "Vermont passed a law outlawing it very early in her history. Did you know that a Bradford boy was in a duel in 1830?"
"Tell us about it," chorused both children.
"Charles May was the victim of the duel. He was a fine looking young fellow, the youngest child of Thomas May who kept a tavern or hotel on the Upper Plain in the big two- story house where Paul Rogers now lives. Charles had just graduated that summer from West Point and had been made a lieutenant in the United States Army. He looked very man- ly in his splendid uniform when he came home that summer on furlough. His parents and friends were proud of him.
"That fall he was assigned to the Sixth Regiment of In- fantry and sent to Jefferson Barracks out in Missouri. Every- body out there, both men and officers, respected and liked him, and he had many friends. Among his closest friends was a young fellow named Hamilton who used to drink a lot.
"Very late one night, young May was awakened by Ham- ilton noisily entering his room. Hamilton was half drunk and
* Based on account in McKeen's History.
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began to rough house and scuffle with Charles. Charles May was tired and in no mood for this silly performance, but see- ing the condition that his friend was in, he good-naturedly stood it for a while. Finally, becoming tired of it and being unable to make Hamilton stop, he got out of bed, dragged his friend to the door, pushed him into the hall, locked the door, and went back to bed.
"Hamilton was very angry. He felt that he had been insulted, so he challenged May to a duel. May thought that Hamilton would think better of it in the morning when he be- came sober, but on the next day Hamilton was still angry. May tried to soothe Hamilton. He apologised to him. He tried to reason with him. Hamilton accused his former friend of be- ing a coward.
"May felt that a duel for such a foolish cause was wrong, but his friends persuaded him that he should go ahead and fight.
" 'If you don't,' they argued, 'everyone will think that you are a coward, just as Hamilton says. No one will want you for a friend. You will be an outcast. Such a life will be worse than death. Go ahead and prove to Hamilton that you are not a coward. Then you two can make up and be friends again.'
"So young May, after writing a farewell note to his mother, in which he begged her to forgive him for the suf- fering he would cause her should anything happen to him, went to face his enemy.
"According to the legend, May could not believe that the boy who had been his close friend would actually shoot to kill. He expected to be wounded, and then Hamilton's anger would be satisfied. So when he was told to shoot, he fired into the air, thinking that he would thus save his honor, and they would be friends again.
"But Hamilton shot to kill. He fatally wounded Charles May who died fifteen hours later after a long night of suffer- ing. His chaplain who stayed with him at his request through
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that terrible night when May did not want to be left alone said that the boy's last words were, 'My Mother! My Mother!' Probably he was thinking of the suffering that the news of his death would cause her."
"What became of Hamilton?" asked Junior.
"After May's death, young Hamilton could not be found. The boy who had called the friend who was worth two of him a coward had run away!
"The funeral was held here in Bradford in the Old Con- gregational Church where we used to go to the movies."
"You mean that old movie house was once a church?"
"Yes. That was before the present Congregational Church was built. The Reverend Silas McKeen, who wrote the first history of Bradford, preached the funeral service. He made the service an occasion for preaching against dueling and drinking."
"But that must have been tough on Charles May's par- ents because he wasn't to blame !"
"Mr. McKeen blamed Charles May for choosing such a friend as Hamilton and for being in bad company."
"Gee, that Hamilton sure was a skunk !" Junior said.
"Yes, but I'll bet he felt awfully bad when he realized what he had done," guessed Patsy.
THE FIRST VACCINE*
Seventy years or more ago when the original old pri- mary school stood at the south end, there was a large ware- house almost across the road from it. In this barn-like building old rags were stored until they were needed to make into paper in the old paper mill which stood a little farther down along the north bank of Waits River near the dam. The rags were collected from all over the country and brought here by ox carts. Some of them were very dirty, came from homes where there had been sickness, and may have been full of germs.
The primary school boys thought it was great fun at re- cess and nights after school to climb down through the high door into the warehouse and play in these rags. Sometimes they buried each other up in the filthy rags or threw them at one another.
There were in the early history of Bradford two serious epidemics of small pox. Even today small pox still seems dread- full, but many people now believe that the danger of catching it is lessened by small pox vaccination. At that time, however, it was almost a sure thing that whoever caught it would die or at least be left terribly pockmarked. During these epidemics, the disease swept the town like wildfire. Every day more and more people came down with it. Many people thought that the last epidemic was caused by little boys playing in the dirty rags.
Most of the people who caught it were rushed away to one of the two pest houses. One of these was down on the meadow near where Waits River flows into the Connecticut. It was so old that everyone had forgotten how it came to be there and no one lived in it. It may possibly have been the first house in Bradford built by the first white settler, a Mr. Osmer or Hosmer, who built his house near that same place. At the time of the epidemic it was owned by the Blisses who gave it for this use. After the epidemic was over, this house was burned by the town so that there would be no risk of anyone catch- ing germs from it. The other house used for a pest house was the first house on the Fairground flat. The reason that the sick
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people were rushed away to one of these houses to be by themselves was because no well person living in the house with them was allowed to go out during the epidemic. Even the bodies of persons who died from it were carried out in the dead of night while well people slept, so that they would not come in contact with the germs. Two persons carried out in this way were a Miss Etta Kennedy and her grandfather. They lived in the house just south of the primary school. At one time this house was a school and at another time a library. Since the Kennedys were both sick and had no one to care for them, Mrs. Fred Doe's sister felt sorry for them and went and took care of them until they died.
At that time there was a young medical student in Bradford named Neziah Bliss. He was the uncle of the two elderly Bliss sisters who later lived in the old Bliss house at the foot of Bliss Hill. Neziah had just graduated from the University of Vermont. He thought that if he could make a serum or vaccine from the germs of the sick people and vac- cinate well people with it, so that they would have the disease in a very light form and not hard enough to die, he might be able to save many lives.
So Neziah Bliss decided to risk his own life to get the germs for his serum. He went down on the meadow to the pest house from which everyone had been warned to stay away, crouched beneath an open window, reached in and picked off some dead scales of skin with his finger nail. Then he went home, and after many days in his laboratory made a serum. He vaccinated several people with this serum.
Legend does not tell us the results of the vaccinations. but he may have saved the lives of many Bradford people who had faith in him, among whom may have been some of your own ancestors. Anyway, he was a brave and unselfish young man and a good student of science. The well people who trusted Neziah Bliss and his experiment enough to allow him to vaccinate them. when they thought that it might cause their own deaths, must have been very brave people. too. In the years since vaccine was perfected, it has been credited with
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saving millons of lives, a fitting memorial to brave scientists like Neziah Bliss who were willing to risk their lives to save others.
Another interesting little story is told about the family for whom Bliss Hill is named. When the Congregationalists bought the parsonage, it cost them $1300 in silver. One of the Bliss men, had charge of handling the money. While it was in his care, instead of putting it in a bank and drawing a check as we would now, Mr. Bliss put the silver in an old seed sack and hid it under the bed in the parlor bedroom of the old Bliss house under the hill.
BRADFORD'S GOVERNOR OF VERMONT*
Governor Roswell Farnham, Boston born, now newly elected Governor of Vermont, sat upon the platform and faced the wildly cheering crowds of people who had just elec- ted him by their 22,012 votes. It was good to look at these people, plain, honest Vermont folks who trusted him to guide their State-his own adopted State-and whose loyalty and courage he could feel rise with his own loyalty and courage. Soon he would rise and tell them of the plans and the dreams that he had for them, of the responsibilities and hard work that faced them under his leadership. But now he would rest and listen to the band music. He did not need to look again at the neat notes in his pocket or to think again about what he was going to say to these fine Vermont people when it came time to speak. He knew so well what he wanted to say to them. Now he would think back over the long way that he and Mary had come, back even to the days before he had had Mary to help him, back to the time when he was just a Vermont farm boy like some of these eager, bright-eyed youths who stood before him; and the pictures that came to his mind were as if they were the pictures of another boy.
The first golden splinters of early morning were just slant- ing across the Connecticut River and over the green meadow grass that was still wet and webby from the night, but already the boy was hard at work in the cornfield. He was a slender boy, tall for his seventeen years, with a thin, sensitive face, a determined chin, and intelligent hazel-blue eyes. The heat of the summer day would come later, but at this hour it was cool by the river bank and nothing but the buzzing mosquitoes marred the Vermont loveliness. Yet the boy's dark hair was
* Imaginative story based upon the facts given in "Men of Vermont," an illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont, com- piled by Jacob G. Ullery; recollections by Mrs. Osgood of her father's efforts to get an education. incident about the church steeple told by Mrs. Osgood, a study of old family photographs.
** Colonel Roswell Farnham was nominated candidate for Governor of Vermont in 1880. It is interesting to note that Silas McKeen arrived in Brad- ford and began to preach about 12 years after Mother Peckett's death and that Governor Farnham first came to town about 1828, about fourteen years after Dr. McKeen had first come to town and begun to preach.
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already wet with sweat. It trickled down his forehead and dampened the hair on either side of his soft boyish cheeks that hinted of the beard of later years.
But as he hoed the corn with fierce, swift strokes, the boy did not see, gradually emerging out of the fog, the beauty of Connecticut River meadow, the strong deep purple of the New Hampshire mountains to the east, or the lovely tumbling Vermont hills to the west. His thoughts were far away in the city streets of Haverhill, Massachusetts, to which he had moved from Boston with his parents when a small boy and where until three and a half years ago he had lived a carefree little-boy life. He dug his bare toes into the rich black meadow dirt, and it felt soft and cool; but when he had walked on the Haverhill streets or ridden in his father's fine carriage, those same feet had been dressed in the softest and finest of leather for his father had owned and managed a boot and shoe fac- tory. He remembered going to the big city church with his mother on that Sunday when everything had first begun to change for them. He was wearing his best English tweed jacket that was made like his father's, his new wide black silk tie that was also like his father's, and the stiff white collars that hurt his neck and that he hadn't had time to get used to since he had entered his teens. His mother had been her loveliest in her prettiest satin gown, bowing to the right and to the left from under her fluffy pink parasol to the stately ladies and to the gentlemen who bowed and raised their tall, shiny black hats so respectfully.
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