USA > Vermont > Rutland County > The history of Rutland county, Vermont; civil, ecclesiastical, biographical and military, pt 2 > Part 37
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The hamlet here a hundred years ago was Lilliputian, almost contemptible in itself. Yet it was the baby figure of a giant mass, henceforth to come at large. It was among the first outbreaks, or rather inbreaks, of the irrepressible Yankee. That Yankee spirit, -colonizing in order to cultivation and cul- ture,-my eyes have seen its miracles beyond the Missouri, beyond the Sierra Nevada, in Hawaiian Honolulu, in Egyptian Thebes, in Syrian Beyroot.
Thus the spring which here gushed forth, a century ago, was one head of a river that was to flow on and on making glad the cities of the world. To what shall I compare this fountain ? It seems to me like a picture of the signing of the Declaration of our Inde- pendence,-small to the eye, great to the mind. To the eye it is fifty men in plain clothes, in a room plainly furnished, writing their names. To the mind it is nothing less than the laying of the corner-stone of the empire of hope,
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open heart, and open hand,
With room enough about her hearth for all mankind.
Mr. Hall's pictures of Rutland in its swad- dling-clothes seem to me the best that can be painted by one shut up to his sources of knowledge. But he was not an eye-witness how Rutland began to be, and I doubt if he ever had an historical talk with more than one ante-revolutionary settler, or if he ever entered a town not yet five years old.
The Rutland "of the dark back- ward " he shall there survey cut out of the distant past and brought safe into the present. How shall I pardon him that he has not long ago pilgrimed where such ravishing views of settlements in babyhood are as familiar as babies themselves ? Why seeks he the living among the dead ?
Mr. Hall's mosaic has shown you a fac simile of an incipient commonwealth. In the great valley of the West such beau ideals are daily realized, so that your bodily eres may gaze in broad day upon whatever he has contemplated only through the moonlight of memory, and has shown only to your mind's eye.
It were, perhaps, natural to expect that a speaker in the position now assigned me, would contrast Rutland of to-day with its aspect in 1770. But the Rutland of to-day is known to you and unknown to me. If, therefore, I should expatiate on that theme, I must fare as I did two years ago in the University of Athens, when showing the students how to pronounce their vernacular Greek. Again, how shall one contrast some- thing with nothing? and in 1770, Rutland was still nothing in respect to the works of man, while, as to the works of God,-aside from the destruction of forests,-all things remain as at the first. The mountain forins and their sky lines, here as round about Jerusalem,-thank Heaven, -can never be much changed. I see them to-day just as I saw them when my eyes first learned to de- light in them as the heaven- kissing wall of a valley embosoming all the sweets of nature, while excluding the cares and sorrows of the world. I see them as my father saw them in 1786, and as the first comers saw them sixteen years before. Well has some one as- serted that no man is ever homesick for his natal soil, unless its scenery is such that he can find his way home without a guide- board. The reason is that only in such places are the features of Mother Nature unmistakable. When a man born on a prairie, or in Chicago, returns to it after long absence, the places that had known him knew him no more. Nor yet does he know the places. He cannot rec- ognize the face of his own mother.
Nevertheless, the truth is that history re- peats itself. What Vermont was in 1770, Nebraska is in 1870, or rather all social eras are co-existent and cotemporaneous. Ac- cordingly whatever Mr. Hall has described from tradition my eyes have seen beyond the Missouri. Voyaging up that river I have sailed up the stream of time. Let Mr. Hall go out West, and there, names and dates It is on this account that the Highlanders have a contempt for lowland regions. Ac- cordingly, when a Dutchman was quoting being changed, he shall behold as waking realities what, after all antiquarian researches here, must remain the baseless fabric of a'the grandiloquent hexameter of a patriotic.
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Holland poet, Tellurem fecere Dii, sua litora Belgae, the English of which is that, " while the Gods made all the rest of the world, the Dutch created Holland," he provoked my Green Mountain pride so that I could not help retorting, " The Dutch made Holland, did they ? I should really think they did; it looks as if a Dutchman had made it."
But the characteristic features of Rutland, even to the utinost bounds of its everlasting hills, the trinity of goodly mountains, Kil lington, Pico and Shrewsbury, were not made by hands, or only by His hands "which by His strength setteth fast the mountains being girded with power."
But while the earth abideth forever, one generation passeth away and another genera- tion cometh. Our fathers, where are they ?
" Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
Meeting lately in Iowa a Rutlander who forty years ago was living here with me, we sat down and talked over the occupants of every house at that time in this village. Only two or three could we remember as dwelling where they then dwelt,-" a glean- ing of grapes when the vintage is done." The pioneer Madam Williams, mother of the Governor, the lady ancient and honorable, of whom my earliest feeling was,-" Nor spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in her autumnal face," had already passed away. We recalled Temple, the excellency of dignity; Williams, the genial judge, whom I have seen weep as he sentenced a culprit ; Walker, the minister, who was to me more awe-inspiring than the whole papal conclave in after years ; Hodges our merchant prince ; Strong, rightly named, for he was strong indeed ; Royce, the most popular of men, and Ormsbee, the most acute ; Alvord, from whose cabinet shop Congress- man Meacham had just gone to college, and who was just about to send General Benja- min Alvord to West Point.
Senator Foot we first saw when, the Castle- ton Seminary proving bankrupt, he was ad- mitted to the Rutland bar. Who then could prophesy that he would live to preside over the national Senate? As little did Page, in the bank, foresee that he was training up a Governor. Green, Porter, Fay, Lord, Burt, Gove, Hall, with more others than I can mention, crowded upon our memories and tongues,
" And every lovely feature of their life Did come appareled in more precious habit, Than when they lived indeed."
I see here a centennarian city, but my eyes seek in vain a centennarian citizen. I saw one ten years ago in the capital of Wisconsin. I was there making a Fourth of July oration, and there sat before me the only revolution- ary pensioner surviving in the State,-a hundred years old,-his youth passed in New England, his middle life in New York, his age on the Mississippi. I called him a three- fold man,-who had fought his country's foes on the land and on the sea, " Look," I cried, " with all your eyes on what you never saw before, and never will see hereafter !"
The people took the horses out of the old man's carriage, and drew him themselves in triumph round the park.
Thus would we delight to honor a Rutland centennarian, did Heaven vouchsafe us one at this centennary.
On this day of commemorating our ances- tors who stood here a century ago, it is im- possible not to contrast the world as they saw it with what our eyes to-day behold.
1770! In that year George the Third, who, according to English wits, reigned as long as he could, and then mizzled and misted, and who,even when crazy and clapped into a strait jacket refused to believe himself a limited mon - arch, chose Lord North for his prime minister, who for a three penny tax on tea bartered away the briglitest jewel of the crown, and, on the next morning after the time we are hallowing as the birthday of Rutland, the British mon- arch, seeing a cannon fired twenty times in a minute, pronounced it an argument no Bos- tonian could resist. Yes, a hundred years ago all England hugged the delusion that five thousand of her soldiers could subjugate America. * *
* Capt. Cook was circum- navigating the globe, though as yet only a lieutenant. The first Napoleon and Welling- ton,-botli children of the same year,-were still unweaned in their cradles. The two first settlers in one Vermont township had been in it almost a year before either knew that the other was there. Their non-inter- course was of a piece with that in the great world. Countries separated by a hundred miles of geographical distance were put asunder a thousand miles by mutual con- tempt, and then touched one another at only a few points, while now no king can turn
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over in his bed without disturbing the slum- bers of a dozen neighboring potentates. *
The death of Whitefield befel on the fifth day before that which we keep as the birth- day of Rutland, and the death of Benning Wentworth, the New Hampshire Governor who chartered it, was on the sixteenth day after. * *
When we look around us here, where can we turn that our eyes do not rest on monu- ments of the last century ? In Rutland we see such monuments not only in every human work, everything whatever graven by art and man's device, but in most of the inven- tions of which these works are specimens. I
mean agricultural machinery, which has made farming a sedentary pursuit; postal facilities " which waft a sigh from Indus to the pole; " drawing-room cars like the Queen City, * * photography, which makes the sun stand still and paint our portraits ; loco- motives, megatheria mightier by far than all the mammoths of Siberia ; and the telegraph, which, though it hath no tongue, doth speak with most miraculous organ.
It is no more than sixty-five years since the first whites crossed the continent in our latitude. Last year an iron river had flowed across it from ocean to ocean. Already its banks swarm with settlers, even as an un- broken oasis skirts the Suez canal all through the desert. Rutland had seeu twenty-one years when the first new State was added to the original thirteen. Twenty-four have now been added. Vermonters are in them all, and everywhere at home. Long after Rutland began to be, a Vermont judge was in a minority of one when he refused to recog- nize any title to a slave except a bill of sale in the handwriting of the Lord Almighty, but we behold all Americans concurring in his opinion, and by the fifteenth Amendment filling up the "great gulf fixed " which so long severed the North and the South. * *
Time fails me to descant on the increase within a hundred years.
" The eye affecteth the heart." No man who saw 1770 also sees 1870. *
What has been will be, as surely as the Missouri, which has tlowed two thousand miles to Nebraska, has thus gained more strength to flow further.
wine will burst old bottles. As the Atheni- ans bounded their valley,-one not unlike this,-north by rye, south by vines, east by wheat and west by olives, so the Green Mountain Boy, who has his birth here, will have his being wherever he can best make his own boons best worth having. In 1860, three-fourths as many Vermonters were re- siding elsewhere as within their own State. One year ago last September, on the cone of a Hawaiian volcano, I encountered one long resident there, a nephew of Luther Daniels, and whose sister had been among iny earliest sweethearts.
One among our early members of Congress used to say that the yellow butter and white girls of Vermont were better than the yel- low girls and white butter at Washington. No doubt they always will be ; and yet Green Mountain Boys will wander to Washington, -yes, to all golden gates. Nevertheless, they will hold fast their individuality, as te- naciously as that Englishman did who, when afraid of chills in Indiana, was assured by his landlady that he was out of danger, be- cause he carried with him so many British airs, such a John Bull atmosphere, that he would be safe while all Hoosiers were shak- ing.
Rutland will grow beyond the dreams of all its founders,
Its honors with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, eulargiug while they flow.
But those born here, becoming continentals, will build up other Rutlands in Nebraska. New wine will burst the old bottles. A Rut- lander, once a schoolboy here with me, Moses M. Strong, thirty-three years ago staked out a town twelve days' journey west of Lake Michigan, now my home and the capital of Wisconsin, which has three times the popu- lation of Vermont.
Farmers in this half bushel have hoed among rough stones till they have beaten them all smooth ; they will be off for prairies where there are not stones enough to give stone bruises to their barefooted boys, or to free homesteads ( which yield even the sloven- ly farmer from each acre thirty bushels of wheat, forty of barley, fifty of oats or seventy- five of corn, and where at harvest time the farmers first fill up all out doors with thelr crops, and then gather the remnant into barns,) or to grazing grounds where steers
Fellow Townsmen : There is a greater as well as a lesser Rutland. Its men have gone further than its marble. New | gain three pounds a day. Thus their plows,
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as was well remarked by the earliest and best historian of Vermont. " will enlarge the boundaries of the habitable creation."
Some outside pressure is indeed needful to push one nurtured here out of this ampli- theatre into that Mediterranean valley where he will never see a mountain until he gets faith enough to move one, but when he has once possessed a prairie it is harder to draw him east again than to move a mountain, or even a meeting-house. Hence, he is like one of his own contrary calves. You must pull his ears off before he will begin sucking,- and then you must pull his tail off before he will stop.
Again, according to the census of 1860, the males in Iowa out-numbered the females by more than 39,000. No wonder when you tell an Iowan he ought to take a wife, he answers: " Whose wife shall I take ?" and that railroad conductors, at refreshment sta- tions, cry out : " Twenty minutes for dinner and Chicago divorces." On the other hand, New England had nearly 37,000 more females than males. In this heyday of woman's rights will the fair, like Jepthah's daughter going up and down the mountains, bewail their virginity in Vermont, where they can no more find husbands than hair on a bald head, or than Spain can find a king ?- or will they hunt husbands in the West ?
Neither. Nevertheless, where the carcass is the eagles will be gathered. Green Mount- ain girls will cross the Missouri in order to visit some cousin, or to teach, or even to do plain sewing. But school-houses are Cupid's mouse-traps. Their needles may be war- ranted not to cut in the eye, but it will turn out that that is more than can be said con- cerning the users of them. * * .
In the future, more and more Rutlanders becoming not only continentals but cosmo- politans, leaving those who will, to sluggar- dize at home, will see abroad the wonders of the world,-earth's kingdoms and their glory. Notwithstanding they will return, as I did, from all continents of memory to our own, as the continent of hope. * *
Townsmen ! sweet is this reunion, like the evening gathering together those whom morn- ing had scattered. Worthy is it to be called a jubilee and proclaimed in the old Hebrew fashion with silver trumpets. It is a scene, take it for all in all, we ne'er shall look upon its like again,-the hospitable home-keepers
bidding us, outsiders, come and see them every week and stay a fortnight everytime. It reminds me of a way-side settse along the highways in Germany, beneath shade or fruit-trees,-a shelf behind its back on which way-farers may rest their burdens, a fount- ain and flowers before it, the road trodden and to be trod in full view, castle, cathedral, city. in the distance.
Coming up to this convocation of old friends who make the world warmer and of new friends who make it wider, we seem like those climbing different sides of the same mountain, rising to broader views, and draw- ing nearer at once to each other and to heaven. It is next to the recognition of friends in the skies. Speaking in a lighter vein,-no ingredient is wanting for concoct- ing a bowl of soul full punch-
Where strong, insipid, sharp and sweet, Each other duly tempering, meet.
Of course I mean teetotaler's punch,-the bright, champaigny " old particular " brandy punch of genial and congenial feeling.
It is good to be here, and we would fain clip the wings of so good a time,-er like Joshua bid the sun stand still. Should we be taking leave as long a term as we have yet to live, the lothness to depart would grow.
"Forever, and forever farewell ! Townsmen ! If we shall meet again we do not know, Therefore our everlasting farewell take. If we do meet again, then we shall smile, If not, why then this parting was well made."
After the address of the Rev. Dr. Butler, a Poem, " The Dead Century," written for the occasion by Mrs Julia C. (Ripley) Dorr, was read by her son, Russel R. Dorr.
Immediately after the close of the exercises at Opera Hall, a procession, one of the largest and most orderly ever seen in Rutland, moved in the following order, under the direc- tion of Chief Marshal, Gen. W. Y. W.Ripley and Assistant Marshals Col. L. G. Kingsley, Major John A. Salsbury, R. M. Cross and Capt. Harley Sheldon.
1. Wales Cornet Band, followed by a com- pany of Continental militia, and, in compar- ison, a company of the militia of to- day.
2. Nickwackett Engine Company, No. 1. 61 men, Capt. S. G. Staley with engine and hose cart, drawn by a double team of horses.
3. Washington Engine Company, No. 2, E. F. Sadler foreman, 50 men, engine drawn by two horses, and hose cart by two.
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4. Killington Steamer, No. 3, drawn by four horses, and its hose cart drawn by two. C. Kingsley foreman, and the full company turned out.
5. Hook and Ladder Company, No. 1, George W. Hilliard foreman, 45 men, with their truck decked with evergreens and flow- ers, and preceded by a band of Martial mu- sic.
6. St. Peter's Cornet Band of Rutland.
7. Hibernian Literary Society of Rutland, Dennis Kingsley and Edward Lyston, mar- shals.
8. St. Patrick's Benevolent Literary Soci- ety of West Rutland, Robert Monaghan, M. Duffy and M. Meagher, marshals.
After these came individuals representing the costumes etc. of " ancient " days, among which was a representation of a surgeon of the Revolutionary Army, a commissary of the same period, and other characters, both male and female, representing the same period.
one hundred years ago, a display of furni- ture and upholstery work which was credi- table. W. B. Mussey's grocery wagon was decked with goods of his line, and the three teams of G. II. & II. W Cheney bore evidence that they kept a good variety, and were not to be counted as minors in the grocery line. Dunn, Sawyer & Co. had three teams in the procession, laden with peddler's goods hardware and house furnishing goods, in- cluding stoves, et :. Spencer, Sawyer & Co. had their large candy wagon in the process- ion. The Rutland Manufacturing Company had a large wagon, piled mountain high, al- most, with chairs. Abbott & Whitman had a display in the shape of a light express wag- on. C. W. Nichols, photographer, had his camera out.
When the procession, after marching through several of the principal streets, arrived at the pavilion it broke ranks, and some five or six hundred sat down to partake of the dinner.
Next in order came a representation of the wares of some of our principal merchants, TOASTS. personified in the manner in which the way- After the dinner, Gen. William Y. W. Rip- ley, acting as president, made a few brief re- marks appropriate to the occasion, and called upon Mr. John Strong, the toastmaster for the first toast. ons which bore them were laden. First was a wagon drawn by six horses, a la tandem, alternate white and black, representing the grocery business of Che-ter Kingsley at the ' Old Red Store." A machine, drawn by two Toast first. Rutland-Like a good mother, pairs of fancy matched horses. G. F. White | she welcomes her sons who have sustained had a wagon drawn by four oxen, and on it and exalted the family name abroad, and who, returning from distant places, testify by their presence to-day that they hold in affectionate remembrance the town that gave them birth. was reclining a monument representing the withered trunk of a tree, or "the flower is faded and the limbs are broken." This mon- ument was very large, weighing several tons. B. W. Marshall represented his grocery bus- Response by James Barrett, who related some amusing anecdotes of the early history of Rutland, among which was that in a for- mer period when the people from the country around came to trade they tasted the liquors in every store, and after arriving at the place where they considered the best liquors were I kept, there they bought their goods. But these times were past, and now we have a town and a community of which every one can feel proud. iness in a heavy laden wagon. H. R. Dyer followed with a team representing steam and gas fitting. Howe's candy manufactory was represented by two double teams, with an assortment of the proprietor's goods. Paine, Bowman & Co. had in display a fine as- sortment of manufactured goods and cloths, and with the goods were their operators, both male and female, seemingly as busily at work as when in the store. Levi G. Kings- ley had two wagons of upholstery goods, In response to the same toast, Rev. Stephen C. Thrall said : I sincerely regret that this welcome Vermont, and particulaly Rutland, has extended to her children has taken my voice away so that I cannot, as Iwould like to, respond appropriately on this occasion. Look- ing about the continent, and standing on the with fine exhibitions of shelf hardware and mechanics' tools. Dr. Verder had a portion of the goods from his bakery out in a wagon drawn by the black horse. George W. Chap- lin, jr., had a fine display of furniture and upholstery goods, and Newman Weeks, in the same line, had, beside two chairs made | Sierra Nevadas, on the borders of the Miss- :
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issippi, or wherever my lot has been cast, I have ever with pride remembered Vermont, not populous at home, but extensive abroad, and it has ever been my pride that wherever I met a Vermonter he was true to the manor born. Douglas said Vermont was a good State to go from, and it is not less true, I find, that it is a good State to come back to. On no place on earth have we seen such beauty, and we say to our noble mother, We thank you, and will bear your memory to our homes and to our graves.
Mr. Frederick A. Fuller made a happy speech chiefly of anecdotes referring to the elderly citizens of Rutland, many of whom, though now non-residents, were present, especially alluding to the humorous traits of the character of Rev. James Davie Butler, when doing business with his father in Rutland thirty years ago.
Second toast. Vermont-Her place among the States, established by the bravery of her "Green Mountain Boys," has been gloriously maintained by a people already distinguished for industry and virtue; by her statesmen, eminent in the councils of the nation ; by her Judges, learned in the law and fearless in its administration ; by her soldiers, first on every battle-field of the republic, from Ticonderoga and Plattsburgh to Gettysburgh and the Wilderness ; and above all by her women; who, true to their duties as wives and moth- ers, with all the sacred precincts of home, have, by the influence of their virtues and the careful training of their children, exalted us as a people.
Gen. Ripley expressed the regrets of Gov. Stewart and Messrs. Redfield, Phelps, Po- land and others who had expressed their desire to be present, but were unavoidably absent, and in a happy manner introduced Col. W. G. Veazey to respond.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :
If I were to point you to the greatest glory of Vermont, I think I should direct your view to the wonderful autumnal beauty that now clothes our mountain slopes, so far surpassing anything that art has ever been able to attain. I might properly refer, also, to the healthfulness of our climate, which, with the beauty of her scenery, makes Ver- mont the resort of the invalid and the tourist.
But there is another aspect in which to speak of our State.
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Although Vermont had a settlement many years prior to the date which the charter of the town of Rutland bears, yet it is scarcely a violation of fact to say that our State is a product of the century just closed, which, historically considered, has been more fruitful of great men and great events than any which history chronicles. But, though a product of this wonderful era, her worth, her honor, her importance as a State is measured rather as a producer. In this respect, as in beauty of scenery and healthfulness of climate, she stands pre eminent. In art her sons are rapidly taking rank with the most distin- guished artists that the western world has produced ; in laws and institutions, eminent jurists and statesmen have said, that she pre- sents, on the whole, the best model of any people on earth. This, perhaps, is the best criterion of the purity and ability of the pub- lic men who have, under a general guidance of the people, shaped and moulded her laws and institutions. But, independent of this, the character of her executives throughout the entire succession has been the pride of Vermonters. Good government, protection of person and property, freedom of thought and action, liberty without license, have been the fruits of their faithful administra- tions.
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