USA > Vermont > The story of Vermont (1889) > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
Of afternoons quilting bees brought together the matrons of a neighborhood who talked as they worked, sometimes of other things than the intricate patterns before them. Strips and squares of brightly colored cloth were sewed together in various com- plex figures, bearing such fanciful names as Albums, Blazing Stars, Baskets, Twin Sisters, Irish Chains, Windmills and Sunflowers. When enough of these had been collected, the neighbors were invited to
.
159
HOMESPUN FOLK.
help finish the quilts. Each quilt was stretched upon four poles; these were rolled inward as the work progressed toward the centre. The stitches which the good woman employed in quilting were as complex and various as the patterns themselves.
This seems now to have been work with little purpose, yet at least it served the purpose of bring- ing together good friends for social enjoyment at a time when the formal call of a few minutes would have been scouted as preposterous. When a guest came to the household she brought her knitting work or sewing and stayed till nightfall, certain of a kindly welcome. In honor of the visit the bucket with its jangling chain was sunk from its high sweep to the bottom of the well and was brought up filled with clear cold water; the pot upon its blackened crane, soon bubbled over the fire on the hearth ; the household stores were ransacked for good things to eat which might be brought forth without ostentation, but with justifiable pride in the housewife's foresight.
What the quilting bee was to the women a " raising" was to the men. It was impossible for a small force to lift the ponderous bents which went into barns and houses, and appliances for hoisting them were not in common use. So when the car- penters had framed and fitted the parts together, the neighbors all came with their pikepoles; with
/
160
HOMESPUN FOLK.
much shouting they lifted the bents one by one into the air until the tenons sank to their places in the sill-mortises and all stood upright. Until the temperance revival, liquor was always served on such occasions and many a sturdy young man " shinned up" the newly hoisted bents to drive the pins in the braces or handle the rafters away aloft whose head was not so steady as it might have been ; deep potations were the rule, and accidents from this cause were not unfrequent. Occasions of graver import brought the people together from far and near. Half a township would show respect to the dead by its presence at a funeral or would gather to offer hearty congratulations to the newly- wedded pair.
Life as it was lived before the days of the rail- road was lonely, yet to busy and contented people there was some compensation for the infrequent sight of one's fellows in the human interest their occasional entrance upon the field of vision excited. The forest is not more lonely than that wilderness which is called a great city. Those thought them- selves well off who lived near a public road where some one passed by almost every day. Sometimes it might be the postman pushing his hard-worked horse through spring mud or winter snow on his weekly trip; sometimes it was the doctor, spurring to the bedside of a patient, sometimes a neighbor
161
HOMESPUN FOLK.
on his way to mill, sometimes the judge or the attorney jogging along to court with his law books in his saddlebags, sometimes the minister on his pastoral rounds. With such glimpses at the com- ings and goings of other people, with trips to church, with the training day and the interchange of neighborly hospitalities they were quite content.
They were indeed good old times when people lived thus; better times, some say, than the railroad and telegraph have brought us. Yet the State to-
day is a better State in most respects than it was. The temperance reform has purified it of a host of evils; the diversity of industries and the introduc- tion of machinery have shortened the hours of labor; better means of communication have given new facilities to trade, to agriculture and to educa- tion ; a wiser economy has husbanded the resources of the people.
The heroic spirit with which the Vermonters of old faced the hard conditions of their lives is worthy the pride and admiration of their descendants, but it is only a disparagement of their virtues to deny that they had any disadvantages to labor with. We may praise their pluck and energy yet need not covet the struggles by which these qualities were developed. The agencies which wrought such mighty changes in the State and whose influence we are now to consider were on the whole agencies
162
HOMESPUN FOLK.
for good. Rude beginnings are but the stepping- stones to progress. From hardship and from con- tinuous toil has success been formed. But he who sighs for those distant days of effort and of meagre facilities imagining them to be purer and more genuine than his own time is as unthinking as he is unpatriotic. Every age has alike its responsi- bilities and its advantages. Not many, even of those whose admiration of the "good old times " is expressed in the loudest terms, would willingly go back to them and fight over again the hard battle that the pioneers waged with the wilderness.
١
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREAT WEST.
A PIONEER "Prarie Schooner.
HE : half-century fol- lowing the close of the Revolution was a season of rapid growth and development in Vermont. In 1760 her people had been but a handful. In 1790 when the first census was taken they Thenceforward for sev-
had increased to 85,425. eral successive censuses the figures were: 1800, 154,465 ; 1810, 217,895 ; 1820, 235,966 ; 1830, 280,652. In a half-century after 1830 the popu- lation did not increase so much by 17,000 as in the single decade following the admission of the State, though in the Union as a whole the increase was marvelous. Out of that western country which was in 1830 a trackless waste, new States have been carved which have passed Vermont by in the race for people and for wealth. This would
163
-
164
THE GREAT WEST.
inevitably have been true in any case, since the newer States have many times the territory of Ver- mont, but there were special causes controlling the earlier and more rapid as well as the slower recent growth of the Green Mountain State.
In the old days following the Revolution Ver- mont was the West of New England. Immigra- tion had been kept out of it by the wars with the French and Indians and somewhat impeded by the alarms of the Revolution; but when with the coming of the long peace the last obstacle to its settlement was removed, people from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut flocked into the State, finding there an abundance of rich and cheap land, valuable timber, good advantages of church and school, a popular government in which all shared and a climate no more rigorous than that to which they had been accustomed. No one then supposed that thriving cities would one day spring up and vast States be developed in the valley of the Mis- sissippi, and even if the pioneers had been gifted with prophetic powers to see the future greatness of the land, the way to it was one of incredible hard- ships and of dangers not a few. Vermont possessed precisely the attractions which the West has since presented ; it profited by them as the West has done. As early as the beginning of the present century it was a source of emigration, a goal of immigration.
165
THE GREAT WEST.
Silas Wright, afterward to become one of New York's greatest governors, graduating from Middle- bury College shortly after the War of 1812, followed the adventurous pioneers of his State into Northern New York, then almost a wilderness. That sec- tion of the Empire State was practically settled by Vermonters with an intermixture of people from the Mohawk Valley and lesser strains from other sources. A few years later, the sons of Vermont were settling in the rich valleys of Western New York or pushing even further toward the setting sun. They were the pioneers of a movement which in years to come was to check almost completely the peopling of their own State. For the present, however, the loss was more than made good by immigration.
Just when the tide of travel to Vermont was at its height, the puny beginnings of a flood whose mighty volume in the future no one then foresaw began trickling through the mountain passes into the broad lands of the Middle West. The ordi- nance for the government of the Northwest Terri- tory was framed in 1787. That vast region which had in 1880 eleven million souls and which em- braces the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- gan and Wisconsin, had then but a few thousand venturesome inhabitants. Kentucky, the first State beyond the Alleghanies, was admitted to the Union
I 66
THE GREAT WEST.
in the same year as Vermont. Public attention was directed to the West by these acts and the stream began to slowly swell in volume. Tennessee fol- lowed in 1796 and Ohio in 1802, but when the War of 1812 broke out and put the frontier settlements again in peril of the Indians there were not more than one third so many people in the entire region beyond the mountains as now live in Ohio alone.
For migration was no easy task in those days; it was full of delays, of dangers and difficulties. The streams of travel flowed along the rivers or sought outlets through the mountain passes. Pennsylvania and Virginia were great colonizing States and the former of these seems to have sent to the West as many of her children as all the New England States together. They followed the old military roads to Pittsburg and thence floated down the Ohio to their more or less distant destinations in flat-boats whereon were loaded their household possessions, their families and often their cattle. Long and hard as was this winding way, it was easy by com- parison with that which must be followed by the uneasy spirits of the Eastern States. These might seek the Hudson and follow it to Albany, ascend the Mohawk with its frequent falls and rapids, strike the lake at Oswego and thus continue on their way West; they might push straight across the State to Buffalo and there embark; or, quite
167
THE GREAT WEST.
as frequently perhaps, cross New Jersey and fol- low the Pennsylvania trail to the Ohio Valley. The difficulty of the route deterred many and sent them to the nearer woods and mountains of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and to some extent westward by way of the St. Lawrence.
A QUILTING BEE.
In 1825 the Erie Canal was opened to traffic and an instantaneous change came over the prospects of the West. The opening of water communi- cation from the lakes to the sea was of incalculable benefit to the State of New York which accom- plished the mighty task, but its value to the West
ה
168
THE GREAT WEST.
was even greater. It was now possible for the sufferer from Western fever to go by water from New York City to Buffalo and thence on to Lake Superior without vexation from muddy roads or adverse currents. The trip was shortened and cheapened ; it was rendered more endurable to women and children. There was something almost approaching the modern luxuries of travel in the packet boats of the day with their comfortable cabins, regular meals and unlimited capacity for stowage.
In Northern Ohio was built up a new Connecticut; Northern Illinois began to receive the freedom- loving population which was in Lincoln's time to overbalance the slavery sympathizers who were already pouring into that State from the South ; Michigan and Wisconsin then became something more than names. Detroit awoke from its slum- bers; Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toledo and a hundred other cities and towns sprang out of nothing and became thriving aspirants for future commercial importance. Steam power made the navigation of the lakes easy and certain ; it worked with the canal in building up the great Northwest. Farmers, mechanics and professional men followed where the hardy pioneers had shown the way and laid the foundations of new commonwealths.
Had not the youth of Vermont themselves been
169
7
THE GREAT WEST.
drawn into this westward tide the State would have continued to grow fast enough in population by the natural rate of increase, but the Vermonters bore their part in building up the new States. The mountains at home were more difficult of cultivation and the winter rigors made the hus- bandman's task seem less easy than on the mellow plains of the West. The rapid increase of popu- lation in the new State had occasioned a natural rise in the price of land and this removed one source of attraction which Vermont had possessed.
In 1830 many of its farms were held at a higher value than now, and the prospect of winning new homes among the cheaper acres of the West lured by the thousand from their native soil, young men and women who were to carry home ways and home influences to be the leaven of new common- wealths. The old post road from Bennington to Troy and the canal from Whitehall westward were crowded with Vermonters seeking to travei the easy new road to that bounteous West of which they had heard such marvelous tales.
It requires no fanciful imagination to con- ceive that the opening of the Erie Canal was an agency which did more than almost any other to curb the power of slavery. Hitherto in the migration to the West there had been a far greater element of slavery sympathizers from the
1 70
THE GREAT WEST.
South than of Northern men, and these settled largely in the southern portion of the Northwestern Territory lying along the Ohio River. With the opening of the canal, Northern men began to cross the mountains in even greater numbers until they formed a majority in every Northwestern State; as much by weight of influence as of numbers they made that section in the dark days of 1861 as loyal as New England itself. But in the work of peopling the new States the canal was only the pioneer. Great as were its accomplishments it was followed, aided and in time almost superseded by an agent even more powerful.
In the year 1830 the venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, a patriot whose great age, command- ing personality and prominence in the history of his State and country made him a fitting link between the old order of things and the new, was the central figure in a significant ceremonial.
The day was big with import, portending results in the near future more vast than any one then had dreamed of seeing realized. It was the celebration of the opening of the first section of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad to traffic. The white-headed old man whose boyhood, youth and early man- hood had passed under the king, who had sat in the council which guided the nation to its deliver-
171
THE GREAT WEST.
ance and who so well remembered when all the land beyond the Alleghanies was an unexplored wilderness, stood up among the younger men to deliver the chief oration, bidding the new enter- prise godspeed. A few months later in the same year, Lord Brougham, himself almost as much a figure of the past, performed a like service for the Liverpool and Manchester railway, the first completed steam line of the world.
It almost passes belief, looking upon the mighty railroad systems of the present time, that they should have been developed within a trifle more than half a century, and that men not yet old can remember when there was not a single steam car on the continent.
Measured by later standards those early rail- roads were rude and primitive. The passenger coaches were something like a Concord thorough- brace in general appearance; the engine was a tiny affair of uncouth shape, too small to afford the engineer a shelter from sun or rain. The speed was about that of a smart carriage horse. The first rails were of wood with thin straps of iron spiked along the top, and it was some time before these were replaced by rails of solid iron, which were in turn to give way to heavier ones of steel. It was not supposed that the locomotives could pull a load up a hill. The first sections of the
1
!
172-3
THE GREAT WEST.
New York Central were built on nearly a dead level ; on what is now the heavy grade near Albany, was a steep incline up and down which the engine- less cars were run by cable and pulley. The Bald- wins of Philadelphia announced by advertisement that their steam engine, the first but not the last . by some thousands of their construction, would be run on fair days, but that when it rained horses would be used. When the sun shone multitudes came to see the marvel.
Shrewd men saw, after a very brief trial of the new motor, that the world's heavy traffic would henceforth be carried by steam power. Almost simultaneously in all the more thickly settled por- tions of the Union rails were laid down, often against emphatic protests and in the face of solemn warnings; locomotives of constantly increasing power and cars of ever more generous dimensions carried more and more of the freight of the country. Boston, Albany and Buffalo were soon connected by lines of railroad reaching from the great lakes to the sea. Before 1840 a road had been built from Boston to Concord, and Vermont roads were soon stretched out to meet it.
The road from Burlington to Windsor was opened for traffic in 1849, from Rutland to Bur- lington in the same year, from Rutland to White- hall in 1850, from Essex Junction to-Rouse's Point
1
THE RAILWAY COACH OF OUR FATHERS.
-
175
THE GREAT WEST.
in 1850 and from White River Junction to St. Johnsbury in 1851. These roads gave Vermont outlets in three directions : to Ogdensburg via Rouse's Point, to Albany via Whitehall and to Boston via White River Junction. These systems were in time consolidated under the management of the Vermont Central Company. This now
has practical control of the railroads of the State. Other lines followed promptly enough and within a comparatively few years the main railroad arteries of the State were reasonably complete as they have since remained. Only short connecting spurs or branches have been found necessary for some years or are likely to be for years to come.
It is a curious and interesting fact that the main railroad lines of Vermont follow closely the old Indian trails - down the east shore of the lake, along the Lower Connecticut, up the Onion River, or across the State diagonally by the Winooski and White Rivers. The Indians were good en- gineers; with their unaided eyes and instinct they solved their engineering problems in a manner with which the level and chain can find no fault.
Such an entire revolution in the transit systems of the country could not but mightily affect the course and manner of its development. The stream of Western migration which had begun to flow feebly toward the close of the last century, which
176
THE GREAT WEST.
had deepened and broadened its current when the Erie Canal was opened, now became a mighty tor- rent. The mid-Western States were built up with marvelous and unexampled rapidity; those of the East felt the effects of a constant drain upon their population, while immigrants from Europe took the places of those who had gone.
It was not alone the growth of the West which now began to call away the rosy-cheeked country boys from their homes. The development of the great cities of the lakes and the seaboard was a natural consequence of the growth of railroad traffic, of the export and import trade and of man- ufactures. The leading business men of New York, Boston and Chicago, the merchants, lawyers, manufacturers and railway magnates, in unnum- bered instances have been those who were the Yankee farmers' boys of the last generation.
Both movements - the exodus to the West and the tendency to flock to the large cities - militated against the continued growth of Vermont in wealth and population; she had no seaports or other large cities and few advantages to offset the attractions of the new States. The census indeed showed in 1850, 314,120 inhabitants in the State where in 1840 there had been but 291,948; this considerable increase, however, was undoubtedly due in part to the checking and chilling influence of the panic
١
177
THE GREAT WEST.
of 1837 upon the Western States and upon the great cities. In the next decade - which included the gold excitement in California and the flocking of freemen into Kansas to save her from the fate of slavery - Vermont's population grew less than one thousand larger. In 1860 the census count showed but 315,098 inhabitants.
Yet the State's prosperity did not suffer in all directions from the new modes of transit. Three years before the opening of the Erie Canal, a canal had been opened from the Hudson to Lake Cham- plain. This proved of great benefit to the State by facilitating the marketing of its bulkier products ; by its means and by the prompt completion of the main railroad arteries, industry was developed and trade stimulated very materially.
In spite of the fact that population remained sta- tionary during the decade following the completion of a railroad through Vermont, considerable ad- vances were made in wealth, and agriculture and manufactures prospered as they had not done before. It was a time of comparatively low tariff. This was no more popular then than now in Ver- mont, yet the number of adults engaged in manu- factures increased from 8,445 in 1850 to 10,497 in 1860; within the same period the annual value of manufactured products rose from $8,570,920 to $14,637,807. Unless the figures were grossly inac-
178
THE GREAT WEST.
curate, the value of manufactured goods had in- creased in ten years more rapidly than the number engaged in making them. This result may have been largely due to the introduction of better machinery and more efficient modes of production and to the bettered facilities for travel, observation and the exchange of ideas.
Even more rapid was the advance of the quarry industry. This important branch of the State's activities practically owes its birth to the canal and the railroads. The first opened a market to New York ; the latter gave one in every direction. The beautiful marble of the State and its rich deposits of slate thus found an outlet and these deposits were everywhere worked by private individuals and by corporations whose keen competition led to the dis- covery of new mineral wealth before unsuspected. The value to the State of the industry thus begun has since been enormous. In 1880, of all the larger States only two surpassed Vermont in the value of their quarry products or in the capital invested.
In agriculture the improvement following the canal and railroads was no less marked. Although the acreage of improved land did not greatly increase, the value of the farms of Vermont rose during the decade before the Civil War from sixty- three millions to ninety-four millions, or about fifty per cent., while most crops produced showed an
1
179
THE GREAT WEST.
increase in quantity and value. Wheat continued to decline, but the more bulky crops - barley, oats and potatoes - held their own. The wool clip decreased somewhat, owing to the competition of Western wool growers, but the Vermont farmers soon dis- covered that they could make more money by breed- ing the finest sheep to sell than by raising wool themselves.
It was found that sheep in milder climates tended to deteriorate in wool-bearing qualities unless the tendency was counteracted by infusions of better blood, and the Vermont growers of fancy sheep made good profits by breeding and selling very fine and heavy fleeced animals. The price for a single
sheep frequently rose to thousands of dollars.
After making this discovery the Vermont farmers cared very lit- tle for the number of pounds of wool they raised, and even less. for the mutton they marketed. The hay crop increased greatly, and with it butter and cheese. These prod- ucts had been difficult
An Old-fashioned Hand-Loom.
1
180
THE GREAT WEST.
of transportation under former conditions, and were apt to deteriorate on their slow way to mar- ket in hot weather. The railroad enabled dairy farmers to market their butter and cheese in Boston and in New York in the best of condition and the importance of the industry rapidly increased.
In early days, when the drovers used to collect herds and drive them along the country roads all the way to market, cattle had been valued in pro- portion to their beef qualities, but with the growth of the dairy interest the milk-producing strains found more favor, and the grade of cattle of the country was improved by the intermingling with better stock.
Fruit of all kinds which would bear the cli- mate was grown in increasing quantities where the soil permitted; former methods were improved by study and through the competition aroused by the agricultural societies. The horses of Vermont have always borne a high reputation. The Mor- gan and Messenger strains have been pronounced unsurpassed for general purposes, and the progeny of Black Hawk and other noted sires proved their value in many capacities. Horses were sold from the State in considerable numbers annually, yet their number increased with the bettering of the roads, and that of working oxen has as steadily diminished. Where there were forty-eight thou-
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.