USA > Vermont > Caledonia County > St Johnsbury > The town of St. Johnsbury, Vt. ; a review of one hundred twenty-five years to the anniversary pageant 1912 > Part 12
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SHAVE HORSE PRODUCTS. "What is that ?" is the question not infrequently asked, even by adults of the present generation, on seeing a survivor of the old shave horse troop. It used to be part of the necessary equipment ; many were the articles and im- plements made with the draw shave on this queer and handy little horse. Nearly all the wood work and some of the iron work of ordinary tools was hand made. Hoes and pitch forks were ham-
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mered out on the anvil, and Tom and Bill shaved the handles and fitted them in to the circular necks. Axes, scythes and sickles were imported from down below, but the helves and snaths were either made or replaced on the shave horse, the snath of the pe- riod being nearly as straight as a rake stale. The common shovel was of wood with a T piece on the handle and the cutting edge shod with a piece of iron. Boys shaved out the different parts of their sleds or pungs, which like the great ox sleds, also home made, were jointed together with wooden pins.
The constant handling of ashes, starch and potash, also soap and sugar making, required receptacles, and coopering became an important industry. Staves and hoops for hundreds of buckets, pails, tubs and barrels were shaved out in different parts of the town. Iron not being obtainable, both hoops and handles were made of elastic wood. A style of bucket not often seen nowadays was the piggin, on which one stave projected above the rim to serve as a handle. "I made a piggin," is the entry on a farm journal of the Moose River region, Aug. 22, 1832. The piggin had no relationship to a domestic animal other than as a recep- tacle for conveying nourishment to his trough ; its original is the Gaellic word pigean, a pot or jar.
LEATHER. On the Plain, prior to 1810, the Hubbard Law- rence tannery diversified the grounds now known as Pinehurst. Here the scrupulously honest Deacon manufactured leathers, the differing grades of which he had a way of marking with the initial letters of good and bad. When a curious person one day interrogated him as to the meaning of the G he replied that that marked a piece of leather that was good. What then is the B for? was the next question. B we'll call better, said the tanner, with a twinkle that gave the questioner the reverse meaning. This tannery continued in operation till about 1830.
Up to that time and later raw leather was an indispensable commodity in the community. There was no ready made foot gear. The traveling cobbler came along, as the umbrella tinker now does, with his kit, and established himself in the kitchen, where he made up the family stock of boots for the year. For men and boys he made the long legged boots, and for feminine
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use whatever might be wanted. Sometimes he would find a shoe bench on the premises. Increasing population called for a shoemaker to set up shop and this with saddlery and harness making kept the tanners busy converting hides in to leather for a good many years.
The most important tannery in town was at the Center Vil- lage opposite the upper bridge : this was built by Isaac Harrington in 1810. Horace Hutchinson was the first tanner, afterward Gris- wold who at a later date set up a tannery in the East Village. In 1853 John Bacon 2d bought the Center tannery ; for 43 years it was successfully operated by himself and his son, Delos M. Bacon, who carried it on from 1876 to 1896. The great wheel of this tannery, mounted about 1830, survived until recent years as a picturesque relic on the hillside, very noticeable from the west end of the bridge. It was an undershot wheel 12 feet in diameter with a rim 18 inches wide on which were set pockets for catching the water as it came down from the brook.
POTTERY. An old-time land mark with low red buildings west of the river half a mile south of the Center Village, was the Pottery established in 1808 by Gen. R. W. Fenton, somewhile known as the St. Johnsbury Stone Ware Pottery. Its products were in constant demand until the introduction of tinware. The business was successfully carried on by Gen. Fenton and by his son Leander until the entire establishment went down in flames November, 1859. All sorts of domestic ware were turned out on those potters' wheels, from jugs, jars, bowls, bottles and milk pans, at a dollar a dozen, to fancy flower pots at sixty cents each, and St. Johnsbury pottery gained high repute ; occasionally sur- viving specimens of it may still be seen. The power was supplied by a merry little brook that came tumbling down the hillside.
CLOVER SEED. During the twenties a brisk business in clover seed sprang up. In August of the second year, when the seed was ripe it was cut with a scythe, dried and bundled, spread out on the barn floor, where the seed was trodden out. It was shoveled thro an upright screen and then put into a barrel rigged with a sweep which was carried around by the horse. The seed
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worked its way below the chaff and as it came out at the bottom was hulled and further cleared by fans. This was the process on the farms, but after a time clover mills with hullers and fans were built and run by water power. One of these was put up and oper- ated by E. & T. Fairbanks at the Sleeper River Falls south of the Plain. This mill was sold in 1828 to Maj. Abel Rice, proprietor of the hotel. Ten tons of clover seed were called for at one time by Clarks and Bishop ; it was used for barter by the farmers ; the price in 1837 was eleven cents a bushel. Eastern Vermont did a large business in this clover seed for many years; in 1850 Cale- donia County produced 179 bushels, during which year Chittenden raised two bushels, Rutland one and Bennington none.
HAIR COMBS. Porter Gibson carried on his comb making at the south end of the Plain in a little house, the original of No. 2 Main street. The farmers brought their cattle horns to Gibson ; he subjected them to steam heat, cut and pressed them in to thin flat sheets, sawed out a disk of proper size and shape, the edges of which he skilfully shoved up under his fine saw which cut out the spaces leaving a series of teeth, and-there was your comb.
Opposite the comb works was the Bookbindery, where T. G. Rice rebound worn out Bibles and Testaments ; up near the post- office was the upstairs room where Parks and Paddock built organs; near the meeting house was the work shop of Francis Bingham who turned out side-boards, secretaries, sofas, French bedsteads and Grecian card tables ; Hezekiah Martin near by, and Clark Brothers across the street, made saddles, harness, trunks and post bags. In Paddock Village was Lindorf Morris' sash, blind and door factory, Ramsey's spinning wheel works and Jo- seph Hancock's shop for nice work in pine, birch, maple and mahogany. Good cabinet work was done at the Center Village by Freeman Loring and Ira Armington, and Cotton G. Dickinson of the sturdy stock of famous Cotton Mather, did high class work on his anvil, from fitting shoes on oxen to making wrought iron implements for farm and household use.
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ARNOLD FALLS RAMSEY'S MILLS
"What, Man! more water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of."
The water power that runs our village water works in Pad- dock Village was originally known as Arnold Falls. This was the first water in the town that was utilized. Dr. Arnold, whose property it was, set up his saw mill there in 1787, and a grist mill the next year. Capt. Arnold the miller, brother of Jonathan, an old sea captain, ran the grist mill. David Bowen was the next miller. He built and lived in a rude hut which was the first habi- tation there. After the death of the Arnolds business declined at these mills ; different parties rented the property, which still went by the name of Arnold Mills as late as 1810.
After a time, 1817, Capt. James Ramsey came along and took the grist mill. He added to it a small building into which he moved his family and there set up a carding machine ; the old Bowen hut was at this time uninhabitable. In 1820 Ramsey and Allen Kent put up a new saw mill at the Falls. Two or three years later Hiram Jones and Sargent Bagley bought this mill and built beside it a carpenter shop. These men built dwelling houses near by, and from this time the place began to be called RAMSEY'S MILLS, tho as late as the year 1830 we find reference made to "the Celebrated Water Fall on Passumpsic River known by the name of the Arnold Privilege."
A reminiscence of these men was given years after by one who knew them when he was a boy :-
"Ramsey was a character, a large, bony Scotchman, with a fund of droll stories which he delighted to tell to the neighbors and over which he would shake with honest laughter. Jones was a little man, industrious, taciturn and obsequious, under a very rigorous conjugal regime. Bagley was a tall, stately man, solemn and monotonous, a consistent and rigid member of the church. His wife-a mild, tidy woman, with a lace cap and an immaculate linen kerchief over her shoulders-dear blessed woman, how we boys rever- enced and loved her."
Capt. Ramsey as time went on built a new house. He be- came a stiff anti-slavery man and his house was one of the under-
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ground' railway stations, so called, where runaway slaves were taken in and helped on their way to Canada. This house is still standing, the low brick house painted gray-white a few rods south of the bridge. Ramsey also became a spinning wheel manufac- turer ; his wheels for spinning domestic flax were considered a superior product ; with oil-stained red rims and cranks and spindles of best hard Swede stock. His sons, John, Charles and William, were well known here in later years. Lieut. John Ram- sey, a conspicuous figure in the Third Vt. Regiment, fell pierced by four musket balls at the battle of Savage Station, Va., in 1862.
THE PADDOCK IRON WORKS
In 1828 Huxham Paddock moved his foundry from Sleeper's River to the Arnold Falls and there set up a blast furnace and ex- tensive iron works. Hiram Jones and Capt. Ramsey took the contract for the main building which was raised and finished "without the use of liquid poison, and much was said of the in- genuity and excellent workmanship displayed." A large force of men was employed in these works; as the business expanded many built homes for themselves and the community came to be known as PADDOCK VILLAGE.
A high grade quality of native iron was made in the Paddock blast furnace. The fuel used was charcoal obtained from the neighboring woods. Ores were brought in on heavy teams from what was then a famous mine in Franconia ; also in smaller quan- tities from Piermont, N. H., from Waterford and Troy, Vt. After experiments were made it was found that by combining these different ores a particularly firm valuable iron could be obtained for the manufacture of stoves and hollow iron ware, for which products there was a steady demand, and the business continued brisk for some years.
In one of the Paddock shops was installed a turning lathe which was considered superior to any other in the State. It was capable of turning a shaft of three feet diameter and fourteen feet long. Turning lathes of all kinds for iron or wood work were manufactured at these works, also various mill machinery, shafts, cranks, spindles, gudgeons, cylinders, pumps, hubs, nails and other miscellany.
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Huxham Paddock was a man of energy, skill and shrewdness, and of dignified character. His enterprise and public spirit con- tributed much to the interests of the town, which by his early death suffered serious loss. His mother Ann Huxham was niece of the celebrated physician of that name in England. Her brother John was master of a vessel which returning from Gauda- loupe laden with dye stuffs, was spoken just outside the harbor of Newport, R. I., by Capt. Crooke, who asked if they were not coming in? "No," said the Captain, "we're too heavily loaded, but will be in for breakfast." During the night a sudden tempest drove the ship on the rocks and all on board were lost.
MOOSE RIVER WATER POWERS
Sometime during the twenties the Fairbanks Brothers estab- lished a hoe and fork factory at the falls where the Ely works now are. Most of the implements of this sort used by the farmers of that period were made here. After the rise of the scale business their work at this factory was discontinued. In 1848, George W. Ely, re-established the hoe and fork manufacture, which has had a most prosperous development by the Ely family until the present time, being now incorporated in the American Hoe and Fork Company.
The neighboring water power at the head of Portland street was first utilized in 1854. At that time the dam and saw mill was built by Jonathan Lawrence and James Harris.
MILLS AT THE CENTER
About the year 1800, and before there was any village up that way, Samuel French cleared a place and built a log hut near the lower end of Trout Brook on the Lyndon road. He utilized a little fall in the Brook, for a small saw and grist mill, the first in that part of the town.
Not long after, Eleazar Sanger who came over from the Four Corners, bought what is now the land included in the Center Vil- lage. He threw a dam across the Passumpsic, and soon an up and down saw was running and houses began to be built. Logs
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at that time were drawn up to the roll-way thro the sand and grit ; this "kept the saw bright and the teeth dull." Logs were hauled in during the winter on sleds, each man's logs were stacked in a separate pile, and every log was marked with the owner's name. Sawing was begun in the spring. E. H. Stone was the first man to introduce a circular saw ; he had the logs fished from the river on to a slip and there was no more dragging thro the dirt.
The first grist mill was run some years by Reuben Spaulding, afterward by Enoch Wing. As the farmers made wider clearings the increasing crops of grain began to tax the capacity of the mill. In the fall of the year Wing was obliged to keep his mill grinding night and day. At night after filling up his hoppers he would camp down beside the mill-stones for a nap ; when this first batch was ground out, the peculiar sound made by the stones when no grain was in them would wake him ; then he had a second filling, a second nap, and so on thro the night. There were two sets of millstones, one for provender and one for flour; they were granite stone, no other being obtainable at that time. Once a year the miller had a salt-grinding day ; every body was notified that salt must be brought in that day ; the salt was washed, then thoroughly dried and ground. Then each family got the yearly supply of fine salt, no other being had except by pounding in a mortar. This grist mill was sold by Wing some years later, 1819, to Ezra Ide ; then to Hiram H. Ide; the original mill was re- placed by a more modern one of brick, which was destroyed in the fire of 1876.
A carding mill was started a short distance below the grist mill by Capt. Walter Wright, who also set up a turning lathe, cir- cular saw and other machinery. In a few years he sold the card- ing works to Stoughton and Kimball; they enlarged the plant, put in cloth dressing machinery and did a prosperous business for several years ; during that period the farmers raised their own wool and flax which after carding was woven into cloth on the hand looms, then dyed and finished off at the dressing mill.
A starch factory was operated by Morse and Ide for four years, near the tannery on the west bank of the river. John Bacon bought out this business and moved it into the village near
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the other mills. He paid from twelve to eighteen cents a bushel for potatoes ; the price kept rising two cents a year, as long as he continued starch making. After some years this mill was converted at considerable expense into a straw board factory, and it was here that the great fire originated that swept the village in 1876. The facts given in the foregoing section have been com- piled from the narrative of H. N. Roberts.
MILLS AT GOSS HOLLOW
In 1793 David Goss built a saw mill on the upper waters of Sleeper's River. This was the beginning of industries that made Goss Hollow famous in the early days. A year later there was a grist mill, then a blacksmith shop; after this a starch factory which belonged to the Hawkins family ; then saddlery and har- ness making was set up, and finally a wool carding and cloth dressing mill run by Capt. Harris Knapp. Such an industrial center had this place become that at one time there was talk of setting up a store and a church. Since then the water power has dwindled to an inconsiderable stream and little remains to dis- tinguish the once busy hamlet of Goss Hollow. Sleeper's River however was not destined to remain forever undistinguished in the manufacturing world, for by and by new industries were start- ed, lower down the stream at
THE FAIRBANKS MILLS
In 1815 Major Joseph Fairbanks who had recently come up from Brimfield, began improving the water privilege where the scale works now stand. This property he purchased of Presbury West; originally it was included in the town rights belonging to Jonathan Arnold. For five acres including rights in the Falls he paid $300.
The dam which Joseph Fairbanks put across the river that spring, except some slab work on the East bank, stood undisturb- ed thro the riot of floods and the wear of time nearly forty years, till in 1854 it was reinforced for the larger business that had grown up around it, with steam power then auxiliary. The first
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saw mill was running in the fall of 1815, and the grist mill in the spring of 1816 ; but the season that followed gave scant material for a grist mill to work on, it being the notable cold summer of 1816. Three pints of barley heads that Nathaniel Bishop had culled from his field and hulled with his hand constituted the first grist brought to the mill that season.
The upper floor of the grist mill was fitted with machinery for wagon making, and in the spring of 1817 several pleasure wagons, so called, were turned out, made by Thaddeus Fairbanks, then 21 years of age. These were the first wagons ever run on our roads, except the one made by him in Brimfield and brought here two years before, which wagon is now preserved in the Museum. The grist and carriage building was swept away by the great flood of 1828, and for a long time the grist mill screw stood up a conspicuous object stranded on the river bank below.
That old screw at one time ground a bushel of corn for As- quire Aldrich, a veteran of the army who knew the value of corn, having starved three days when captured by the British; in 1797 he came here, pitched in the neighboring wilderness, and as time went on added five wives and fifteen children to the family life of the town. One of the fifteen, after the lapse of eighty years told about that bushel of corn. "My father sent me with the corn to be ground at the mill. Greatly to my surprise I saw Mr. Fair- banks go to my bag and take out some corn before he began to grind it! My astonishment knew no bounds and I hurried home to tell my father what had happened. At which he began to laugh, and then he said 'Why, George, that was the toll!' Mr. Joseph Fairbanks laughed heartily over this, when I afterward told him, and for many years it was a standing joke with us."
The only smut machine for cleaning grain and the only buzz saw in this part of the world were installed in the Fairbanks Mills. In 1818 Huxham Paddock had a trip hammer and iron foundry in operation near by ; his contract called for water power enough to carry one trip hammer, one grindstone, two pair of bellows ; here somewhat later the Fairbanks Iron Works were established for the manufacture of stoves, plows, and whatever else anybody wanted. Here also Dyer Percival had his fulling mill and cloth
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dressing works, and William Hutchinson carried on a pottery for making domestic ware. Dense woods enclosed this busy com- munity and it was not difficult to make acquaintance with an oc- casional wolf or bear.
Lower down the Sleeper's River near the Passumpsic turn- pike was a clover mill which Abel Rice bought of the Fairbanks owners in 1828. Here afterward was the shop of the Belknaps, whose workmanship in iron, steel and brass was of very superior quality ; knife blades tempered and polished at this factory were in universal demand.
TO DEPART SAID TOWN
"It was customary ye newe people shd be worn'd out of ye towne."
S State of Vermont
County Caledonia
To Josiah Thurston, First Constable of the town of St. Johnsbury in said County : Greeting.
You are hereby requested to summon Joseph Fairbanks and Family, now residing in St. Johnsbury to depart said town.
Hereof fail not, but of this precept with your doings herein legal service and due return make according to law.
Given under our hands at St. Johnsbury, this 25th day of Nov. 1815.
ARIEL ALDRICH PHILO BRADLEY JOEL HASTINGS 1
‘Selectmen
Then served this precept by leaving a true and attested copy of the original precept at the last used place of abode of the within named Joseph Fairbanks in St. Johnsbury.
JOSIAH THURSTON, Constable.
Received for record, Dec. 18, 1815 and recorded.
LUTHER CLARK, Town Clerk.
Had Mr. Fairbanks decided to depart said town under this order, the woods of Walden might have had a scale factory, the brooks of Goshen Gore might have run the wheels of machine shops. He probably paid no attention whatever to the writ, but went on constructing his mill at Sleeper's River. It was one of the curious customs of that period in New England to warn out every new comer on the assumption that he might some time be- come a town charge. By serving this process upon him the town
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was releasing itself from any after obligation to support him. This old time usage was deemed of sufficient interest as a freak or curiosity to call for a book published in 1912, entitled "The Warning Out," "a volume of utmost interest to every de- scendant of the New England settlers."
One hundred and eighty-three persons were warned out of St. Johnsbury between Jan. 1, 1805 and Sept. 23, 1817. Among the number were many who became well known citizens and some who had a large share in the industrial development of the town. The list contains such familiar names as Major Abel Butler, 1811 ; Sargent Bagley, 1812 ; Huxham Paddock, 1813; John Armington and Joseph Fairbanks, 1815; Rev. Pearson Thurston first pastor of the old church, 1816; Leonard Harrington and Levi Fuller, 1816; Ezra Ide and Capt. James Ramsey, 1817.
FROM FIREPLACE TO COOK-STOVE
Cobble stone fire places kept the roaring fires and cooked the substantial victuals of early time. Potatoes got nicely roasted in the ashes, and a bear steak or a wild partridge would be done to a turn on the end of a rotating spit. A tin oven set front of the fire did the baking of bread and cakes ; on the swinging crane were suspended pots and kettles going to and fro. A mother who lived in one of the first log cabins said she used to bake her corn cakes on a board before the coals ; she had a way of suspending a goose by a strong cord some distance above the fire; the goose would accommodatingly turn itself this way and that on the cord so as to get an even cooking on all sides, and never was goose more neatly done for the table. Out of doors hung the big iron kettle between forked sticks over a rambling fire, ready for making soap or sugar or potash.
It was a good many years before stoves of any sort were had in the town. For generating warmth in the old first school house of the Middle District in 1806, a large flat rock was planted on the floor, upon which was set a potash kettle bottom side up and tilted a bit at one side. Under this kettle a fire was kindled; a hole drilled thro the bottom which was now the top of the inverted kettle received a small pipe that carried off the smoke. This was
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St. Johnsbury's first achievement in stove making. It does not appear that the inventor suffered persecution on account of it; tho thirteen years later at a Unitarian council in Boston, Rev. John Pierpont was charged with having invented a new style of stove. See page 113.
After Dr. Lord had built his new house at the south end of the Plain, he imported from Montreal a large metallic structure reported to have been cast in Scotland; this had the distinction of being the first real cook-stove in the town. It was so much of a curiosity that people used to visit the house for the purpose of seeing it, and it was the object of considerable comment ; one old codger after inspecting it said he would as lief try to warm him- self sitting beside a nigger as by that great black thing. Tradi- tion tells us "it was so monstrous that a kettle could be set inside the oven," but no indication is given as to the size of the kettle.
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