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 13
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The time presently came when it was no longer necessary to send off to foreign parts for such conveniences. In the Fairbanks foundries stoves of various sorts began to be cast, and finally in 1827 there was brought out and patented the famous Diving Flue Cook-Stove, which was in almost universal use throughout this region till well into the fifties. This was a large deep bellied box stove, the most effective cooking apparatus then obtainable. By means of a rising and diving flue and rolling damper the draft was brought under complete control and the oven readily tempered to any desired use. The sunken projecting hearth provided for broiling on coals, also for quick heating of the tea kettle over. a handful of chips. This type of cook-stove was considered a valu- able invention and a prime necessity in every well-appointed kitchen ; it brought large increase of business to the St. Johnsbury Iron Works. Thaddeus Fairbanks was the inventor.
ST. JOHNSBURY HEMP WORKS
In 1829, when hemp culture was flourishing among farmers of this and other towns an establishment for dressing hemp for the market was erected on Sleeper's River where the scale pack- ing shop now is. Here were installed three machines for dressing hemp. Each machine was thirty-two feet long by four broad, had
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65 fluted rollers geared together so as to break the hemp straw properly when drawn through them. The gear wheels and other particular parts, also a machine invented for fluting the rollers, were made by Thaddeus Fairbanks, his hand work. He was ap- pointed manager of the St. Johnsbury Hemp Company, and he patented an improved hemp dresser.
As a business venture the hemp enterprise proved unprofit- able; but out of it came an unexpected asset that ultimately shaped the destiny of this town. Fifteen dollars a ton was paid for undressed hemp straw. The only way of getting at the weight was by hooking chains around the cart axle and lifting the load at the short arm of a huge wooden steelyard. Mr. Fairbanks contrived a platform with levers under it on to which the load could be drawn, and thus came in to being the invention of the Platform Scale, which in coming years was to make St. Johns- bury famous throughout the business world.
THE OLD COUNTING ROOM OF 1832
The fire that destroyed the store in Fairbanks Village in Nov. 1889, also swept away the "Counting Room" in the small building adjoining, which had been for more than fifty years the executive seat of the industries there carried on. Someone whose memory went back far enough recalled the scenes of earlier time in that room, with pleasant reference to the first clerk employed there :-
"Hiram Knapp was book-keeper, mail carrier, store keeper, chore man, the ever faithful and trusty Knapp. On a shelf at one end of the Counting Room he kept his store, stocked with blue drilling for men's aprons, buttons, soap, etc. When not busy with keeping books, tending store or carrying the mail, H. K. hauled castings from the Paddock Foundry with Old Sorrell, which horse besides doing all the trucking of the Scale Works, did duty also as a family horse, taking children to ride, or going over to the Bank in Dan- ville, where all banking business was done. What a tale of deep sagacity, earnest purpose, indomitable perseverance, rigid economy and high resolve the walls of that old Counting Room could tell of the three Brothers at the one desk where they worked, and builded better than they knew."
It seems however there was a yet older Counting Room, which this same Hiram Knapp told about in some reminiscences given to his children long afterwards, as follows :-
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"It was on the 22nd of May, 1832, that I came down on the stage from Lyndon, snow falling quite fast, to begin with the Fairbanks Company. The Counting Room, known for so many years since as the headquarters of the business, was then in the end of the plough shop : where also some goods for the workmen and their families, such as tea, sugar, molasses, woolen and cotton cloth, were kept for sale. I boarded six weeks with Dea. Erastus Fairbanks, who lived in the little house at the corner of the Dan- ville road, (site of the Office Building of today) ; from the first I was treated as one of the family, and a pleasanter home could not be found. This house was successively occupied by Huxham Paddock, Erastus Fairbanks, J. P. Fairbanks, Hiram Knapp, John H. Paddock. (It now stands first on the right, going to the Danville bridge.) The other houses in the Village were 'The Homestead' on the other side of the road, a two story house recently built by Joseph Fairbanks, father of Erastus, in the east end of which also his son Thaddeus lived. Near the bridge were three houses, oc- cupied by John Rowland, Austin Hubbard and Levi Fuller.
"The business part of the Village consisted of a saw mill, in charge of Mark C. Webster, a grist mill with a pair of new burr mill stones, a blacksmith shop, with a dozen men, Elisha Peck, Loammi Flint and others ; also the dry house of the old hemp mill which was used for the plough shop, store, counting room and lodging place of the clerk. At this date the cast iron ploughs newly invented, and considered very serviceable, especially the sidehill ploughs, made the principal business. Hoes, forks, culti- vators and other agricultural implements were being manufactured, all of the finest quality in the market ; also heavy screws for the use of factories, powder mills, clothiers and presses, weighing up to 1500 1bs. ; the cutting and finishing of these screws was a nice piece of workmanship.
"After a time the demand for scales obliged the proprietors to gradually discontinue the manufacture of other articles and devote themselves to scales of various descriptions. The agents for dis- tributing these were selected with the greatest care; they were furnished with carefully written instructions, with drawings in water colors and plan and model of each scale, the importance of
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which I had to know, as I drew them myself. Care, system and constant watchfulness were insisted on, the agents were invari- ably men of energy, reliability and industry ; they made full re- ports of their explorations, labors and trials, and uniformly they secured the confidence of individuals and the public. Among these men who were pioneers of this business in different parts of the country were Houghton, Evans, May, West, Thrasher, Norris, Sherman, Sanborn, Eastman, Oakes, Alden Young and others.
"Young was sent to the Southern States in 1832. In one of his letters he gave a vivid account of the trial and whipping of a man named Dresser for having in his trunk papers from the North containing references to slavery. I made some extracts from Young's letter, omitting parts that might be thought offen- sive and they were published in the Vermont Chronicle. Mr. Young afterward wrote me that happening to look over the file of newspapers in the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans, his eye fell on these extracts which had been copied and found their way down there ; he said if it were known that he was their author it might have cost him his life. Soon afterward he perished, with 100 others in the explosion of the boiler of the Ben Sherwood which was racing up the Mississippi River. Hon. Charles Durkee, Governor of Wisconsin and Senator in Congress, was one of our traveling agents.
"I used to go out on trips for collections, driving Old Sorrell ; by starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, I could make fifty miles a day for a week at a time; these trips were thro towns in Ver- mont and New Hampshire. A plough agency and manufactory was established in Waterville, Maine, under management of J. P. Fairbanks. Driving up one time from Waterville, I found myself overtaken by darkness ten miles below the old Crawford place which I wanted to reach that night. I urged the tired horse to put his best foot forward ; he seemed to understand, and over that ten miles up the Saco, with only one or two houses on the way and so dark that I could not see the horse, we made our way thro the forest with perfect safety, tho it was the season for bears and other wild animals.
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"One Monday in February, Horace Fairbanks started out on a trip which took us away ten days, with the mercury below zero every day, one day 34 degrees below. Near Haverhill, in the in- tense cold, a Northwester struck thro our buffalo coats as if they were only thinnest clothing. Meantime a letter from Charles Fairbanks informed us that however cold it might appear to us, it was not so cold but that molasses would run in St. Johnsbury ; for he had tried it by setting a measure under the faucet, and while he sat snugly by the side of the stove, the molasses not only flowed the quantity wanted but went on flooding the floor in addition." This was in the Old Counting Room.
XII
DIVERSIONS AND DOINGS
STREET SPORTS-LONG BALL-MERRYMAKINGS-SAPLING AND MUSKET-URSA STUMPIENSIS-BEAR HUNT-PATRIOTIC RALLY -JUNE TRAINING-THE 56-FOURTH OF JULY.
SPORTS ON THE GREEN
The strenuous demands of pioneer life allowed little oppor- tunity for the diversions of later years. Whatever recreations there were usually fell on a Sunday. Until about 1810 this day was very largely given over to social pleasures, hunting and fish- ing, wrestling matches, street sports ; the restraining influence of religious leadership was lacking, there was no regular public wor- ship ; young and old amused themselves as they had a mind to. After the formation of the church in 1809, a change in public sen- timent began to be effected and the old-time Sunday sports were brought forward into Saturday afternoon. This was the period of horseback matches on the Plain; the head of the street was the rendezvous and the galloping steeds swept the whole distance down to Dr. Lord's at the South end. There were then fifteen houses on the street and no general congestion of traffic. A notable feature, as reported by old inhabitants, was the superior equestrienneship of Sally Tute, sister of Zibe Tute, who leaping on a barebacked horse called for a glass of stimulant and challenged any man of the crowd to overtake her.
BALL CLUBS. + After a time that particular sport was discon- tinued and skilled ball playing became very popular. Ball Clubs
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were organized and contesting games were played on the Green at the head of the Plain.
"There all the village train from labor free, Led up their sport beneath the spreading tree."
On assembling, the roll of the Clubs would be called, and as part of the necessary discipline, an absentee would have to pay four-pence ha' penny fine, or a glass of something stronger than water for a drink. Ephraim Paddock, the tall young lawyer re- cently settled in the town, was Captain of one of the Clubs and tradition says that "Squire Paddock was a great hand at long ball."
Long-ball and round-ball, before the advent of the present day base-ball were the games for men. Three-year-old-cat and four- year-old-cat were in vogue for boys as late as 1850, and there are probably quite a few veterans of four-year-old-cat who can still repeat the magic formula used in choosing sides :-
"On-e-ry U-ge-ry Ick-er-y Ann, Phil-i-sy Phol-i-sy Nich-o-las John, Quee-vy Quaw-vy Irish Mary Stick-i-lum Stalk-i-lum By-low Buck-Out"
No one dreamed that some day Arnold Bennett would be saying : "How mighty nevertheless is American base ball; its fame floats thro Europe as something prodigious, incomprehen- sible, romantic and terrible."
QUOITS. Somewhere near the tavern or store were seen the pegs at the shallow spots worn by the pitching of quoits. Skill in these contests was as real as in the times of Homer, when "some whirled the discus and some the javelin dart." Flat stones an- swered fairly well for a while, but this was an importantgame insomuch that after a time the Paddock foundry began turning out a reproduction, in small size, of the ancient discus of Ulysses. Quoits of an entirely modern type came in to common use when the flat iron weights of the new scale industry were taken up for play-things at the pegs; then some whirled the discus and some the platform scale weights.
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THE WRESTLING MATCH. We find that "wrastling" was for more than fifty years an indispensable feature of out-door town life. Belonging as it did to the acrobatic rather than the pugilis- tic department of physical accomplishments it had good standing for holiday entertainment and furthermore created a demand for popular meets and competitive tests in the art. Certain sections of the town had their local matches and expert wrestlers ; then after the championship for the different villages had been deter- mined on their own streets, the final one for the town was wrestled for. A memorable one was that between Henry Jenkins for the Plain and Ira Bagley for Paddock Village, held by lantern light on Saturday night front of the tavern, at which the Plain won the honors. Tradition allows that the watch of the referee was set back suitably as the midnight hour approached.
ALL TOGETHER FOR A HOIST. Raisings were hilarious oc- casions of town-wide importance. Lifting the heavy hewn timbers then in use called for the united muscular force of all the able bodied men. The entire framework of each side of a build- ing was jointed together lying on the ground; this broadside was called a bent ; it had to be hoisted and swung into position by a posse of men with pike poles who guided each tenon to its cor- responding mortise in the sill. Until about 1830 it was not con- sidered possible that a raising could be properly carried thro with- out the reinforcing beverages that flowed freely at such times, under stimulus of which some crowning acrobatic feat would be executed on the ridge pole-the outstanding event of this kind in the history of the town was the raising of the Meeting House on the Hill, in 1804, narrated on page 124.
THE HUSKING BEE. "Come, Molly, my dear, spur up; get ready something good and cheering, and we'll have a Husking tonight." The place will be on the barn floor of the Gardner Wheeler farm up at the Four Corners. Corn shocks are packed solidly along the upper end of the floor; the cattle in their stanchions are having a comfortable evening chew on their cuds ; tallow candle lanterns of punched tin are hanging from pitchforks stuck into the hay mows. Squatting on boxes, milking-stools or
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flat pumpkins is a merry group of young folks stripping out the corn, with now and then a test of marksmanship to see how near to somebody's ear an ear can be shied without hitting; also a keen and eager scrutiny for the upturning of a red ear which en- titles the lucky holder thereof to the privilege of a kiss. Two hours of such close attention to business leads up to the next act which is in front of the blazing fire logs in the kitchen, where work is concentrated on pumpkin pie and cheese, doughnuts and cider, after which the sprighty hop. Formerly some variation in beverage was found conducive : "they could not handle the corn till the Rhum bottle had enlivened them, then they gave three cheers, the work was done in a trice, and they went to their pastimes at ten o'clock."
To the English, maize was an unknown product and the Husking was a novel entertainment. In 1791, Rear-Admiral Bartholemew Jones saw "the Ceremony of Husking, a kind of Harvest Home with the additional amusement of kissing the girls whenever one met with a Red corn cob-also there was dancing, singing and moderate drinking." During his captivity among the Indians, Capt. John Smith was told that one of the ceremonies at a marriage was the presentation of a red ear of corn by the squaw to her man ; out of which custom may have been evolved among the white settlers the genial kissing privilege per- taining to the red ear. The old time Husking has not yet lost its good standing either in up-country barns or city ones. In 1909, the Vermont Association of Boston entertained a thousand people on the floor of Mechanics Hall, transformed into a barn floor of corn stalks and pumpkins where the standard stunts of the Husk- ing Bee were properly executed, with the proper cheer thereafter of pumpkin pie, doughnuts and drafts from the cider barrels.
DIVERS SORTS OF BEES. Bees in earlier times were far more plentiful than now, adapted to all sorts and conditions of work and play-Husking Bees for everybody ; Chopping or Log-rolling Bees for men ; Quilting Bees for matrons ; Apple-paring Bees for young folks ; Spinning Bees for Priscillas ; Goose-plucking Bees for girls and boys, wherein the boys had to catch the geese and hold them properly while the girls adjusted stockings over their
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heads and leisurely plucked the feathers, reserving the quills for the school marm to make up into quill pens, the only ones in use.
Bees of whatever sort called for victuals to match the large expenditures of vitality. It is not supposed however that every Bee made way with all the varieties of nutriment that rounded up Mrs. Stockwell's Apple Paring Bee; which included "chicken pie, fresh baked beans, pork and pickles, corn bread or johnny- cake, hot biscuit, doughnuts and cheese, indian pudding, pumpkin pie, cranberry pie, pound cake, sponge cake, fruit cake, fried apple turnovers, currant jelly tarts, peach preserves, ginger cookies, seed cakes and coffee."
A SAPLING AND A MUSKET
Early in the century Simeon Cobb, coming up on horseback from a trip down below, caught up an elm sapling for a switch to encourage his horse withal. The root being on it, he set it in the ground near his house. To his surprise it not only survived the day's operations but took kindly to the Cobb soil, rooted itself to stay, and still throws its shadow over the old County road a mile or so this side the Lyndon line.
Three generations of Cobbs-Simeon, Elkanah, Charles-lived and died there while it was coming to full growth, near where the old well sweep used to be, and where the little trout brook runs merrily along. The great clock that meanwhile ticked off the hours for nearly a century under the family roof, came by bequest to the Museum where it has the prospect of being carefully cher- . ished for more centuries to come.
Simeon Cobb handled other timber than young elm sticks. At the age of seventeen he joined the Lexington minute men. In the revolutionary war he enlisted under Stark and at the battle of Bennington he wrested a musket from the hands of a British red- coat which he retained as a trophy of that victorious day until his death. It went back again to the old battle field 100 years after in the hands of Charles Cobb who carried it at the Bennington Centennial of 1877. This musket is now in the Museum where it stands in honorable distinction, decorated with the name and the date that the old soldier cut deeply in to its stock with his pocket
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knife. He was expert with tools; in the same building may be seen silver shoe buckles, polished steel tongs for Sunday use, and other articles the work of his hand.
After the Bennington battle Cobb enlisted on a privateer, was captured with sixty others and put to hard labor for two years on the British fleet in the West Indies. Only seven of these sixty survived the severities of their captivity, one of whom was Cobb, who after Cornwallis' surrender returned to America and in 1798 came to St. Johnsbury, cleared the Cobb farm where he lived re- spected by all as a good citizen, till his death in 1843. His experiences while a prisoner and his escape from the British frigate are narrated under some out-of-town events farther on.
HE SMOTE THE BEAR
"I've had queer dreams an' seen queer things an' allus tried to do The thing that luck apparently intended f'r me to do." Eugene Field.
Returning from the Plain to his home up in the Four Corners one November night, George Aldrich came upon a bear sitting in the middle of the road. Being young and muscular and having a heavy staff in his hand, he determined to test that quadruped's right in the highway. Advancing boldly he smote the bear a tre- mendous blow across the nose. It was well aimed and sufficiently forceful to instantly accomplish its purpose. The bear was so startled and stunned by the unexpected stroke as to be rendered incapable of reply. Aldrich was elated at having so speedily and easily vanquished a bear. On closer inspection he discovered that his bear was a quite unique specimen. It belonged to the species known as Ursa Stumpiensis : a rotten stump that had rolled down into the road. This valorous performance of Aldrich gained him distinction at the Four Corners, as the great bear man of , that part of the town.
NINE BEAR PELTS
Too many bears were disporting themselves amongst the farm crops in 1812. It was thought best to reduce the number.
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Dr. Calvin Jewett took the field as Captain and with him one or two hundred men on the war path for bears. During the early morning they encompassed a wide range of forest, having as the point of convergence the deep gully that opens on the east side of Passumpsic River half way between the Plain and Center Village. In to this gulch ten bears were gotten during the day. One somehow broke out and escaped. But before sundown, as the narrator remarked in 1860 with a twinkle in his eye, "there were nine bear pelts spread out on the Green front of the old Edson tavern, all of which were sold for the necessaries of life-rum, bread and butter." Of the junketing on bear steak, rum and rye and indian, the particulars have not survived.
It was during the despatching of the bears that Elhanan McMenus imagined himself to have been shot, and set up a howl- ing that came down thro all traditions of the day in after years. When remonstrated with he said he "wouldn't have hollered so loud if the ball hadn't struck so near his vitals." He was ob- sessed with the idea that what was intended for a bear had found its way in to him. For forty years after Elhanan was a sort of curiosity in the town; always on the fringe of bear hunts, wrest- ling matches, town trainings ; now and then a church visitor stalking up the whole length of the aisle while the minister was in the midst of his sermon.
WAR OF 1812 PATRIOTIC RALLY
The declaration of war against Great Britain was made June 18, 1812. On Monday of the 6th of July following, pursuant to public call, a large assembly of citizens of St. Johnsbury and ad- jacent towns met on the Green front of Major Abel Butler's, the old Edson Tavern, a mile south of the Center Village, for the purpose of commemorating the 36th anniversary of the Declara- tion of Independence. Gen. William Cahoon was president of the day, Major R. W. Fenton was chief marshal. The procession formed and marched up to the Meeting House on the Hill,
"escorted by Capt. Samuel Wheeler's well disciplined company of Light In- fantry ; here they were met by a Band of Instrumental Music and a company of about a hundred Ladies, elegantly dressed in robes of white and wreaths
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of evergreen. Thus escorted the procession entered the Meeting House, where after being seated, the services of the sanctuary were performed in a solemn and impressive manner by Elders Palmer, Page and Peck. The Dec- laration of Independence, the Declaration of War and President Madison's Proclamation were then read by Major Wm. A. Griswold, after which an elegant, candid and patriotic Oration was delivered by Isaac Fletcher Esq. 'These exercises being closed the procession returned under escort and ac- companied by the Ladies, whose presence added great brilliancy to the occasion, to a bower erected on the Green, where about a hundred freemen partook of an excellent cold collation prepared by Major and Mrs. Butler."
The exercises rounded up with a string of toasts, eighteen in number which were drunk under the discharge of musketry. Among the eighteen toasts were
No. 4, The United States of America : the only REPUBLIC on earth ; George and Napoleon with all their efforts and leagued with all the despots on the globe were unable to destroy it. No. 6, The Tree of Liberty : its roots are moistened with the richest blood of heroes; may its luxuriant branches spread till all nations shall regale themselves beneath them. No. 7, The American Navy : small in number, but great in valor and patriotism; may it ere long set bounds to the present tyrant of the sea, the enemy of the rights of man. No. 9, The Declaration of Independence, 1776, The Declara- tion of War, 1812 : the same spirit which originated the one, dictated the other, and will again be supported by the blood and treasure of America."
These sentiments so confidently uttered were amply realized in the events of the war; No. 7, as we now read it was strikingly prophetic of the brilliant achievements of the little Navy that set bounds in the midst of the seas, and made illustrious the names of Decatur, Perry, Bainbridge, Lawrence, Hull, McDonough. Major Butler who entertained the assembly on his Green, enlisted with a Company recruited in this vicinity; he just missed the Battle of Plattsburg, for when he arrived on the scene the British were precipitately retreating toward Canada. That day, Sept. 11, 1814, was thick and cloudy, the wind in the west; and Henry Little on a hill two miles or more west of the Plain relates that he distinctly heard the boom, boom, of the cannon from the field of Plattsburg, the wind blowing strong from the west.
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