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 32
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tals returned to the station for the night train to Boston, where the next day they were tendered a banquet by the city govern- ment at the Revere House.
SCALES IN JAPAN
An interesting coincidence with the Japanese visit to this town was the arrival here later in the same month of a chest of tea from Yokohama. That chest contained a sheet on which was the following printed statement : "This chest contains forty- eight pounds of tea as weighed on the Fairbanks Scales; we warrant this tea free from artificial colorings." Signed in Japa- nese by the Yokohama tea dealer.
Four years later the following letter was received from Japan. "General Post Office, Tokio, Japan, March 20, 1876.
Messrs. Fairbanks and Co. On the first day of January, 1875, your scales were introduced into the Postal Service of this coun- try, and since that time the number in use has been constantly increasing, it being found that they are, what is claimed for them, a standard scale.
"It is therefore a source of great satisfaction to this Depart- ment to be able to add its testimony to the volumes already writ- ten in praise of the Fairbanks Standard Scales. I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your very obedient servant
H. MAYESIMA, Post-Master General.
YA-SHEIKH EL-ARAB
A notable band of orientals paid us a visit April 14, 1881. They were here by invitation of the writer who some years before had tented for a month among the Tawara Bedouin in the Midian desert. There were in the party Abou-Daiyeh, a Sheikh of Moab, Selim Hashmi, one of Stanley's Arab guides ; Yakoob Bazoosie, Syrian Swordsman; Sheikh Mohammed Sulieman, a whirling Der- vish, and others. Their picturesque figures on the streets at- tracted a large assembly in the Town Hall that evening where various scenes and usages of oriental life were depicted. None
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who witnessed it will ever forget the thrilling passage at arms of the Syrian Sword Dance-the swift lightning-like parry and thrust of the flashing swords clashing around the ears of the antago- nists ; nor the whirring whirl of the whirling Dervish howling ya-lell-lee! yo-yell-loo! performances unlike anything ever before known in our town.
Sheikh Abou-Daiyeh was a dignified representative of his high-spirited Bedouin race ; with characteristic generosity he left as a friendly memento a coffee roaster which he said had roasted coffee for Sheikh Falleh of the Beni-Adwan Arabs hundreds of years ago. Its appearance does not dispute the claim to vener- able age and service.
NISHAN EL IFTIKAR DECORATING A PLAIN MAN
At the Vienna International Exposition of 1874, the platform scales manufactured in St. Johnsbury were awarded the highest premiums. In addition to this Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks, the in- ventor, was knighted by the Emperor. There was a touch of unintended humor in the circumstance that a plain man, extremely averse to notoriety, should have been saluted with the pompous announcement from Chancellor the Baron von Lichtenfels, that, by command of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty-he, the scale-maker, had been decorated a Knight of the Imperial Order of Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria !
This however was but the beginning of sonorous announce- ments to the man of shrinking mood. The next year, in recogni- tion of his merit as inventor of Standard Scales, came the Decoration of Puspamala or Golden Medal of the Kingdom of Siam. That the Power which is mighty in the Universe may keep him and guard him and grant him all happiness and pros- perity, was the prayer accompanying the Document of Investiture, conferred by His Royal Majesty the Potentate Somditch Phra Paramindr Maha Chululoukom, Phra Chulu Chom Keas, Fifth Sovereign of the present Dynasty of the Kings of Siam.
In 1877 additional embellishment arrived-a Saracenic dec- oration conferred by His Highness the Bey of Tunis, consigned
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to the care of a relative for presentation. Thereupon a company of citizens invited themselves to the home at Elmwoode and sum- moned the many-titled man to come out from his library and stand in the midst. After some exchange of ordinary greetings, one spoke and said :-
"History repeats itself with some variations. It is well known to readers of oriental story that the fifth Caliph of the line of the Abbassides, the world-renowned Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, upon whom be peace and the joys of paradise, was a potentate not less eminent for the magnificence of his court than for his generous patronage of the liberal arts. It was a cus- tom of this monarch to invite to the hospitality of the Saracenic court, or otherwise to dignify at their own homes, men of foreign and far distant na- tions who had distinguished themselves by services to mankind in the way of useful arts and inventions. Thus he not only advanced the intelligence of the world but crowned his own reign with superior lustre.
Now in view of the decadence of enterprise and art and invention among the Arabic-speaking races of modern times, it is gratifying to find that in our own generation the disposition of the great Haroun-al-Raschid, upon whom be peace and joys, is re-appearing in one at least of the Islamic Sove- reigns-viz : our eminent contemporary, His Highness Mohammed es Sadok Pasha Bey, Ruler of the Kingdom of Tunis. This prince has become so assured of the excellence of weighing machines constructed in our neighborhood and introduced into his Kingdom from the Centennial Expo- sition-also so impressed with a sense of their value to the commerce of the world, that he would in some way manifest his admiration of the invention thereof. Had circumstances favored he might have invited the inventor per- sonally to the hospitalities of the Tunisian court, after the fashion of the re- nowned Caliph of Bagdad Haroun-al-Raschid, upon whom be peace and the joys of paradise. Had the course of events permitted the consummation of this hypothesis we can see that our distinguished host instead of unexpected- ly receiving us under his own roof this evening, might be sitting, feet up, on the divan of the oriental magnate, sipping black coffee from the gilded zarf and fingan of the Bey of Tunis, regaling himself perchance with the fragrant fumes of his exquisite nargeleh !
This, it must be confessed, is merely suppositional ; we will pay attention therefore, not to what might have been, but to what has been done. His Highness the Bey of Tunis has been pleased to confer on the inventor of the platform scale the Knightly Decoration of NISHAN EL IFTAKAR, grade of Commander, an Arabic order of high distinction among the natives of that realm.
The recent arrival of this insignia is both a token of international good will and an event of considerable interest in our little community. We have
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therefore taken the liberty of inviting ourselves to the home of the recipient, that we might in his presence recite the formula thereof, which is as follows:
"Praise to God alone! From the servant of God May his Name be glorified Who relies on Him And leaves to Him All his earthly affairs. Mohammed es Sadok Pasha Bey Possessor of the Kingdom of Tunis To the Honorable and Honored
Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks Inventor and Maker Of the Fairbanks Scale
In compliance with the request Of our Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
And on account of the Merits Which distinguish you We send you this Decoration
Ornamented with our Name And which is of the second Class
COMMANDER OF OUR ORDER IFTAKAR May you wear it in peace and prosperity!"
Written the 7th Babia Elawel 1294 Kheradine, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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MISCELLANEOUS
WAGON - LOOM - OIL LAMPS - SEEING THE ELEPHANT - THE SKOOTER-SKATING PARK-TOBOGGANING-FIELD SPORTS-A CHIMNEY-COIN-RHYMES.
THE STORY OF A WAGON
CHAPTER I-IT ARRIVES ON THE SCENE 1815
"In the month of May, 1815, Joseph and Phebe Fairbanks came to this town in a dark green colored one-horse wagon made by their son, Thaddeus Fairbanks, in Brimfield, Mass. This wagon had one broad seat attached to wooden springs running the whole length of the wagon box, 672 feet long. It had no iron springs. This was the first pleasure wagon owned in our town."
CHAPTER II-IT GOES FROM ONE TO ANOTHER
"Thaddeus Fairbanks sold that wagon to Ephraim Paddock ; Paddock sold it to Marshall Jones whose farm was two miles west of the Plain; Jones sold it to Chauncey Spaulding." It was not sold again, but continued in service or in storage, in the Spaulding Neighborhood till into the twentieth century.
CHAPTER III-IT BECOMES ANTIQUATED 1876
"In the burlesque procession of the Fourth of July, this Cen- tennial year, was an antiquated wagon made by Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks before his invention of the platform scales. It is now
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owned by Chauncey Spaulding. That it has been in constant use so many years is good evidence that it was well made."
CHAPTER IV-IT BEGINS TO LOOK YELLOW 1833
"A rival to Oliver Wendell Holmes' One Horse Shay turned up at the Caledonia County Fair last week. It was built 69 years ago by Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks. It is a four wheeled vehicle, springless, and shaped something like a flat boat. Its single seat is about double the height of those in modern wagons, and the affair is painted yellow. This wagon is almost as good as new, save that the forward axle is some worn and one or two spokes are broken. It shows few signs of the many years' service it has done."
CHAPTER V-IT WAKES MEMORIES FAR AWAY 1889
"There is a missionary in India, who was Lois Lee, and who with her friend, Ellen Bugbee, attended the St. Johnsbury Acad- emy under Prof. Colby of honored memory ; and those two girls, who then lived in the Spaulding Neighborhood, were driven to school and back daily in that old Fairbanks buggy. It was not, even in those days, noted for its beauty or its ease of motion, but it did its part well in training a missionary for India-whose privilege it was to found a Girls' Academy where hundreds of women who could not read or write have had a christian educa- tion, in which work that famous old buggy may be said to have had a part."
L. L. P.
CHAPTER VI-IT GETS A GOOD BERTH 1909
The old wagon, having outlived the period of its active use- fulness, was invited to a berth in the Fairbanks Museum; and, having been presented by its owner, was transported from the Spaulding stable to that institution in 1909. After being properly groomed and adjusted it was installed in the Colonial room as a cherished relic of the early history of the town.
CHAPTER VII-IT TAKES A PLEASURE RIDE 1911
On the Fourth of July, 1911, ninety-six years after its first trip across St. Johnsbury Plain, the old green "pleasure wagon," now
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rather more yellow than green, was entrusted for a day to the hands of the Daughters of the American Revolution. By them it was carefully mounted on a hay rack and given a pleasure ride over its original course on Main street, admired by all spectators as a quaint feature in the Colonial parade that day.
CHAPTER VIII-IT REPOSES AMONG CONTEMPORARIES
The old wagon rests from its runnings in company with the old two-wheeled chaise, the old wooden plough, the old house loom, the old reels and hatchels and spinning wheels of the good old days of its prime.
Salutations to these ancient and honorable for good service done in their day.
A ST. JOHNSBURY LOOM
Alpheus Goss built his log house in 1793, on a pent road run- ning from what is now the Center Village; the road which today runs on to Paddock Village. In 1800, he replaced this with the frame house which descended to his son, Nathaniel Goss, and is now the home of his granddaughter, Mrs. Angelina Goss Fuller. Here he made and set up the hand loom which has recently come into possession of the Museum, the gift of Mrs. Fuller. This loom is of birch wood, five feet square and six and a half feet high, with its accessories-harness, skarne and warping bars, loom spools, swifts and quill-wheel-and tho it has been in active service thro three generations is still in excellent preservation. Looms of this description, tho not always of this superior quality, were in nearly all the well to do homes of the earlier settlers of the town. This Goss loom undoubtedly did its share in making up the 27,733 yards of cloth turned out from St. Johnsbury looms in the year 1810. The thumping of looms was as familiar a household sound in that day as the ring of the telephone is to- day.
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle refers to the loom of our ancestors as being "a historic machine of great antiquity and dignity ; per- haps the most absolute bequest of past centuries which has re-
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mained unchanged for domestic use. You may see a loom of this same sort in Giotto's famous fresco in the Campanile at Florence, painted in 1355. During the seven centuries since Giotto's day, women have continued weaving on just such looms, the same as our grandparents had in their homes."
Note. The Indians who captured Hannah Dustin in 1697, tore off a strip of linen from the loom she was running; after she had tomahawked them she wrapped their ten scalps in this same linen, a portion of which, belonging to Mrs. Lydia Jones Varnum, a descendant, was displayed in floral hall at the Caledonia Fair of 1863.
ELECTRIC LIGHTS AND THE OLD-OIL LAMP
The South Church was adorned in 1852 with whale oil lamps and reflectors mounted on the walls, which did their best to illu- mine the large expanse. On Thanksgiving eve, 1900, at a union service in this house, the pastor, Edward T. Fairbanks, al- luded to the new century electric illumination as contrasted with the dim old smoky oil lamps. Almost immediately, as if in- spired with a spirit of mischief, the lights began to decline and fixed themselves just above the vanishing point. The janitor was obliged to go out in the neighborhood and beg the loan of an oil lamp. This, which he bore up the aisle and set as a trophy on the pulpit, furnished light for the rest of the service. It was, as it were, the call of the electrics to their discarded and antiquated predecessors-"give us of your oil for our lamps are gone out." Rev. Edward M. Chapman, in his work on English Literature, page 240, cites this as an illustration of true humor, which to be genuine must be casual, an inconguity that is unpremeditated, an accidental coincidence that occasions quiet mirth.
On a summer evening in 1903, a stroke of lightning whirled the eagle at the mast head of the Athenaeum to the ground and extinguished all the lights. It happened just then that the at- tendant was alone in the building and she had to move around in semi-darkness setting things in order before closing for the night, till Wm. C. Tyler came in from the neighboring store bringing an oil lamp by the light of which a suitable exit was effected.
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1
If the above events had been recorded among the Fables of Æsop, he would have appended this observation : it is foolish to throw away our old things, they will come in handy some day.
GOING TO SEE THE ELEPHANT
On a day in July, 1821, Royal Ross of Waterford asked Eliza Mason to go with him to St. Johnsbury to see the elephant. She was the minister's daughter; the family lived on a salary of $100, plus provisions that might amount to any reasonable sum ; for example, the table furnishment one winter was rye bread and milk and half a pig. On the trip to see the St. Johnsbury elephant something more than elephant was arrived at, and the next trip that Eliza took was a bridal one over to the Ross farm house, where she promptly spun and wove thirty yards of sheeting ; and from that time on continued spinning, weaving, knitting, stitch- ing, till near the turn of the century in her ninety-sixth year. During these later years she was coming to St. Johnsbury not es- pecially to see the elephant but to visit her son Chief Justice Jonathan Ross.
As time went on other people came here to see the elephant. Which one it was in 1821, is not reported; it may have been Ahasuerus ; but 1834 it was Columbus, in 1849 it was Hannibal, in 1864 it was Tippoo Sahib, in 1882 it was Jumbo. The elephant Columbus belonged to the New York menagerie which exhibited near Josiah Gage's Hotel above the East Village, Sept. 11, 1834, from nine o'clock in the morning till after dinner. A reminiscence of the event has been preserved by one who at the time was a lass of ten years :
"We were asleep in the trundle bed in the hotel. In the middle of the night there was a loud pounding on the door. My father got up and went to the door, then came back and said 'the elephant has come.' My mother asked how large the elephant was? 'Oh, it is a monstrous big creature as high as the door.' We children wanted to get up and go at once to see the elephant, but we had to wait till morning. Besides the elephant there was a camel and some ponies. In the morning Mr. Aaron took us out to the barn where they had been put up, and there we were allowed to sit on the camel's back between the humps, and then to feed the elephant. The show
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was on Saturday ; while the tent was being set up in the yard beside our house, a crowd collected and it was an exciting time. The admission was a ninepence, and it was worth that to see the animals, especially the elephant, said to be the first ever in Vermont. (The writer seems not to have known that Ahasuerus was here in 1821?) There were a good many monkeys, and Alonzo, three years old, caught hold of a monkey and got bitten; the monkeys had been taken into our house and allowed to run thro the hall. The caravan staid with us over Sunday, and in the next night went over to the Plain to exhibit there ; we had free tickets given us and went, con- sidering ourselves highly favored."
It was on the twelfth day of August, 1882, that Jumbo arriv- ed in this town having only recently landed in America. Here he took his third American bath in the waters of the Passumpsic. There was some apple of discord between Juno and Fritz, the other two elephants, while in the river, causing the deep to boil like a pot ; Jumbo serenely looking on, maintaining the dignity of Olympian Jove.
People to the number of 15,000 came to pay their respects to. Jumbo, and gave him the satisfaction of surveying an orderly and admiring American crowd. No one had ever before seen a creature of 13,000 lbs. weight, and questions were asked as to his daily rations. These were stated in general to be 200 1bs. hay, 2 bushels oats, 12 loaves bread, a bushel of biscuit, 3 quarts onions, 12 buckets water, with indeterminate amounts of oranges, apples, figs, bananas, candy and other nutritive miscellany. Three years later, after the wreck that ended his career in On- tario, the taxidermist found in his stomach a collection of coins of nearly all nations besides a quantity of car-seals that he had ac- quired as souvenirs of his railroad trips. While in this town Jumbo indicated an inordinate appetite for whiskey, a bottle of which he would empty into his throat at a gulp, and promptly hold out his trunk for more. He had no suspicion that this was. a dry town. None of the 400 men who had the circus in charge were allowed any of the bottle refreshment that Jumbo was treated to ; this was one of the strict rules of P. T. Barnum ; but they drank 75 gallons of milk fresh from the cattle on a thousand hills of Caledonia.
Note-Thomas Jefferson also went to see the elephant. This event took place in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and later in the same year he was elec-
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ted Vice-President of the United States. Posterity would have welcomed from his philosophic pen some observations about the elephant, but we find nothing more than certain entries in his account book, viz :-
1797, March 10 Paid for seeing elephant 25
1797, March 13 Pd for seeing elk 75
1791, Dec. 20 Pd seeing a lion 21 months old 11}d
The Barnum and Bailey Caravan at a later date paraded the streets with 24 elephants; 37 lions, tigers and other beasts in open cage wagons; 16 crowned heads, reigning sovereigns of the world, in chariots and royal robes, escorts accompanying-pretty nearly a mile of moving miscellany. The entertainment enter- tained 13,000 spectators and carried away $8000 as a pleasant reminder of St. Johnsbury, Vt.
WINTER SPORTS
"THE ST. JOHNSBURY SKOOTER"
"There are many things that impress and some that surprise the stranger who visits St. Johnsbury for the first time. If it is in summer he is impressed with the beauties of the place ; if in winter he is surprised to see the skill with which boys ride down hill on a contrivance called THE SKOOTER. Instead of a sled with its two runners, the St. Johnsbury boy takes a barrel stave for the base of operations, builds a seat two feet above it, sits astride the contrivance, and with marvelous skill and speed skoots down those steep hillsides. Sometimes he will go a long distance bal- anced without touching a foot to the ground ; sometimes a touch with either toe keeps the thing upright and going ; sometimes he lands in a heap at the foot of the hill."
This contrivance, such a curiosity to the stranger in 1871, was no wise remarkable to the native born citizen who had been brought up on it, or rather carried down on it, from boyhood. The skooter was popularly reputed to be a distinctly St. Johns- bury article. Tradition has ascribed the invention of it to the author of this book; quite likely as with many other inven- tions it may have originated simultaneously in more than one adventurous mind. It is true however that more skooters were put together in a woodshed at the south end of the Plain about
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1846, than elsewhere in all the town of St. Johnsbury. Here the boys of the period congregated and a choice line of barrel staves was always in readiness for the manufacturing industry in which all hands took a part. More than forty years after, a New York paper announced that up in the Mohawk valley a new device for coasting had made its appearance ; it being a barrel stave fitted with a post and a seat, and called "a jumper ;" possibly derived from the Indians? This showed no advance on the primitive type ; meanwhile the evolution of the St. Johnsbury skooter had resulted in a steel runner with iron-rod uprights and a shapely seat painted red; but no generation of St. Johnsbury lads ever generated more fun on their steel shod skooters than the boys of forty-six got out of the old barrel stave equipments, the work of their own hands.
The period of the fifties witnessed the advent of the TRAVERSE-SLED. This not only multiplied the proportions but also the possibilities of the single ordinary sled. Being any- where from six to ten feet in length its smooth or cushioned seat was capable of carrying a very considerable number of snugly packed riders with tremendous momentum either to a gentle pause at the terminal, or to a triumphant catastrophe somewhere on the way. In those days one could mount a sled or skooter at the top of Warner Hill on Summer street and directly after find himself amongst the forges of the blacksmith shop in the scale works. Under present day conditions that kind of entrance into the factory is barred, and coasting on the village streets is not considered advantageous to the public welfare or convenience.
THE BUTLER SKATING PARK
In 1860, Beauman Butler graded and flooded eight acres of the meadows lying east of the old road to the Center Village. This tract was enclosed with a high tight fence, between which and the inner railing was a driveway and a small building provided with stove and lunch counter. It was arranged to have the ice flowed every night giving a fresh skating surface each day. Tickets were issued at ten cents for each admittance, and season
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tickets at one dollar, for either skating or driving round. This Park was opened November 30, 1860, on which day about seventy- five skaters were on the ice, and a large number of spectators within the gates. On pleasant evenings there would be as many as two hundred skaters. For a time the novelty, safety and at- tractiveness of this Skating Park brought in considerable patron- age, but it proved to be too far away from the main villages, and after one season's trial it became evident that the enterprise must prove a failure. It was financially disastrous to the projector and ultimately cost him the beautiful farm which had been in the Butler family since Nathaniel Edson left it about 1809.
A favorite skating spot was the artificial pond in the hollow west of Gov. Erastus Fairbanks' house, where the lumber yard now is ; this pond was after a while drained away for sanitary reasons. In later years the ice on Passumpsic River near Rail- road street has been successfully flowed and a very accessible skating surface provided. Viewed from the Summerville bridge it is a merry scene one looks upon of an afternoon or evening when the ice is alive with circling skaters. In 1856, a quartet, of which the writer was one, found a ten-mile skating park down which they sped to the mouth of the Passumpsic, and up which they toiled in a driving snow storm.
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