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 39
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The Ide Mills In 1879 St. Johnsbury became headquarters of the flour milling business established 1813 at Passumpsic Vil- lage by Timothy Ide, continued by his son Jacob and by his grandson Elmore T. Ide, who became manager in 1861. In 1866 the partnership of E. T. and H. K. Ide was formed with $50,000 capital, and this management continued till the death of the latter in 1897. The tract of about three acres, partly swamp land on the west bank of the mill pond, was acquired, reclaimed and connected by the new Bay street with Eastern avenue and Portland street; this provided ample ground for new buildings. The mill at Pas- sumpsic having burned a new one was purchased at Lyndon Falls. This presently met the same fate, after which those water priv- ileges were sold and a large new mill was built on Bay street in 1906, also a circular corn bin of 12,000 bushels capacity. The elevator building previously erected stands 50 feet high with four floors of 50 by 80 feet, adjoining it is a coal plant with pockets into which 1500 tons of coal may be dumped from the cars. The
old Passumpsic water privilege which cost $1200 in 1813 was sold to the Electric Company for $15,000, and from that place, three miles down the river, power is now delivered at the Ide mill on Bay Street thro seven electric motors 132 horse power. There are in the building three roller mills each three pair high, three attrition mills, eight grain elevators, automatic power shovel, automatic weighing machine and all modern equipments, making it possible to grind 3000 bushels of grain per day, and to store 30,000 bushels of bulk grain and 1000 tons of sacked flour and feed. This is the only business in the town which has been con-
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tinuously in one family for the period of a century, viz., 66 years in Passumpsic, 34 years in St. Johnsbury.
Griswold and Mackinnon The first wholesale establishment in the town was opened in 1850 by Ephraim Chamberlin in the building 50 by 100 feet on the site now occupied by the Swift Brothers just north of the passenger station. Grain, flour, hardware, oils and other commodities were dealt in and the busi- ness was a large and profitable one. From 1860 till 1878 it was owned and conducted by Joel Fletcher and his sons, then by Gris- wold and Mackinnon and Pearl; but meantime the hardware de- partment had been purchased by William Wilder. Fire destroyed the old building in 1892, and the new Griswold-Mackinnon ware- house for handling grain was erected on upper Railroad street. This is a building of four floors equipped with elevator and hop- per bins and with the annex has a mill capacity of 1500 tons of grain. The mixing plant handles two carloads of grain per day, and the annual business approximates a million dollars. Mr. Mackinnon's connection with the business covers 41 years.
That three large wholesale grain establishments planted within half a mile of each other should be carrying on for so many years a constantly growing and profitable business amounting collectively to as much as three million dollars, is an unusual circumstance ; it certifies to a high order of business management and makes St. Johnsbury the leading grain distribut- ing center in this part of the country.
IRON WORKS The blast furnace and iron works founded by Huxham Paddock in 1828 were continued by John C. and John H. Paddock for nearly a quarter century ; then successively by Alex- ander Thompson, Daniel Thompson, O. W. Orcutt, Luke Buzzell, Michael Hynes, O. V. Hooker and Frank B. Hooker as O. V. Hooker & Son. The old machine shop was bought by the Hookers in 1878. Starting in a small way with one lathe they have enlarged the business interests until today their patented saw sharpeners, saw mills, felt tighteners, and other products are shipped all over the world. Here were made the first Dupont Power Hammers and Howard Saw Tables, both St. Johnsbury
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inventions. The partnership of O. V. Hooker & Son was incor- porated in 1912 with $50,000 paid capital and since that time much new machinery has been added; electricity for power and light- ing is furnished from their own generators; in the new power house is installed the Sampson-Lefell water wheel of 112 horse- power and 15 tons weight, also an air-compressor which distrib- utes pneumatic power in the granite works.
BRICK AND STONE WORK Early brick making has been described on pages 141 and 194. The Bagley brick works were established in 1810 by Mr. Bagley, who came from Weare, N. H., his son, Ira Bagley, born here in 1813, continued the business thro his life time on the plain above Paddock Village. He made all the brick now in the Court House, the first Catholic church, the Union school house and the Athenaeum. The brick yards of Sandford and Lewis Thayer on the Danville road above the pres- ent dry-bridge did a brisk business during the thirties. In 1870 Major Bowman and his son Thomas bought twelve acres on the river bank above the village water works on which was laid out a floor for making ordinary and also hard-pressed brick of su- perior quality ; these were used in the construction of the Under- clyffe home and other buildings of that period. Millions of brick of high quality were made here, the expenditure for labor the first nine years was $25,000; from this kiln in October, 1882, there were turned out 400,000 brick, the largest single bunch ever produced in the town; a good proportion of them went in to the new school building on Summer street ; comparatively few brick are now made in the town.
Granite and Marble. All the early stone work of the town was in marble, which was made up into head stones ; there were sheds for this purpose at the Center Village and on the Plain. Ex- cellent and elaborate work in marble has been done for many years by the Bennetts and others, but since the opening of the quarries in Ryegate granite work has become much the more important. The St. Johnsbury Granite Company was founded in 1867 by Peter B. Laird, enlarged and reorganized in 1874, and the prod- ucts of Granite Square obtained high recognition. Statuary came to be an important feature. This was done at first by
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Italians. Some 25 statues a year were being made in the early eighties ; these were distributed in most of the Atlantic states as far down as South Carolina ; some are in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. The fireman's monument of Rochester, N. Y., was made at a cost of $7000, the granite figure of a fireman in full uniform was nine feet in height erected 48 feet above the ground.
After the Laird Brothers retired the Carrick Brothers con- tinued to operate on Granite Square and some important orders were executed by them. One was the Vermont Gettysburg monument, a Corinthian column of 35 tons weight modeled after the Lord Nelson shaft in Trafalgar Square, London ; surmounting this is the bronze statue heroic size of Major General Stannard rising to a height of 66 feet. The order received in 1886 from Camden, Arkansas, for a confederate monument to be made in the St. Johnsbury granite works is worthy of record. The weight of a granite sarcophagus made for Greenwood Cemetery was 120 tons; the receptacle was 16 by 18 feet with bronze doors and columns of polished granite. Monumental structures of large proportions have not been produced in recent years, but a brisk and profitable business of perhaps $100,000 in granite has been continuously carried on by various owners.
CARRIAGES The Miller Wagon business which originated in Lyndon during the forties was removed to St. Johnsbury in 1862 and for fifty years under management of Miller and Ryan was among the important industries of the town. Carriage making required the skilled hand of four different trades-wheelwright, blacksmith, painter and trimmer ; master workmen were employed and the Miller wagons came to high rank everywhere for their superiority ; "a well known Vermont institution, good for mill or for meeting, for pleasure and for service." All varieties were made and the yearly output would reach 200 wheeled vehicles and 50 sleighs, representing a $25,000 business. Following the death of both proprietors the business was discontinued and the large building, a notable landmark on Railroad Street, which had for half a century been sending out its contribution to the running activities of the road, was transformed into a garage for vehicles of a quite different type.
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FILE WORKS James and Charles Nutt of England set up works near the old steam mill in 1860 for re-cutting files. This was a peculiar process requiring expert training and skill. The files were subjected to a ten-hour bath in furnaces to draw the temper, then ground to a level surface, in doing which a two-ton grindstone would be used up in a few months; cutting the teeth was a work of extreme nicity and precision, followed by final hardening in crucibles of melted lead and chemical cooling solu- tions. These files were of all shapes and sizes-flat, round, three-cornered, long, short, thick, thin, of weight from one ounce to five pounds. For more than 23 years the Nutts of three gen- erations cut files for the Fairbanks scale works-36,520 files in the year 1880; they also cut files for the Howe Scale Works ; for the pistol works in Worcester and for other factories in New England and Canada.
BELKNAP WORKS Amos K. Belknap, after seven years as apprentice under Samuel Crossman, surpassed his master, became the most expert blacksmith in this part of the world and stood vigorously at his anvil when nearly eighty years of age. He was famous for edge-tools, would make as many as 300 axes a year, produced the first cast steel welding done in the town. Belknap- ville at the little water power on Sleeper's river south of the Plain acquired distinction for nice work in iron, steel or brass. John Belknap, son of Amos, keen and skilful, bred to the trade, surpassed the father in ingenuity. He was capable of readily producing any desired article, from a plain edged tool to a well bored and mounted rifle, a nice machine or powerful water wheel. Something like 100,000 Belknap knife blades were in use in most of the northern and western states ; an average of 100 blades a week were made and sold at a quarter of a dollar each ; $25 worth of steel would yield $1400 of knife blades. The John Belknap water-wheel much in demand, was the ultimate product of 41 different models which he constructed. He built the dam on Passumpsic river south of the Fair Grounds over which he was swept by the current of high water and drowned.
OTHER NOVELTIES Aeolicons. These were manufactured by Gilbert and Spencer during the fifties in considerable quantities ;
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they were then a popular musical instrument; now and then a lonely survivor may be seen at the present day. Shoe Pegs. In 1864 Napoleon Flint and Israel P. Magoon were manufacturing shoe pegs in Summerville at the rate of sixty bushels of pegs a day. Hoop Skirts. A factory for making hoop-skirts was in operation on Railroad street above the old Passumpsic House as late as
1868. Archæologists of future generations desiring to know just what the products of that establishment were, can excavate the mounds of rubbish now buried in various parts of the village. Saw Horses. Colby and Gay manufactured saw-horses that folded up like a jack knife ; they worked up two million feet of lumber into these convenient horses in 1867, the merits of which were appreciated by one firm in Boston to whom 6000 of them were sent. Threshing Machines. B. F. Rollins began with making half a dozen of these machines a year in the early sixties; to meet the demand he soon had to build five times that number.
Tobacco. Roederer was turning out 30,000 cigars a month in 1880. Bed Frames. Out of four million feet of lumber Jovite Pinard in 1887 got 10,000 bedsteads and 500 chamber sets, not to mention other products. Mineral Spring. The sulphur water of Asisqua Spring, pumped up, charged, bottled and distributed by Capt. E. L. Hovey in 1895, brought in $1400 that year from people of this and other towns who did not go to Saratoga or Brunswick Springs.
MILK, MEAT AND MEDICINE In the good old times when pasturage was abundant on or near the Plain almost anybody could have a cow and the land flowed with milk if not with honey. After the opening of the railroad, William Green, who had the care of J. P. Fairbanks' herd of cows, began delivering a few cans of milk from the farm wagon which was driven around the village by John Green, in later years a victim of Andersonville prison pen. This was the first regular distribution of milk in the town other than the neighborhood supplies carried by hand in pails or cans. It was some years before a real milk wagon made its appearance ; since then the number has multiplied with the de- creasing pasturage and increasing population, till at the present time there are ten or more daily traversing their routes. The Pen-
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nimans for more than 30 years, and A. F. Lawrence for many years, have been large dealers, delivering from one to two hun- dred quarts a day each; also Higgins, Grady, Ladd and others ; the total daily delivery is estimated at about 2800 quarts.
Meat was formerly bought of the farmer and a family supply for the winter was put down in nature's cold storage. The meat cart and pedler's cart were contemporaneous, the latter distribut- ing tin ware, brooms, goose wings and sundry notions in exchange for rags ; (a man universally respected for his character and commiserated for his obstinate stutter was James Wheaton of the Center Village ; his brawny figure perched on the high cart fringed with brooms was a familiar feature of the road over which he jogged for so many years.) The first meat market was open- ed in 1850 by Augustus Sanborn in the basement of the Brown block on the Plain; at that time there was not another one nearer than Montpelier or Lancaster. Harvey Gilman took it next, then Lambert Hastings, H. S. Wright, Leonard Penniman, and others in the same place down to the present time. In 1858, R. B. Flint and A. M. Daniels opened a market on Railroad street ; among others of later date in the same business were A. M. Cook, Jarvis Bartlett, William Daniels, Sylvester and Gray. The local branch of Swift Brothers was established here in 1893, with a refrigerator capacity of two car loads of dressed beef, cooled by a semi-annual deposit of 180 tons of ice. Refrigeration is now secured without ice by the ammonia process ; there is an annual business of about $400,000, C. W. Steele, manager.
Live stock operations by Lambert Hastings had acquired proportions even before railroad transportation began, see page 226; Bela B. Hastings carried on the business with increasing volume. Current transactions in live stock of W. A. Ricker in- cluded last year 12,223 cattle, 30,542 calves, 11,602 sheep, 14,581 swine, together with 50,000 pounds of wool, a total valuation of $1,140,607.60.
Bakery. As the so-called staff of life, bread was entirely a kitchen product and crackers a Boston importation till the sum- mer of 1851 when John S. Carr began bakery operations on a small scale in the old Major Peck building of 1799. The business
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was carried on by different parties for fifteen years, then pur- chased by George H. Cross who continued it forty-five years, during which time it expanded from the making up of three barrels of flour a day, to a daily manufacture of seven times that amount of flour, plus a ton of confectionery. The new establishment on Railroad street is considered one among the best in New England. St. Johnsbury bakery products from these ovens and others are distributed in nearly every town within a radius of sixty miles or more.
Medicine. The little apothecary or medicine shop of Dr. Luther Jewett near where the Academy now is, had a tolerably ample assortment of drugs, as shown on page 229; the establish- ment was moved after some years into the building more recently known as the Cross bakery ; while there it was purchased by J. C. Bingham and continued to be for thirty years the only drug store in the town. The remembrance of this druggist as he stood among the rows of jars carefully pouring paregoric or whatever else into a phial, is interesting-his gaunt figure and peculiar physiognomy made attractive by high worth of character and gentle courtesy. The business descended to his son Charles ; this store ranks all others of the town in point of age and has been continuously in the same family.
Physicians. Following Dr. Jewett came Dr. J. P. Bancroft in 1847 ; ten years later he was called to take the superintendency of the New Hampshire asylum for the insane at Concord, in which position he was succeeded by his son Charles, a native of this town. He built the house at the east end of Prospect street, now the Notre Dame rectory, owned afterward by Dr. Selim Newell who was for many years one of the most eminent physicians in this region. Other doctors well known or long resident were H. S. Browne, S. T. Brooks, Gates B. Bullard, J. D. Folsom, H. C. Newell, J. R. Nelson, T. R. Stiles, J. E. Hartshorn-Sanborn, Houghton, Cushing and Sparhawk were homeopathists. Of seven- teen physicians now in active practice, two are women, Alice E. Wakefield, Charlotte Fairbanks ; four have a professional record in medicine and surgery of twenty years or more in the town, W. J. Aldrich, J. M. Allen, C. A. Cramton, E. H. Ross.
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Few towns the size of St. Johnsbury are favored with so many specialists and surgeons of superior skill and hospital facilities so finely equipped.
Dentists. The first dentists were the Kilbourne Brothers, who in 1850 began operations in a small room over Frank Brown's store ; H. H. Newton was next in the line. J. L. Perkins' dental rooms in the south corner of the brick block were a familiar fea- ture of the place for forty years ; G. F. Cheney has been nearly the same length of time in practice; also R. W. Warner, and the profession is well represented by more recent comers.
Lawyers. It was reported that St. Johnsbury in 1849 had the services of only one lawyer, Judge Paddock. Whether this indi- cated a non-litigatious condition just then prevailing does not appear, it may have simply happened to be so. The growing town however required more legal talent and the demand has always been abundantly and ably supplied. Among its citizens the town has had lawyers of high character and distinction, not- ably the two chief justices, Poland and Ross. Of the seventeen lawyers now in residence, Elisha May and Marshall Montgomery, both army veterans, are also the veterans of the legal fraternity- old war-horses of the bar who have survived forty-eight years of law-battles or peaceful adjustments. The town has sound and able lawyers and the fraternal spirit alluded to at the banquet in the St. Johnsbury House, 1856, as noted on page 268, still prevails.
MERCANTILE Dry Goods. The designation of some goods as dry apparently originated in the days when textile fabrics were carried by merchants in the same store with fluids like molasses, rum and vinegar-the sign over the door indicated the two main departments of dry goods and groceries. Among the first strictly dry goods dealers were Samuel Jewett and Samuel Higgins, later N. M. Johnson, whose successors were H. H. Carr and L. P. Leach ; but for a good many years the combination of dry goods and groceries continued. `The largest stock was in the old Fair- banks store near the scale works, founded in the early forties and burned in 1889. Three years later the dry goods department was installed in the new brick block adjoining the St. Johnsbury
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House, which gave 25,000 square feet floor space. James Ritchie was manager ; later this became the Brooks-Tyler, and now is the Berry-Ball dry goods store. That store when first opened in 1892, together with the finely appointed establishment of Lougee and Smythe on Railroad street already two years in high repute, gave the town a sort of metropolitan rank in the quality, bulk and variety of dry goods transactions. In 1850, Wm. H. Horton re- cently from England, established the first tailoring house in the town, in a small white building where the Merchants Bank now is ; he continued in the business about forty years ; in that store was a glass show-case, a novelty at that time which attracted at- tention. Not long after, Joseph Boles opened a similar store in Union Block on the Plain. This was before the era of men's fur- nishing establishments like those of Steele-Taplin, Moore, and others that are adding much to the business importance of the town today.
There are some business houses of long standing. The vet- eran among merchants is T. M. Howard who opened a bookstore in 1852 ; prior to that time George and Plummer Downing were repairing watches and dealing in small jewelry near the St. Johns- bury House. Mr. Howard in 1856 purchased their business which he combined with books, continued it first in the Gilson building, then after 1870 in the new brick block on the same site, where it is now known as the Randall and Whitcomb store. The large and choice assortments of jewelry and other wares in Thad- deus C. Spencer's store were hastily rescued from the flames that swept Railroad Street in 1892; four years after he lost his life in the Avenue House fire; his successors today are Lurchin & Lurchin, the business dating back somewhat more than forty years. Geo. P. Moore is the merchant of longest record in that part of the village, now nearing the half century mark. The Edson Randall store, now in its thirty-sixth year, is in the block built by his father, Sias Randall, sixty years ago when the lot was purchased for $200 and the first drug store on that street was opened. C. A. Calderwood bought the furniture house founded by Justus Burnham in 1851 and has continued it nearly forty years ; for about the same period A. L. Bailey has been supply-
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ing musical instruments and the Estabrooks store distributing dry goods and groceries. C. A. Stanley inherits the furniture business of Thomas L. and S. W. Hall which began in 1850 in the basement of the old Ephraim Jewett store now standing in the rear of the Berry-Ball block. On the east side of Main Street four men in four stores in a row are in the second quarter-century of their business, Bundy, Goodrich, Brown and Flint. When the Union Block was built in 1854, David Boynton set up there the first hardware store in the town ; later hardware men were Capt. C. F. Spaulding, Fayette Fletcher, C. P. Carpenter in the Gil- son building, then standing on the Pythian Hall corner, also H. J. Goodrich, whose iron ware, heating and plumbing business is now in its thirty-seventh year. The C. H. Goss Company with specialties in steam fitting, has had rapid expansion, doing an an- nual business of about $300,000, retail and wholesale. This house is one of the most extensive in the state ; its heating plants are installed in many public buildings here and elsewhere. The Goss garage and warehouse, a modern structure of concrete and iron, has fifteen plate glass windows, some measuring nearly ten by ten feet and containing 10,000 pounds of glass. This building dignifies a corner formerly distinguished for unsightliness, and is hardly surpassed for its purposes in New England. Another spa- cious, finely equipped establishment is the new Wright garage on Railroad street.
Of fifty business offices in the town, nearly all have high standing in the community, many have a most creditable past record, some have large out-of-town patronage, few only can be included in this brief sketch.
LUMBER AND CONSTRUCTION The most extensive lumber dressing plant was that established in 1881 by the Northern Lum- ber Company with mills in Granby and St. Johnsbury wherein ten million feet of logs were manufactured yearly ; C. H. Stevens president since 1890. The Paddock Village mills were dressing a good deal of lumber from an early period, also the Moose River mill in Summerville built by Jonathan Lawrence in 1854, the business of which has been profitably continued by Moses Barrett, J. S. Parker, E. L. Hovey, W. L. Russell, C. C. Follensby. As many as thirty or forty teams used to be seen at
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a time on a winter day around the yard; in 1904 a million and a half feet of lumber were sawed and sold here.
The town has had capable contractors and builders. Horace Carpenter built the Pinehurst residence and the South Church in 1851-52. Lambert Packard was for 24 years architect and builder for the Fairbanks Company. He constructed the brick buildings of the Academy, the Athenaeum, the Y. M. C. A., the residences of Underclyffe and Brantview; he was the designer and builder of the North Church and the Museum. W. J. Bray, Horace Ran- dall, A. L. Bragg, Matthew Caldbeck built many of the substantial business blocks and private residences; Wm McFarlin, Joseph Brunelle, James Foye are well-known contractors. With the ex- ception of the Notre Dame Church, Brightlook and the Masonic Temple most of the important buildings of the town represent the designs and construction work of our own citizens.
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