Concord, Vermont 05824

NEWSLETTER

Volume 30 Number 4                                                                                             Fall 2009

Veterans Recommend Old West Concord House Site for Monument

            Members of the Concord Veterans Monument Committee and Advisory Group voted unanimously on August 24, 2009, to recommend the area between the Post Office and the Municipal Offices building as the most appropriate location in Concord for the proposed Veterans Monument. Also, they  proposed that the area be named Veterans Memorial Park.

            The West Concord House, Concord’s hotel for most of the 19^th century, was the original building on the recommended monument site.  Levi Howe built the West Concord House in 1844 just six years after John D. Chase built the first house in “West Concord.”  The West Concord House served travelers from far and wide for nearly eight decades.  This historic structure, along with the house built next door in 1852, which became the Cutting Drug Store, and the Union Block, built in 1871, characterized the vitality of Concord in the latter half of the 1800’s.  A huge gap was left at the center of Concord village when the old hotel was destroyed by fire on April 22, 1912. 

In later years, Clyde Rivers ran a garage and filling station in the same place, which is also remembered fondly today as Edith Easter’s front lawn.  After the 2009 Memorial Day parade, the community gathered on that lawn to enjoy the traditional hot dog barbeque.  The former Cutting Drug Store (now Concord Municipal Offices building) looks much like it did in the early 1900’s when it sat beside the West Concord House as seen in the picture above.

Sun Shines on Community Potluck Picnic

            Right on cue, the sun burst forth as families gathered for Concord’s Community Potluck Picnic at the Miles Pond Pavilion on Sunday, July 26, 2009.  Participants pitched horseshoes, played volleyball and competed in water balloon contests to earn hand-made gold and silver medals.

Everett McCarty, Betty Mitchell, Mike Smith and Lena McCarty pitch horseshoes while Brody Young, Don Nuzzolo, Lauren Young, Sally Drown, Tyler Hill, Nicole Young (hidden), Kaitlyn Girouard, and Josh Goulding toss water balloons.

            Picnickers became “Friends of the Monument” by purchasing yellow ribbons, the symbol of support for the Concord Veterans Monument project.  Raffle winners: Jason Ball, Lainie Allen and Lincoln Paquette carried away fancy baskets crafted and stuffed full of “goodies” by Bernice Pierce.

            The informal picnic set a comfortable tone for talking about monument designs.  Designs by more than three dozen “artists” were displayed, explained and discussed.  The monument designs varied from pencil sketches to professional drawings.  Most designers depicted large, patriotic monuments on spacious sites landscaped with flags, trees, shrubs, flowers, walking paths and benches.  Many included pools, fountains, inscribed paving bricks, special lighting and even digital capability.  All monument design ideas will be maintained in a 3-ring binder at the Municipal Offices building for public review.

            Before any monument design can be determined, a monument site needs to be selected.  A suggestion box was in place to collect ideas about appropriate monument site locations.  Town-owned and privately-owned locations that have been mentioned for consideration as possible sites for Concord’s veterans monument include: Syri Park, the old town garage, the area beside the fire station, lawns on either side of the Municipal Offices building, Folsom Common, the area between the Town Clerk’s Office and the Town Hall, the old creamery site, the land between the dump and Route 2, the park at North Concord and a location in East Concord.  At its August 17, 2009, meeting, the Veterans Monument Committee listed pros and cons for each of these locations.

Original Costumes Recall First Normal School Celebrations

            The granite monument in the picture below marks the spot on Long Hill Road where, on March 11, 1823, Rev. Samuel Read Hall began teaching teachers at the private Columbian School (soon to be Concord Academy and, then, Essex County Grammar School).  Mr. Hall’s “Lectures on School Keeping” constituted the first formal education on the subject and when printed in 1829 provided the first textbook in the country on teacher education. (1973 newspaper clipping)  The first public normal school opened in Massachusetts in 1839.

            In 1923, three hundred participants staged a spectacular 5-day Pageant in Concord to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the first normal school in America.  The Pageant was a magnificent outdoor presentation of the evolution of education from earliest times down to the present, which stressed Vermont’s contribution to the educational system of the United States, and ended with a vision of the future of education.  It involved orchestral and choral music, stately dances, imposing processions, attractive stage properties, and historical drama in costumes of the period.

            Mrs. Edith Lee, a long time Concord teacher, was an active participant in the 100^th anniversary celebration - and, she saved the costumes!  Last fall, her son, Bob Lee, donated several of the costumes to the Historical Society.  These costumes will be displayed during the annual Open House.

7th & 8th grade First Normal School Play, June 5th, 1953.  Bill McCrae (left) represented Mr. Darling. l. to r., Lorraine (Cuttie) Moyse, Bill McCrae, Judy Morehouse, Richard Morehouse, Jean Fournier, Merrill (Buddy) Bean, Vera Young, ______, Ken Copp, Virginia Gullen, Glen Piper, George Morehouse, Agnes Cote, Janet Swett, Steve Austin, Elmer Santaw, Ilene Davis, _________, Betty Labounty, Betty Lynaugh, ___________, and Doris Stuart.

            On June 5, 1953, several 7^th and 8^th graders from Concord School (pictured above), dressed to represent specific “important” early Concord citizens, presented scripted readings in a production of The First Normal School Play.   Possibly some of these costumes are still stored in attics around town.  Wouldn’t it be great if they could also become part of the Open House costume display?

Logging in Concord: A Culture and a Living

            In the 1780’s, young adventurers, mostly Revolutionary War “veterans,” chopped their way through unbroken wilderness after crossing the Connecticut River, braving horrendous conditions to settle their land in the “meadows” along the river. They cleared acres of woodlands and turned the forest into homesteads, farmland, roads and, later, a thriving community up the hill that would become Concord, now Concord Corner.  There were plenty of trees to build their crude structures and to make tools and furnishings, and plenty more to be burned to ashes for potash - their first cash crop – to sell in St. Johnsbury and down river.

            The sawmill was among the first buildings constructed in the new settlement.  “At a meeting of the proprietors, held in 1786, it had been voted to give two lots of land to any one who would build a saw and grist-mill in town and keep the same in repair for 15 years.  At a subsequent meeting it had been voted to give an additional hundred acres to the builder of the mills.  The first mills were built by Joseph Ball, sometime prior to 1795, upon “Hall’s Brook,” in the S. E. part of the town.” (Vermont Historical Magazine. Hemenway’s Gazetteer. 1867).  As a point of reference, this happened in the area at or below the current waterline formed by the backwater of the Moore Dam at the end of the Old Grist Mill Pit Road where Concord’s first settlers lived.  Evidence indicates that Concord’s formal logging industry began about 1820 when James Darling built a sawmill on Miles Brook.  That mill was still cutting 200,000 feet of lumber and 100,000 shingles per year in 1887 as the Whipple & Parker’s Shingle and Lumbermill.

            In West Concord, now Concord, John D. Chase built the first house in 1838, as well as the first dam and sawmill on the Moose River that formed the mill pond by the upper bridge.  By the 1860’s, Asa Hibbard owned the sawmill on that same site pictured below.   The Then & Now pamphlet provides a layout (inside back cover) of West Concord homes and businesses in the 1860’s.  In the 1900’s, Ernest Lee ran the sawmill and, later, George Quimby operated it before it closed in 1952.

Ice piled up around the sawmill above the upper bridge during the March 1913 “freshet” (spring flooding).  The Methodist Church steeple is visible upper right.

            Lumbermills sprang up in North Concord on the Moose River below the Victory town line in the area known until 1856 as Bradleysvale.  Log drives became a common sight. The coming of the railroad gave the greatest boost yet to the logging and lumber industries.  It allowed loggers to push further into the mountains of Victory, Granby and East Haven.  With completion of the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad (later the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Railroad) in 1875, North Concord became the center of the growing lumber interests in Essex County.  In February 1878, fifteen mills in Victory and Granby shipped seventy-eight cars of lumber by rail out of North Concord.  This tremendous volume prompted construction of the 11-mile Victory Branch Railroad, which began at North Concord in 1882 and reached Stevens Mills in January 1885.  By the early 1900’s, the large new steam-powered mill at Damon’s Crossing produced fifty thousand board feet a day.  In addition to the lumber produced by the mill at Damon’s, the Victory Lumber Company shipped as many as fifty carloads of long logs daily over the Victory Branch to a mill located at Miles Pond.

            Phelps’ Mill manufactured croquet sets at North Concord until April 9, 1879, when a “freshet” washed it away.  William L. Russell managed Hastings & Follensby’s lumber mills in 1887.  And, the A. and D. Lumber Company still operated a sawmill there in the 1970’s.

            At Miles Pond , C. H. Dudley’s steam sawmill, built at the base of Miles Mountain in 1870, turned out 1,500,000 feet of lumber per year and employed thirty-five men by 1887. In 1954, C. H. Davis operated one of the largest and most modern sawmills in the northeast.  George Quimby sold this mill in June 1963 to Miles Pond Wood Products Company, which made chair parts there for a while.  The mill buildings were torn down in 1968.  (Note: Many readers remember logs floating at the end of Miles Pond and most will agree that the modern spillway, beach and picnic area are a significant visual improvement. (See Community Potluck Picnic article on page 2).

            At East Concord, in 1871, the large Russell Brothers sawmill employed thirteen men, turned out 20,000 feet of lumber daily, milled clapboards and lath boards, and looked forward to operating a chair factory on completion of the P & O Railroad.  About this same time, Samuel Kellogg (Dorothy Baker’s grandfather) operated a steam sawmill on the east branch of Carr Brook.

            Lumber authorities consider the large-sawmill era in the Concord area to be 1882-1911.  With useable timber in the area largely depleted, the big mill at Damon’s shut down in August 1911.  In 1916, the Victory Lumber Company removed the rails from the woods and, once again, this always-remote area returned to the solitude that had been temporarily lost.

            Logging is still Concord’s largest industry, even though the railroads and big sawmills are gone, now.  Currently, the Larry Brown family of Granby owns and manages most of Concord’s timberland and operates its largest logging company.  The high-tech equipment requirements of such a large commercial endeavor are extensive - skidders, loaders, grapples, chippers, delimbers, slashers, slicers, dump trucks, many trailers and, in Brown’s case, five tractor trailer trucks. This six-person, family business, incorporated as Larry M. Brown Logging and Chipping, ships up to 50 truckloads of logs, pulp and chips each week to mills in New Hampshire, Maine, New York and Canada.

            More typical, in modern day Concord, however, are seasoned loggers, such as Ceylon Morehouse, who own chainsaws and a skidder and, maybe, a loader.  These loggers contract with landowners, for example Ed Lee in Ceylon’s current operation, to cut the timber and they contract with truckers to haul the logs.  Normally in such cases, a forester, like Jim Wood, North Country Environmental and Forestry, develops a timber management plan with the landowner and oversees the logging of his land.  Ceylon is pictured below sorting, piling and sawing up logs and pulpwood

on the landing at his current logging site in Concord.

            In is interesting to think that present day Concord loggers work some of the same unbroken wilderness that those young adventurers faced more than 200 years ago.

Mattie Petrie’s Diary - “Concord, Vermont.  February 24, 1927.  Bear Day – by old calendar makers theory and I’ll say, It’s Great!  If the old Bear comes out today, he will want to stay out surely, until the “predicted” return of winter does come.  If old predictions fail, our winter is surely gone for its one of the most beautiful days the sun ever shone upon.

            This is my first entry in new book.  Am not going to say much about my sickness which returned over a week ago.  Am out on the couch today where I can enjoy the beautiful sunshine and get a glimpse of frequent passersby.

            This is the night of our (the P.T.A.) annual supper and sale.  I am one on committee.  If they were all like me, ernest supper seekers would go hungry. Zyp made a cake but had bad luck in placing so guess our donation will have to be money.  After all, Z is very busy these days with Mr. Chapman’s critical illness, and the chief operator’s absence from the Office, she is obliged to work extra time at Office and with her school work she is kept over worked.  She worked two Friday afternoons, Feb. 11 and 18, and all day out of school today with afternoon in Office from 12 p.m. till 9 p.m.  She goes in every afternoon at 3-30 and worked till 9 this week.  Have managed to pay a little on Z’s sick account this week.  She and I together have paid 8.00 and I’ve paid Dr. D. 5, so you see we manage pretty well.”

            Mattie Petrie’s diary, found by Jak Katuzny among items at Cola Hudson’s auction, reveals the gentle soul of a hard working, single mother as she faces the challenges of earning a living and raising teenagers, Zylpha and Robert, in 1927. The reader meets a middle-aged widow still grieving the death of her husband ten years earlier.  One soon senses her worries about her ability to manage alone; her meticulous attention to house-cleaning; her ideas about children, their school and work habits; her ailments; and her social life with family, neighbors and customers in Concord - and the weather in 1927!  Mattie speaks of the nearby Moose River like a “friend” with constant mood changes.  In November, she talks about the heavy rains that first threatened, then, took out culverts and bridges – an event that would become known throughout Vermont as The Flood of ’27.

            Mattie’s name never appears in her diary, but the names of family members, neighbors, employers and customers for her cloth, are sprinkled throughout – Zylpha, Robert, Edna, Harry Wilson, Mrs. Burtt, Edith Lee, Mrs. Miltimore, Mrs. Lillicrap.  Mattie was involved in church activities, the PTA and school board, and the Woodbury Woman’s Relief Corps.  Dr. Johnson was ailing at the time.  Dr. French and newly arrived Dr. Dickson attended to her medical needs.  Zylpha spent long hours at the telephone office substituting for Louise Chapman who had a medical situation and whose husband died that year.  Mattie often walked to the railroad station to meet folks or to make her frequent trips on the train to St. Johnsbury to shop and visit family.

            Like most diaries, Mattie’s reveals few specifics about herself.  But, also like most family diaries, it provides clues for a vital records search.  A quick search of Census data found that Mattie was born in May 1879 to John and Lydia (Gray) Blake and grew up in Sheffield.  Her husband, Don Petrie, was born in Newark in 1875.  After his death in May 1917, Mattie worked as a live-in housekeeper.  In 1927, she was working in Concord for Harry Wilson, the widowed father of two.

New Discovery in Old Cemetery

            In July 2009, Barry Normandeau’s crew uncovered a very long granite obelisk while cleaning and restoring gravestones in Concord’s old Pike Cemetery.  When unearthed, the stone appeared to be a spire that matched the granite base of the marble monument, pictured below, which marks John Morse’s grave today.  The spire may have been laid horizontally to form a family lot boundary, which later became grassed over.  Possibly, the spired granite monument had been erected when Susan, John Morse’s first wife, died in 1831 at the age of 27, and was replaced later by the marble monument which sits on the granite base of the original marker.

Concord Historical Society

PO Box 195

Concord , VT 05824

President Kathleen Fisher                   695-3330

Vice President Nancy Rivers              695-1104

Secretary/ Treasurer Joy Wood          695-8818

 
 Town Hall and Museum