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| Curran store and gas pumps at rear; house at front. |
Fall foliage has settled onto the ground, and in Waterford, Vermont, snow is expected next weekend. Maybe it won't stay around long, but the ground is getting colder, and winter's around the corner.
Among the many discoveries and events this autumn was a well-attended and appreciated history walk around the White Village -- "Lower Waterford, Then and Now" -- led by Dave Morrison. He kindly agreed to sit down on another occasion to explain the Curran store and gas pumps that once stood on Route 18. Here is his explanation.
Waterford History, 20th Century: Mitchell and
Gertrude Curran and Their Gas Pumps and Store; Other Gas Pumps; and the Rabbit
Hill Inn
Information from Dave Morrison, in-person interview,
Sept. 30, 2015
Mitchell Curran [1883-1954] and Gertrude Mabel
(Baker) Curran [1881-1957] lived in the house that is labeled G. (George)
Morrison on the 1875 Beers Map of Waterford. (George [1838-1906] and
Kate/Katherine [1847-1928] Morrison were great-great-aunt and great-great-uncle
to David Morrison.) The house stood on the west side of what was then the main
road from Waterford to St. Johnsbury. Around 1930, the state of Vermont relocated
Route 18 and negotiated for land from the Currans. Their land probably extended
to Mad Brook Road, and the state had to buy some of it. Mr. Curran’s
negotiation with the state included future state snowplowing on his newly
elongated driveway, which had to extend much farther to meet the relocated
roadway. Two other current houses have since been built on what would have been
the Curran land.
“The Currans weren’t that into farming, and got the
idea of having a store and gas station at the top of the hill” – that is, where
today’s Route 18, leading out of Lower Waterford village, stops rising for a
bit. They placed their gas pumps in front of a modest building on the related
through-road, within walking distance of their house – and “behind” their home.
There is a structure at that location today, a white house with attached
garages; the double garage is where the store once stood with the gas pumps in
front of it. In the 1930s thoses pumps sold Mobil gas. [As described later, the
store was built by Kenneth Curran, Gertrude and Mitchell’s son.] Patricia
Powers, in the 2004 Waterford Town Report, dated the start of the store and gas
pumps to “the late ‘30s.” Dave Morrison recalls, as a small child in the early
1950s, having his mother pull him up the hill in a wagon, from the White
Village, to go to the Currans’ store. There were cookies in a glass case;
Hoodsie cups (Hood Dairy’s prepacked ice-cream cups); and soda “in a pool
of water where you put in a coin and slide the bottle to the gate.” The
property included “a huge pull-off of several car lengths.”
Around this same time the Currans took over operation
of the Lower Waterford Post Office. It had been run by Dave Morrison’s
grandmother, who died in 1944 of a stroke; Dave’s mother and father then moved
back into the family house (after just six weeks in their own place!) to take
care of Dave’s grandfather. The Morrison family had a store that accompanied
the post office, on Maple Street. Dave’s birth in 1946 made it too hard for his
mother Dorothy to run both the store and post office, and Dorothy gave up the
postal service (closing the store) to Gertrude and Mitchell Curran, who hosted
the post office at their own location from 1946 to 1954. Their son Ken, who was
particularly gifted with cement work, eventually built the Currans a new home
adjoining their store, so they wouldn’t have to walk across the field from
their original home. That is the house
currently seen at the location (attached to the double garage mentioned
earlier). Their original home (currently blue) was then occupied by Milton and
Marion Valentine and their daughter.
Mitchell and Gertrude Curran had two sons, Ken and
Robert. Ken was an engineer and partner in the Curran–Lavoie contracting
business in Littleton, NH, and took part in construction of Moore dam
(1954-1957). When the road across the reservoir was being constructed in 1982,
a very expensive bridge was included in the plans. Ken saw the possibility of
skipping the bridge and creating the earth-filled segment now called “The
Causeway” on which to lay Interstate 93, saving a great deal of money. The
Causeway extends across a brook valley that entered the lake in the location
that was the old village of Pattenville, NH, and Ken called the depression “the
Pattenville draw.” (Another small causeway was built to support Route 18
nearby.) The other son, Robert, lived at the round barn now owned by the Levy
family, best known locally as the Hastings farm; Robert owned Curran’s
Furniture in St. Johnsbury, located where Mayo’s Furniture now stands. [Dave’s
guess: Kenneth was born 1910 or 1911; Robert, aka Bob, had children, including
Peggy Curran (Bristol) Barber, whose recently deceased husband was Glenn
Barber, Jr., living where Hastings Road goes off Daniels Farm Road.]
Mitchell Curran’s sudden death of a heart attack in
1954 ended the Curran post office and also rearranged the lives of the Morrison
family. Dorothy Morrison, Dave’s mother, resumed being postmaster at the
building that had been Dave’s grandparents’ home, where there was also a
woodstove, but no store at this time. (Dorothy ran the post office until she
retired in 1980, at which time the postal service moved into the Davies
Memorial Library across the road.) At the same time, 1954, Dave’s father Arthur
Morrison took a leave of absence from his job and invested all his funds into
finishing the house that he and his wife had started back in 1941 (and had only
lived in for 6 weeks; Arthur had puttered on the house during the intervening
years).
Eventually the Currans sold the property to Earl and
Lydia Stetson. “Earl needed a garage so he tore down the store and built the
garage there” where the store had been. Mrs. Curran (Gertrude) moved to the end
of Webster Street in St. Johnsbury, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Dave recalls that his mother Dorothy saw the Currans as parental figures, so he
often visited there with his mother.
Back at the original Curran place, as already
mentioned, the next occupants were Milton and Marion Valentine and their
daughter. After these, the Leon family moved in. Major Leon (who may have
rented the place) came to the area as part of the project of building a radar
base on East Mountain in East Haven, part of the DEW (Distant Early Warning)
Line then being built to protect the United States from potential Soviet bomber
attacks. Major Leon and his wife had three sons, of whom the oldest was
Douglas. Douglas Leon showed Dave Morrison the old mineral excavation shafts on
Rabbit Hill. [A note written by Patricia Powers in the 2004 Waterford Town
Report gives the 2004 owners as the second Curran house, the one now on Route
18, as Raymond and Nancy Auclair.]
Other gas pumps in Waterford in Dave Morrison’s
lifetime included City Service pumps at the brick (Begin; later Looking Glass
Inn) house where Route 18 meets Interstate 93. A barn on that property was
built twice. Dave believes there may have been dances at the barn after the
second rebuild. That barn also is now gone, but driving past the property, the
line of the existing driveway can be seen – it once separated house from barn,
and continued across to the lower fields of today’s Gingue dairy farm, reaching
Route 2 about a quarter mile east of the Route 2/Route 18 junction.
There were also gas pumps – Texaco ones – at the
Whittemore place on Route 18, southeast of Lower Waterford village. Gladys and Earl
Whittemore started that business in the 1950s, not many years after the Curran
store went out of business. [Its name was the Countryside Service Station and Restaurant.]
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| Ad for the Whittemore restaurant and gas pumps, from 1963 Waterford cookbook. |
Dave knew Earl Whittemore before the Whittemore
business opened, as Earl worked at the lunch counter of Parker Drug Store in
St. Johnsbury in the 1950s, perhaps 1952-1957; Dave’s parents after 1952
attended Sunday church services at Union Baptist Church in St. Johnsbury and
would often give Earl a ride to his job in St. Johnsbury on Sunday mornings.
The Whittemore place began with just gas pumps and a
stand that sold ice cream. Gladys Whittemore was a gifted baker, especially of
pies, and the couple then operated a restaurant with their gas station. Dave
recommends Barbara Douse, the Whittemores’ daughter, to give information and
memories about that business.
Another business that Dave connected with as a youth
was the Rabbit Hill Inn. He worked at the inn as he entered his teens,
1957-1964. In 1957, room rates were $10 single, $12 double. Alden Hull, a St.
Johnsbury businessman [and father of Deborah Thornton], managed the St.
Johnsbury (St. J) House (a hotel) then, and the Rabbit Hill Inn was purchased
to be a satellite operation. Even the laundry was taken from Lower Waterford to
the St. J House each day. Dave worked for the manager Anita DesTroismaisons
Oakes, whose husband Kenneth Oakes worked for St. Johnsbury Trucking.
Where the safe [vault] now is, in the Town Office
(lower floor of Davies Memorial Library building), in those years there was a
garage door instead. It was installed with the dream of a firetruck for the village,
to be parked in there. The dream was especially dear to nearby village resident
Hamilton Allport (married to a daughter of the Davies family), who lived three
houses away from the Davies Memorial Library, but the dream did not come to
fruition. Instead, the Oakes family used the space as a garage while Dave
worked at the Rabbit Hill Inn.
(report completed November 9, 2015 – BK)
