Which Name Do You Use for White Birch Farm, by the Interstate?

Photo from the Historic Sites & Structures Survey.

Looking Glass Inn. The Begin place. White Birch Farm. The Richardson B. Graves Residence.

And now, the Conte family home.

These are all names for one of Waterford's iconic homes, just off exit 1 of I-93, and up the hill from Pettyco Junction (another place with an older name, Aime's). The large stately house with its mansard roof has been sheltered in recent years by a cedar hedge; look more closely to see the attached carriage stalls, the wing with the ballroom upstairs, the traces of what was once a showplace farm for the region.

The Conte family is welcoming the June 26 (Wed.) meeting of the Waterford Historical Society at 6:30 pm in the ballroom -- most easily reached by parking behind the present home, where an entrance meets that level of the house. With photographs and stories to share and review, it's going to be a lively get-together!

Photo courtesy of the Conte family.

Allen Hodgdon's historic survey of the structure in 1980 placed its date of construction a century earlier, 1881, in the "Second Empire" style. But the site clearly hosted much earlier a structure belonging to the Hill family, who settled that part of Waterford.

Hodgdon wrote:

Originally known as the Simeon Hill farm the [Antoine] Begin farm, also referred to as White Birch Farm, was settled around 1808 by Simeon Hill*, a native of Walpole, N.H. Hill kept a tavern here until 1810. The timber-framed wing of the building predates the brick block. It exhibits a ballroom on the second floor, over the open-end carriage stalls. The northwesterly end of the wing may be part of the original house. The outstanding Second Empire style main block was built by Richardson B. Graves* around 1881. Graves' son, Herbert K. Graves, continued his father's farm, and by 1904 it was considered "one of the most desirable farms in northern Vermont [according to William H. Jeffrey in "Successful Vermonters, A Modern Gazetteer of Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans Counties," 1904].

There are other aspects of the place that Hodgdon didn't mention: the old road from Waterford to Route 2, for instance; and the important role of the farm as an E.T. & H.K. Ide company farm.

From the Jamie Ide family album, 1926: taken from White Birch Farm. (Lee farm in distance.)

Residents today may also recall its use as an inn for some years, the Looking Glass Inn, owned by Perry Viles and family.

What a treat it will be to see the interior and hear what the Conte family has discovered!

*Notes:

Simeon Hill: Born about 1783 in Massachusetts; wife was Rebecca; died April 3, 1845, in Waterford, and buried at the Charles Hill Cemetery (attached to today's Gingue farm). Probably hosted his tavern from about 1808 through at least the 1820s. It appears that his parents Thomas and Eunice lived in Waterford by the 1820s also.

Richardson B. Graves ["Successful Vermonters"]:

Lee Family Reunion (1903) and Dairy Herd Auction (1915)

My partner in research, my husband Dave, often finds Waterford-related items in past issues of our local paper, the Caledonian-Record (or Caledonian, or Evening Caledonian, as it was for while). He passed these two along regarding the Lee family that has resided near Stiles Pond since 1801. I'll show the 1915 item first, since it's short:

And here is the 1903 Lee family reunion report. Note in particular the presence of Bertha Lee, home from Ohio where she received her schooling; her eventual return to the farm would engage it again in dairying, as well as offering guest rooms. Also note mention of the nearby Asa Lee property on "East Village Road," which apparently became the Hovey farm that remains as The Farmer's Daughter today. "East Village "(East St. Johnsbury) residents may also be pleased to see Charlotte Morrill mentioned; her house still stands in the village. The geographic closeness of the Lee farm and East Village was mirrored in the social closeness of the two, and marriages linked them further. This is a great example of how Waterford's clusters of settlement often stayed closest in most ways to the nearest neighoring village or town, rather than to the (farther away) center of Waterford itself.

Waterford Essays, 1990: Sent by Edward B. Lee Jr. to Jack Hird

The Waterford Historical Society was very pleased to receive this envelope with its two typed essays, sent by Edward B. Lee Jr. of the Lee Farm (mail via St. Johnsbury, but the main farm is in Waterford) to Jack Hird.

A Birthday Poem from a Waterford-Linked Poet

Two of Waterford's farms are already listed on the National Register of Historic Places. If you live in the area, you've probably driven often past one of them: the Lee Farm, with its date of 1811 painted on the barn.

The men in the Lee family, sent forth into the world from the farm in Waterford, or sometimes born further away and ending at the farm instead, often wrote about their world.  The Lee farm women wrote on other topics: consider the extensive dairy records kept by Bertha Lee, for example, and just before her time, this poem (fitting for National Poetry Month!) by Phoebe Harrington (Fenton) Brown (1804-1889), mother-in-law of Edward Payson Lee (1839-1922; one of the four Lee brothers engaged in the Civil War). Although Phoebe was a Northeast Kingdom gal, born in St. Johnsbury, she appears to have moved to Attleboro, Mass., around 1870 to live near another of her daughters, Jeannette. In this poem she honors her own 83rd birthday:

My Old House

I hail once more my natal day

Still in my tenements of clay

With many favors blest

And He who placed the structure here

Can prop it up another year

If he should think it best --

Long has it stood though snows & rains

And braved life’s fearful hurricanes,

While many stronger fell.

The reason why we cannot see

But what to us seems mystery

The builder knows full well,

But now tis weather-worn and old

The summers heat & winters cold,

Pierce through the walls and roof

The tattering pillars too are weak

The poor old rusty hinges creak,

The windows are too dim.

Nature and reason tell us all

This shattered frame ere long must fall

When, where, or how is unknown,

We'll leave that with the architect

And trust his wisdom to direct,

The taking of it down.

And when you see it prostrate lie

Let not a tear bedim the eye

The tenant is not here

But just beyond time’s little space

Has found a quite resting place

No more to date her year

And though she walks with you no more

The world would move just as before

Tis meet it should be so.

Let each his house in order set

That he may leave without regret

Whenever called to go.

P. H. Brown, aged 1883, So. Attleboro

Lee Farm

The Lee Farm includes another set of Waterford, Vermont, farm structures already documented; this group was described in a 1982 National Register of Historic Places nomination written by Deborah Noble. The nomination can be found here: http://www.crjc.org/heritage/V19-3.htm

Here is the paragraph that most intrigued me in the nomination:

The large farm complex alludes in its relative grandeur to the early days of what was then known as Waterford Hollow, when that village was formerly of "considerable importance, having a church, store, hotel, oil-mills and saw mill" and when the proximity of Stiles Pond "rendered the locality a pleasant summer retreat."(8) The Stiles family, who settled nearby, were developers of the various mills at the outlet of the pond. After business passed to nearby East St. Johnsbury and Concord, the village declined until now all that is left is the nearby cemetery and several farms bypassed by the newly constructed Interstate 93.