Grandmother's Daylilies, Great-Grandfather's Onion Plants? May 7, Heritage Plant Swap

The White Birch Farm in Waterford (361 Route 18, not far from Route 2) will host a free event from 9AM til noon for people looking to share stories about their heirloom plans, and swap for another, with possibilities ranging from house plants to rhubarb to birch trees. 

The Waterford Historical Society also will be on hand to sign folks up for two upcoming events in June, including an order form from the The Rhubarb Kitchen for deserts in July.

Some pick-up services for plants in Waterford available on Friday May 6 -- email Beth at BethPoet at gmail dot com.

Many thanks to co-hosts Sam Haimovitch and the Ward/Conte family!

Who Are These Children? A Waterford School Mystery to Solve

 Andy Dussault, who now lives in St. Johnsbury, has set us a mystery to solve. His father Albert Dussault (1909-1985) was about seven years old in the photo shown here of the students at the Graves School, the district school in Waterford closest to where the boy lived with his family. Albert marked himself in the photo -- but who are the other students?

To help a little, here's a class list for the Graves School for 1915-1916. The teacher was Lottie Hill, whose family held farmland around the school.

Eight years later, the 1923-1924 class list shows four Dussault siblings -- as well as children from the Blair, Lamontagne, Maguire, Mulliken, Pierce, Voyer, and Prue families.

Here are two more photographs taken at the Graves School, with thanks to Andy Dusssault.

In a second post today, we feature Albert Dussault's autobiography, packed with details about growing into his work and community in the 20th century.

[To browse this site for more Waterford, Vermont, stories, click here -- and you can look for specific topics, like schools or dams, by typing the topic into the white search box at top left.]

Wedding Bells in Waterford, Vermont

The Waterford Historical Society presents "Waterford Weddings and Fashions" with historian Nola Forbes on Wednesday May 22 at 6:30 pm at the Lower Waterford Congregational Church. In planning this presentation, Nola Forbes reflected, "[Wedding gowns] brought to the meeting can be draped over sheets placed over pews, and perhaps held up when discussed.  At the moment we have samples from different time periods; of these, most were not worn in this church. Connie Quimby hopes to bring the 1873 dress worn by Geneva Powers Wright's grandmother Sarah Gilbert Powers to display. Photo of Geneva modeling it in 2012.  Beth [Kanell] has her mother's dress that she also wore (1950; 1971; 1980).  I have my grandmother's 1915 dress that I also wore in 1972.  I have my daughter's 1997 dress she & I made. Roberta hopes to make a wedding cake as part of refreshments. I have a story of Carpenter-Kinne 1909 "daisy" wedding, but unclear if it actually took place in the church or perhaps at Nathan Kinne's home in Waterford."

Of course, Waterford is a noted wedding destination today because of the Rabbit Hill Inn (see romantic photos at the inn's website: https://www.rabbithillinn.com). But there are many notes of marriages in the past in this Connecticut River town -- and some, like the "daisy" wedding just mentioned, must have embraced traditions different from today's. In 1877, Cosbi Bowman (Parker) Carpenter wrote to her son that "All is quiet here now, there was to be a China wedding up to Mr Wells the first of May." I wonder what a China wedding was?

Surprises also emerge in sifting through Waterford history -- as when yours truly (Beth) discovered a cousin of hers, Jennett Cutler Batcheller of Bethlehem, New Hampshire, who in 1856 married one of Waterford's Bugbees:

 It's especially exciting that Nola Forbes is making the May 22 presentation, since her team of Daughters of the American Revolution recently reviewed all the local church records -- who knows what other wedding stories maybe rediscovered!

A Sense of Place: Vermont Farms, Gregory Sharrow

Gregory Sharrow, photo courtesy of Williams College.

It will take a few weeks to catch up with the history-related events that took place in our region during the first week of August! So here are a few notes from the shortest and easiest to summarize: the talk given by Gregory Sharrow of the Vermont Folklife Center, at Old Home Day in Lunenburg, Vermont, on Sunday August 2 at the town's primary school.

Here is the summary from the Humanities Council, which co-sponsored the talk:

A Sense of Place: Vermont's Farm Legacy. The character of a place is shaped by its cultural heritage and folklife, the informal traditions of family and community that guide the ways in which a person plans a meal, treats a neighbor, or understands civic responsibility. In Vermont the cultural legacy of farming has strongly influenced the identity of Vermonters, and it is these distinctive traditions, which have persisted even with the decline in farm numbers, that help make the state unique. This lecture by Gregory Sharrow explores the fabric of farm culture in the past and probes its relationship to the world of Vermont today.

Sharrow collected oral history from about 500 Vermonters during the late 1980s and 1990s; in our region he interviewed dairy farmers Wayne and Edie Patenaude in East St. Johnsbury at Locust Grove Farm. He did not bring the Patenaude recordings, but played parts of several others to illustrate three concepts that he wanted to emphasize:

* Palimpsest. This is a term used for early manuscripts where writing was repeatedly erased in order to re-use the vellum or other flat substance -- but every use left some trace on the "page." Sharrow sees Vermont farms this way: with evidence of changing use.

* Sense of Place. For Sharrow, this is "the thing that anchors you in a web of experience and meaning." He illustrated it with farm choices and traditions that are particular to Vermont.

* Oral History. Sharrow and fellow oral historian Jane Beck use a form of listening to local residents that rarely involves questions or direction -- more, letting the person talk at length about his or her topic. He presented one farm woman's explanation of making butter, from milking to stamping.

Sharrow also described a question he had used to understand people's relationships with their neighbors: "Do you live in a neighborhood? Who else is in your neighborhood?" With this, he found the clusters of people who help each other on the seasonal tasks that could otherwise take too much cash and expense out of the farm cycle. He cited the book Changing Works by Douglas Harper as initiating this idea and giving examples, and the fifteen people in the audience provided some in exchange, as they recalled group efforts for haying, for instance, as well as kitchen tunks (aka kitchen junkets), musical gatherings in the neighborhood. Gary Fournier and others of the Lunenburg Historical Society added examples of this locally, especially for the region known as West Neighborhood -- proving Sharrow's point locally.

Who are your neighbors? Do you see them less often now than you did a decade ago? That's what many people in the audience talked about. It's an interesting way to look at the changes in our current history and heritage.