Sheep in Waterford, Vermont: A Preview and a Farmer's Talk

photo by Linda Kenney from United Kingdom (Baaaaa!) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Waterford (Vermont) Historical Society welcomes farmer Elizabeth Everts on Wednesday March 23 to talk about the history of sheep in our region. The Everts family owns Too Little Farm in Barnet, Vt., where they raise sheep, as well as market vegetables and fruit. The talk is at the Davies Memorial Library in Lower Waterford at 6:30 p.m. Please join us if you can!

As a preview, the sheep face here belongs to a Cotswold, one of the popular breeds in town in the 1880s. Here is a short general description of sheep in Vermont, from the Billings Farm website:

Vermont was a sheep state before it was a dairy state. Through much of the 19th century, sheep dominated the livestock interests here, outnumbering both cows and people. The first important breed in Vermont was the Merino, whose numbers exceeded 1.6 million by 1840. The Merino was known for producing fine wool and its desirability helped Vermont's woolen mill industry to prosper. By 1870, Vermont still had well over 500,000 sheep – and just under 200,000 cattle. As the demand for Merino wool declined however, Vermont's sheep population also declined and the conversion to dairy cattle was underway. Today, there are an estimated 25,000 sheep in Vermont.
     Frederick Billings began importing Southdown sheep from several of the best flocks in Britain during the 1870s – about the time that sheep farming started to decline in Vermont. He selected this breed for its excellent meat and wool - believing that introducing a dual-purpose breed might help slow the decline of sheep farming. Billings's flock of Southdowns quickly became one of the best in the state. By the early 20th century, there were several hundred sheep at Billings Farm.

Local Waterford details on sheep in Child's Gazetteer of 1887 show a dozen local farmers with sheep, most with 20 or 30 sheep, one with 50, and George C. Lawrence, co-owner with George G. Winslow, held 100 Cotswold sheep.

The Lawrence/Winslow farm was also known for Mr. Winslow's breeding and dealing with the Costwolds.

Now, aren't you curious to learn more? Come to the talk!

March 5 (2016) History Hike Postponed

The "First Saturday" hike for March, for the Waterford Historical Society, is being postponed due to weather effects ... although the Moore Lake water level is always reduced around this time of year, the unusually low northern snow pack has kept the reduction much less than usual, and the remains of Upper Waterford are iced over and NOT visible.

Hope to see you March 23 instead, at 6:30 pm at the Davies Memorial Library, for a sheep and wool evening featuring guest speaker Elizabeth Everts.

Calendar Alert: March 23, Sheep! At the Waterford Historical Society Meeting

Find a pencil or pen and mark your calendar for Wed. March 23 at 6:30 p.m., when market gardener and sheep breeder Elizabeth Everts of Too Little Farm, Barnet, comes to the monthly meeting of the Waterford Historical Society at the Davies Memorial Library in Lower Waterford.

Elizabeth will fill us in -- as she did for years at the Fairbanks Museum's Festival of Traditional Crafts -- on sheep raising over the years in our region, and the wool products that result from this.

Above, a sheep design from the February display of hooked rugs at the East Burke Community Library; below, Roberta Smith of Waterford works on her newest rug project, Donna Heath of Waterford practices hooking, and a display of other rugs, including Roberta's Fifteen Mile Falls rug that she designed and hooked for last year's centennial of the last long-log drive on the Connecticut River.

Additions to the Archives of the Waterford Historical Society

This month included the first annual meeting for the Waterford Historical Society, ably chaired by board president Donna R. Heath and well attended in spite of icy roads and heavy rain. Wait til you see all the events planned for the first half of 2016!

Earlier in the month, the archiving team gathered to sort, label, and file -- which always turns out to include mysteries, puzzles, and excitement. This time, a group photo taken at the local VFW (post 4992) needs identification ... if you know who's here, please add a comment to this blog piece; thanks!

Who are they? And did they/do they live in Waterford?

We also welcomed into the archives this month a five-generation genealogy of Geneva Powers Wright and her late husband Gilbert August Wright (1912-2000); the couple were married on March 1, 1938. Mrs. Wright included with the genealogy a photo of her husband's family and their home in Waterford, shown here.

Another arrival in the archives, thanks to the careful eye of Davies Memorial Library director Jen D'Agostino, is the massive family genealogy compiled by town resident and postmaster Amos Bugbee Carpenter, which he had printed in 1898. The book is elegant, and the information inside is wide-ranging and fascinating.

Coming to Town Meeting on March 1 at the Waterford School? A number of historic photos will be on hand, thanks to WHS members; also look at some letters from Amos Carpenter's family (featured earlier in this blog). Hope to see you then.

Waterford's Religious Centers: The Baptist Ministers and Churches

Today's Union Baptist Church, Waterford,  VT. Photo courtesy of the church website, http://www.ubcstj.org

The "White Village" of Lower Waterford today has only one church, and it is not a Baptist one -- but the longing to worship in the "spirit of Roger Williams" (1603-1683; Puritan who became a Reformed Baptist) came along with many of Waterford's early residents whose roots had first been in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In 1796 Silas Davison arrived in Waterford, where his farming career vacillated with his landholdings. He preached in Barnet as well as Waterford, and Dr. C. E. Harris in his Waterford history (A Vermont Village) says that the Rev. Davison was "ordained in John Wood's barn."

Baptists in Barnet and St. Johnsbury found the journey to the Rev. Davison's home for his services was too difficult, wrote John D. Thyng in a note added to Frederick Palmer Wells's History of Barneet, Vermont. So a "call was sent to the Baptists in these two towns to meet at Passumpsic on Sept. 24, 1811, that village having been chosen as the most central point" (J. D. Thyng again).

Eight people had been meeting at "Bro. Silas Davison's house" and became half of this "Baptist Church of St. Johnsbury and Waterford." The church's second pastor would be the very well known Rev. George B. Ide, and "scores [of people] were added tp the church." With a membership of more than 200, it became the largest Baptist church in Vermont, until a decline began around 1843. The intricate history of these years includes the "Millerite doctrine" and reorganizations that stretched across into New Hampshire as well. Various buildings were outgrown. A bequest from Jonathan Lawrence of about $2,000 and the land on which the Passumpsic Baptist Church now stands (plus a farm in Waterford) led to the 1895 construction of the church seen today in Passumpsic, designed by architect Lambert Packard.

Things became more complicated during the late 19th century. In 1869 a Free Will Baptist Church was organized in St. Johnsbury, and in 1875 it gained a church building, which burned in 1881, was rebuilt in 1882 (seating capacity 300!), and when its congregation later merged into a second one (see next description), the building was taken over by the First Church of Christ Scientist (it still stands, next to the Fairbanks Museum). Another congregation, the First Baptist Church, was organized in St. Johnsbury in 1874 and in 1875 gained a church building on Railroad Street. In 1916 the two St. J Baptist congregations merged to form the Union Baptist Church, which thrived in its Railroad Street home, adding a school in 1976.

Railroad Street (St Johnsbury) building that housed Union Baptist Church, 1916-1992 (and earlier, the First Baptist Church).

The Union Baptist Church outgrew its home in St. Johnsbury, and in 1992 it completed construction on a much larger building, including a school wing, in Waterford. The first worship service held there was on October 25, 1992, bringing the Baptist group back into the town where the Rev. Davison had launched his own church meetings so many years before.

Groundbreaking, for 1992 structure - photo from UBC website, annotated by Tanya Powers.

This year, 2016, is the centennial of the merger of those churches, and Union Baptist Church plans to celebrate its history in July. A complete narrative of the church and its many leaders will be compiled by then. So this post is simply a "place holder" for that long version that we can look forward to.

Waterford Cemeteries: Their Histories

Here's a great document created around the time of the national bicentennial (1976).

Waterford Archives: Action! (Housekeeping in the Good Old Days, by Ella Douse)

The bell perched on the library roof used to remind people that it was time to be working! (see White Village history)

If you think archiving is some sort of dull "filing" task, you've never taken part in the Waterford Historical Society archiving sessions! The next one is Saturday January 30 from 9 to noon, in the hallway of the town office, at 532 Maple Street in Lower Waterford (downstairs from the library). Pull up a chair and explore newspaper clippings that reveal community structure; sort photos, often mysterious; discover how the scraps of written material and images come together to show how families have grown and interacted over the centuries in our Connecticut River town.

Here is a document from the archives, by Ella Douse, who wrote this as part of the town's bicentennial activities. It's a good read!