Waterford Hollow: The Stiles Farm and Cemetery

The Waterford Historical Society's "Green-Up" project this year focused on the Stiles Cemetery on Route 18, across the road from the water filtration plant for Stiles Pond Reservoir.

So here's the background on the area, with a photo (above) from the 1983 Waterford Town Report, taken from a C. H. Clark photo postcard. Look closely to see today's Route 18 between the barn and the pond; a high-rise entrance to the side of the barn farther from the pond; and the Stiles home, to the left of the barn in this photo. The three round structures are the earlier water filtration beds.

Here is the version of Waterford Hollow history (in which both the Stiles and Hill families play significant roles), as printed in that Town Report, written by the town's dedicated historian, Eugenia Powers. At the end are some photos showing the house foundation, not far from today's Stiles Cemetery, as WHS President Donna Heath explored it this month.

An Upper Waterford Home and Family at "Trout Brook Farm"

Postcards sent and treasured can offer unexpected insight into families and their lives in the past 150 years. It was a delight yesterday to find this card, which must have been included inside an envelope, since it had no address or postmark. It is a Velox postcard, according to postcard expert Dave Kanell, who says the card was thus printed between 1907 and 1914. On the back in browned ink, in neat but not fussy script, it says "Compliments of / S/ F. Cutting / Trout Brook Farm / Waterford Vt."

S. F. Cutting was Stillman Franklin Cutting, a longtime resident of Upper Waterford. He was born in Concord, VT, on September 17, 1846, to parents Franklin H. Cutting and Prudence Isham Cutting. In 1910 he served as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives.

It's poignant to know this homestead vanished with the construction of the Connecticut River hydro dams. Mr. Cutting would have seen Comerford Dam built (1930-31), but he died in 1940, before the Moore Dam's reservoir would fill the scraped-bare landscape where his home once stood. His death was recorded in Gilman, Vermont, but he is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Waterford.

An extra pleasure in exploring Mr. Cutting's life in Waterford was discovering his Valentine's Day 1841 marriage to Martha Woodward Carpenter, daughter of Amos Bugbee Carpenter -- some of whose family letters, perhaps due to his role as West Waterford postmaster, have also survived the years. In fact, we have a note that Martha, nicknamed May, sent as a child to her brother in college at Dartmouth, which can be seen here.

"Early Town Government in Waterford" by Eugenia Powers

Eugenia Powers (1913-1985) grew up in a Waterford family where everyone contributed to town government in some way. She gave her own historic research and writing to Waterford, Vermont, for decades. We will use her map and description of the Stiles Cemetery on Green-Up Day this year; we treasure the narratives she inserted in town reports (more on this next week with notes about the Stiles farm). And at the time of the town's bicentennial, she contributed longer work, like this essay.

A Vanished -- Almost! -- Waterford Cemetery

A few scraps of notes in various records refer to Waterford's Fuller Hill Burial Ground, or Fuller Hill Cemetery. Historian Helen Pike was able to pass along a neighbor's capture of the remains of the cemetery between Campbell and Lawrence Roads last fall. The two photos here show the area -- a last chance to see this almost vanished sign of human life and passing.

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

March Winds, April Showers, and a Postponed History Hike

The April 2 history hike on the Campbell Road has been canceled by the Waterford Historical Society. But exploration of the town's mineral-related past continues, and it should be possible to reschedule this hike for another season.

Meanwhile, if you are walking around Lower Waterford, take a look at the church with this old photo in mind, recently spotted at an online auction: see the wooden front porch? The photo was mailed in 1909. Keep it in mind for the next WHS regular meeting, April 27 at the Davies Memorial Library at 6:30 p.m.

Thousands and Thousands of Sheep ... in Vermont in the 1800s

And there are still sheep in Vermont today. Farmer Elizabeth Everts of Barnet shared details of the many years when Vermont had more sheep than people -- and of her sheep-raising life today, complete with vibrant skeins of yarn. What a great speaker for the first regularly scheduled meeting of 2016 for the Waterford Historical Society! (In the photo, Elizabeth is on the left, with WHS president Donna Heath.)

Next adventure, a history hike on April 2, weather permitting, to some excavations for copper ore. Then, as the April 27 meeting, ace genealogist Nola Forbes brings us skills and techniques for hunting down family connections, present and past.