UPCOMING EVENTS
March 18 (Sunday): Annual Meeting 2-4 PM at the Cavendish Baptist Church. This year’s
program will feature “Cavendish Women You Should Know.” The program will start
at 2 with the annual meeting to follow. Refreshments will be served. The
President’s Letter and Budget will be available at the meeting.
May 27 (Sunday): The CHS Museum opens for the season. Hours are Sundays, 2-4 from Memorial
Day weekend to Columbus Day Weekend (Oct. 7). Other times can be arranged by
contacting CHS at the numbers above.
May 31 (Thursday): Memorial Day
June 30 (Saturday): Annual Plant Sale. If you have items you would like to donate to the
sale, please contact CHS at the numbers above.
July 28 (Saturday): Cavendish Town Wide Tag Sale
September 9 (Sunday): Annual Phineas Gage Walk and Talk, 2-4 pm. The “talk”
begins at 2 pm at the Museum and will be followed by the walk to the scene of
the accident, with stops at the site of the boarding house where Gage stayed as
well as the surgery of Dr. Harlow.
CAVENDISH WOMEN YOU SHOULD KNOW
Cavendish has been home to women whose lives have had
significance in all aspects of life. Scientist and geneticist Nettie Stephens
was born in Cavendish while the author Harriet Ellen Arey, also born here, edited
the “Home Monthly” and wrote “Household Songs and Other Poems.” Cornelia Otis Skinner spent her summers at the family home in
Proctorsville, now The Golden Stage Inn. She wrote for the New Yorker and was co author of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.
As
part of Cavendish Historical Society’s (CHS) annual meeting (March 18) there
will be a presentation Cavendish Women
You Should Know. Often thought of in terms of their husbands, fathers or
even in the case of Mrs. Svetlova, son-in-laws, they have lead lives of service
and meaning in their own right.
Each
week in March we will feature a different woman’s story, which will be posted
to the CHS blog. When the Museum opens is May, there will be a special display Women in Cavendish History. If you have
information you would like to contribute to Cavendish Women’s History, please
forward it by mail, e-mail or call us at the numbers above. Below are stories
of some of Cavendish’s amazing women.
Phyllis
Bont: Many know Phyllis Bont as a nurse practitioner, who for many
years worked along side her husband Dr. Eugene Bont at the Black River Health
Center. However, when she went to Albany Medical Center, she added the role of
teacher to her clinical practice, working in the Department of Family Medicine.
While her contributions to family and community were outstanding- some will remember
the teen center she ran for local youth-she has taken on a whole new role in
retirement.
When
Gene and Phyllis returned to Cavendish after having worked in Albany for over 10 years, Phyllis was quite adamant that
she didn’t want to spend her retirement cleaning the large house where she had
raised seven children plus half the community’s. Instead she decided to return
to a childhood passion-weaving.
Growing
up in Grand Rapids, MI, Phyllis thanks her 4th grade practical arts teacher for
allowing her to make use of a loom from grades 4-6. After that she didn’t have
an opportunity to weave again until the 1970s, when she took classes in
Charlestown. However, it was when she hung up her stethoscope and started
collecting fibers that another whole career took off.
One
of the original founders of Six Loose Ladies. Phyllis not only helped to staff
the store, that for many years was on the corner of Depot Street and Route 131,
but she taught weaving and sold her incredible shawls, scarves and other items.
Phyllis continues her career as a healer through fiber arts. The gorgeous shawls and scarves she makes is
her way to continually wrap someone in loving kindness.
Listen
to an interview of Phyllis at Vermont Public Radio.
Ethel
Roosevelt Derby: The youngest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt,
Ethel spent summers in Cavendish and was also one of the founders of CHS and
contributed to the first exhibits at the Museum. Growing up in the White House, Ethel’s mother
encouraged her to keep a low profile as women should only appear in the papers
when they were born, married and died. While on the quiet side for a Roosevelt,
she was neither retiring nor reticent.
During
WWI, she served as a nurse in France at the American Ambulance Hospital, where
her husband Dr. Richard Derby was a surgeon, In WWII, she worked with the Red
Cross and was the Nassau County Chairman.
Edith’s
nursing background would support she and her family time and again. Her oldest
son died of blood poisoning when he was only eight. The trauma of losing a
child plunged Dick Derby into a deep depression that lasted for several years.
During this time, she needed to maintain the household, the finances and keep
the family together.
An
active participant in the American Civil Rights Movement, she hosted meetings
in her own home to help to secure low-cost housing for minority families in the
Oyster Bay area.
Like
her father, history was important to Ethel. She was a member of the board of
directors of the Museum of Natural History in New York and played a major role
in preserving Sagamore Hill, her father’s estate in Oyster Bay. Ethel was also
vice chair of CHS and a benefactor of the Old Stone Church in Reading.
Natalia
Solzhenitsyn: The wife of the Nobel Prize author and Soviet dissident
Aleksandar Solzhenitsyn, Natalia lived in Cavendish from 1976 until their
return to Russia in 1994. In the New
Yorker article by David Remnick, Aug. 6, 2001, he described her life as
follows, While Solzhenitsyn wrote, often
staying in his study for days at a time, she ran the household, raised their
three sons (a son from her previous marriage, Dmitri, died in 1994), carried
out research, typed and retyped manuscripts, edited a series of volumes on
Russian history, administered a fund for camp veterans using the proceeds from
“The Gulag Archipelago,” organized the family archives, and planned their move
home. In Vermont, Natalia was Solzhenitsyn’s liaison with the world; she
retains that function here, dealing with publishers, reporters, readers, harassers.
Prior
to their return to Russia, Natalia, her mother and two of her sons participated
in an oral history about their time in Cavendish. On the challenges she faced
in helping her husband and her children, she said, So it is clear that one must help one’s
husband as much as possible and I’ve done that. It is also clear that when one
is exiled from one’s country and in one day everything from your past is cut
off, your friends, your life, your property, and language, then from that moment
on one feels, perhaps mistakenly, one feels that one’s children have been
punished, that they have been deprived of everything. And then a mother, as I
imagine, any mother, because of her nature, becomes a “mama bear,” becomes a
lioness, who must protect. And this gives one great strength, the feeling that
one must replace for one’s children everything they might have lost. To replace
their lost environment, to fill the home with the sounds of the language of
which they were deprived. Because, of course, at home one could even turn on
the radio and hear one’s own language, but here no. To create for them... So you see, to
sum up, when one finds himself in an extreme situation of one sort or another,
and clearly our exile put us into such a position for many years to come, then
simply one no longer has a choice one simply must overcome the situation and do
everything one can do to make some semblance of a normal life. And if there is
a secret to it, when one is thrown into the water, one must swim.
Today Natalia lives in Russia
and is the president of the Solzhenitsyn Foundation and editor of an edition
of 30-volumes of her husband’s collected
works. She also serves on the jury of the Solzhenitsyn Prize, awarded annually
to recognize writers living in Russia and writing in Russian.
The interview of Natalia and
her family will be on display this summer at the Museum.
Yekaternia Svetlova: For
many Cavendish residents the Solzhenitsyn brothers and “Mrs. Svetlova,” the
mother of Natalia Solzhenitsyn, was the face of the Solzhenitsyn family. Mrs.
Svetlova could be seen daily picking up the mail, going to the post office,
driving her grandsons to and from school, or shopping at local stores. Even
though she spoke only Russian, her smile did the talking for her. The postmaster
at that time, Sophie Snarski, spoke Polish and some Russian. Sophie described
how they communicated, “I’d try Russian, then she’d try Polish, and when all
else failed, we drew pictures.”
Compared to Switzerland, where we only lived for two
years and four months, Americans, and Vermonters in particular could understand
you very easily in any language. So if I ever spoke to anyone, let’s say in the
store, in Russian, my grandchildren would always ask me,” Why are talking to
them in Russian? They don’t understand’ And I would say, ‘You see they are
doing exactly what I am asking them to do.’ ..I had relations with all kinds of
people, all over the place, especially in the same grocery store, down at Grand
Union in Ludlow, at Singleton’s, all the tellers at the bank. They always wave
to me, they call me by name when I come in, and although my vocabulary may be
all of ten words or so, may be a little more, I always seem to be able to get
across what I want to say, it is always a joy to do. No one ever gets irritated
at all. So, I feel really comfortable here. Very much at home.”
Svetlova was an aeronautical
engineer in Russia but in Cavendish she not only handled various household
chores, but she also helped in preparing her son-in-law’s books for print by
painstakingly turning English letters into Cyrillic script. Her eye for detail
would prove to have a very important applications when a bank robbery happened
in Ludlow. I arrived at the Vermont National
Bank in Ludlow almost at closing time. So I come in at about 4:30 in the day. I
came up to the first teller window, I wanted to cash a check, so I giver her
the check and turn around and at the window next to her is a tall blond man in
a hat, kind of a cowboy hat, and in his hand was a gun. We were the only
customers in the bank. I looked at the tellers, saw their pale, stunned faces.
Perhaps because it was the end of the work day, most of the money had been
stored away already. So they what they had in any case, in a little bag, and
gave it to him. He took it and left. So I came up to the door, behind him, I
opened the door, and looked where was going. In any case, I cashed my check.
..Actually a person had come up at that point and she showed the person, that
is where he went. So, later on I was asked to describe him to the police, which
I also did, so I was able to be of some help. And I was a hero there for at
least a full year.” Within the
family, while a good story, they weren’t surprised by Svetlova’s actions. As
her daughter noted “We always knew that she was a hero.”
Mary Mattison van Schaik: Featured
in the spring 1979 edition of Vermont
Life, Mary was well known for her
love of gardening and her bulb sale catalogue. Born in Trenton, NJ in 1909, she
was one of four children. Graduating from Smith College in 1931, the
friendships and connections Mary made there would play a significant role
throughout her life.
After graduation she became a
speech writer and researcher for presidential candidate Al Smith. However it
was through her job as observer at the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland
that she would meet Henri van Schaik in 1934. They were married in 1935 and in
1936 he would compete in the summer Olympics, taking a silver medal in dressage
for Holland.
During WWII, Mary lived in
occupied Holland raising six children. These were not easy times and as she
would write in a Letter to the Editor of Life
Magazine in 1957, in which she encouraged the proposal of parachuting food
into Hungry, Our family with six young children benefited from the British and
American food-drops in German-occupied Holland in April 1945. The food saved
lives. The act boosted morale.
Shortly after WWII, while
Mary was still living in Holland, she was asked to contribute to the 75th
Anniversary Fund of Smith College. Since it wasn’t possible to send cash from
Holland, she sent bulbs to classmates and asked them to sell them, with the
proceeds going to Smith. The idea worked and an exporting business was born.
At the time of the Vermont
Life article, Mary was sending out over 5,000 catalogues of her bulbs. With the
help of a group of Cavendish and Reading women, orders would be filled and sent
all over the United States and Canada.
Mary’s love of bulbs and
Smith College culminated in her writing The
Gardens and Arboretum of Smith College This relationship was mutually
shared as in 1997, a tulip garden was dedicated at Smith
College’s Capen Garden as a tribute to Mary
Mattison van Schaik ’31, an ardent supporter of the Garden. She was a frequent
visitor to the greenhouses and played a significant role in helping to beautify
the Smith campus.
BECOME A MEMBER, RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP,
DONATE
If
you have not joined the Cavendish Historical Society, need to renew your
membership, and/or would like to be a volunteer, please complete the form below
and sending a check, payable to CHS, to CHS, PO Box 472, Cavendish, VT 05142.
All contributions are tax deductible.
Name: _______________________________________
Address:
_______________________________________________
Phone Number: _____________________ E-Mail:
____________________________
Membership
Level
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Individual Member $10 ___ Senior Member
65+ $5 ___ Sustaining Member $500
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Household Member $15 ___ Contributing
Member $250
Volunteer
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I would be interested in serving, as a volunteer .I would be interested in
serving on the following committee(s):__ Program Planning __ Fundraising
__ Building (Museum)
__Archives _ Budget –– Cemetery __ Carmine Guica Young Historians
Donations are always welcome and can be designated as
follows:
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general purposes __ Young Historians __Publications
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Archeological Activities _ Museum & Archival __ Special Events
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Rankin Fund __
Williams Fund __ Solzhenitsyn Project
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Other (please specify) __ Cemetery Restoration __ Preservation Projects
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