THE SCRIBBLER II
The Cavendish Historical Society Newsletter
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PO Box 472 Cavendish, VT 05142
802-226-7807 margocaulfield@icloud.com
Winter 2025 Vol. 19, Issue 1
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
April 12 (Saturday): In celebration of spring, Easter, as well as remembering the history of Mary van Schaik’s bulb business, a workshop on paper flower making will take place at the Cavendish Library from 10-12. This workshop is free, open to the public and suitable for all ages. This workshop is made possible in part by the Cavendish Community Fund.
May 24 (Saturday): Annual Memorial Day Plant Sale at the Museum.
May 30 (Friday): Memorial Day activities at Cavendish Town Elementary School
June 1 (Sunday): Museum open for the season 2-4 PM
June 21 (Saturday): Cavendish Village Ghost Walk. Meet at the Museum at 8 pm. Wear comfortable shoes and bring a flashlight.
Sept 14 (Sunday): Annual Phineas Gage Walk and Talk. Begins at 2 pm at the Museum.
October 12 (Sunday): Last day the Museum is open for the season.
November: Proctorsville Ghost Walk
SPRING BULBS THANKS TO MARY VAN SCHAIK
Many in Cavendish will be thinking of Mary van Schaik this spring as they tend their gardens of daffodils and flowers, as for many years Mary ran a bulb business from her home. Her son Pieter carried on her love of bulbs and plants with his daffodil workshops, and it was always a welcome sign of the pending spring when Pieter would place daffodil and other bulbs at the Cavendish Post office for all to enjoy.
Mary, a graduate of Smith College, was an observer at the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. This is where she meet Henri van Schaik in 1934, whom she married.
During WWII, Mary lived in occupied Holland. These were not easy times. In 1957, she gave a glimpse of what it must have been like. Following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the communist government, Life Magazine suggested a food drop to help those who were starving. Living in Cavendish by then, Mary wrote a “Letter to the editor” stating, 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. Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound were humanitarian food drops carried out to relieve a famine in German-occupied Holland undertaken by Allied bomber crews during the finals days of WWII.
When asked to contribute to the 75th Anniversary Fund of Smith College, Mary knew she couldn’t send cash but she could send bulbs to classmates and ask them to sell them, with the proceeds going to Smith. The idea worked and an exporting business was born.
With the changes in government in Holland, the van Schaiks decided there was more of a future for them in America and they moved in 1953. Settling in the old Wilcox estate on the corner of Tarbell Hill and Chambers Rd, in Cavendish, Mary continued her bulb business. Her husband would start a riding school across the street and became quite well known for training dressage riders.
Featured in the spring 1979 edition of Vermont Life, Mary was well known for her love of gardening and her bulb sale catalogue. 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 in 1971. The relationship between Mary and Smith College was a mutual one. 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.
CAVENDISH ROCK HEARTS 2025
The Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) is once again sharing their love of history this February with a “find the heart” hunt at various historical spots in the two villages of Cavendish.
Using the clues below, find the hearts and take a picture and/or add a heart stone of your own to the places that mean the most to you. Please don’t move the rocks.
On March 15, we will remove the heart rocks and place them along the stone wall by the Cavendish Cemetery on High St.
Answers to the clues appears on the last page of the newsletter. Special thanks to the 5th/6th graders at CTES who painted the rocks.
Cavendish Village Clues
1. All that remains of the tenements built for the Gay Brothers Mill employees is a stone wall. It was in close walking distance of the Mill and is near Pulaski Street (Pleasant Street) and 131.
2. In the 1950s, the Gay Brothers Mill was sold to F.C. Hyuck and Sons and became “Kenwood Mills.” Along with the Mill, they also acquired the stone building known as the Cavendish Inn. While a former boarding house for workers at the Mill, as well as teachers and others, Hyuck and Sons donated the building to be turned into a health center in 1957. Dr. Eugene (Gene) Bont, along with his wife, nurse practitioner Phyliss, ran the Black River Health Center until 1988.
3. Salmon Dutton subscribed $7,500 (one third money and two thirds labor or materials) for building “Cavendish Academy”-the largest gift received during the fund drive for the school. Dutton, who is credited as the founder of Cavendish Village, was a Universalist and not interested in paying a “preacher tax,” which was customary at the time. Instead he opted to pay for education. It is the fifth oldest academy in the state of Vermont having been incorporated October 26, 1792 at a session of the Vermont Legislature in Rutland. It is also the 24th oldest academy in New England. Over the years, it has served many purposes including being the home of the Cavendish Partnership as well as Perkins Store.
4. The current Mill Street Bridge replaced a covered one back in the early 1900s.
5. With fire and rescue trucks leaving all hours of the day and night, this building was originally built as a home for a newly married couple. Sadly, the wife died before it could be occupied.
Proctorsville Village Clues
1. Built in 1788 as a stage coach stop, this inn is reported to be the most haunted inn in Vermont, if not New England. The innkeepers started a new tradition when they bought the place 13 years, the Honey Festival, which takes place in September.
2. What we call the Proctorsville Green, was the vision of a town manager who worked for many years to make it happen. There is a marker in honor of him.
3. This bridge with beautiful planters, once was a covered bridge.
4. Legend has it that just before this cemetery, there used to be what was known as a potter’s field. The lot was destroyed by a party who plowed it up and planted potatoes there during the “Great Depression.” Please note the following: a) CHS has found no proof that potatoes were planted in this cemetery, though Mary Churchill references it in her Cavendish Cemetery Guide and b) The snow is now piled up so high, there was no easy place to leave a heart.
5. Built in 1906, the “Adams Opera House” housed a hardware store, library and post office. There was a large hall and well-equipped stage with dressing rooms on the second floor, and another large meeting hall and kitchen on the third floor. Chautauqua lectures and silent movies were part of the entertainment at the Opera House as well as many dramas and musicals. Today it’s the current home of SuperRoasted Coffee. It’s believed to be haunted by the ghost of children.
NEW SOLZHENITSYN PUBLICATION
The University of Notre Dame Press is excited to announce the publication of “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, edited by Ignat Solzhenitsyn.
This collection brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997.
Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. He spent 18 of those exiled years in Cavendish. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide—forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West—and searching for humanity’s possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and—perhaps most centrally—the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.
These annotated speeches, including his timeless "Nobel Lecture" and "Harvard Address," have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn’s sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn’s life.
It seems fitting, with town meeting day just around the corner, we include Solzhenitsyn’s Cavendish Farewell Speech he gave on Feb. 28, 1994
Citizens of Cavendish, our dear neighbors,
At town meeting seventeen years ago I told you about my exile and explained the necessary steps which I took to ensure a calm working environment, without the burden of constant visitors.
You were very understanding; you forgave my unusual way of life, and even took it upon yourselves to protect my privacy. For this, I have been grateful throughout all these years; and today, as my stay here comes to an end, I thank you. Your kindness and cooperation helped to create the best possible conditions for my work.
The eighteen years which I have spent here have been the most productive of my life. I have written absolutely everything I wanted to. I offer today those of my books that have been translated into English to the town library.
Our children grew up and went to school here, alongside your children. For them, Vermont is home. Indeed, our whole family has come to feel at home among you. Exile is always difficult, and yet I could not imagined a better place to live, and wait, and wait for my return home than Cavendish.
And so this spring in May, my wife and I are going back to Russia, which is going through one of the most difficult periods in its entire history-a period of rampant poverty, a period where standards of human decency have fallen, a period of lawlessness and economic chaos. That is the painful practice we had to pay to rid ourselves of Communism, during whose seventy-year reign of terror sixty million people died just from the regime’s war on its own nation. I hope that I can be of at least some small help to my tortured nation, although it is impossible to predict how successful my efforts will be. Besides, I am not young.
I have observed here in Cavendish, and in the surrounding towns the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy where the local population decides most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decision of higher authorities. Alas, this we still do not have in Russia, and that is our greatest shortcoming.
Our sons will complete their education in America, and the house in Cavendish will remain their home.
Lately, while I have been walking on the nearby roads, taking in the surroundings with a farewell glance, I have found every meeting with many of you to be warm and friendly.
And so today, both to those of you whom I have met over these years, and to those whom I have not met I say: thank you and farewell. I wish all the very best to Cavendish and the area around it. God bless you all.
CHS MEDICINAL GARDEN
Having visited the gardens at the Enfield Shaker Village, Sturbridge Village, as well as the Paris Cluny Museum, there’s been a desire to create a garden(s) that would reflect how people, from indigenous through the first settlers and beyond, would have planted for health and cooking. As an outgrowth of the three talks in 2024 on herbs and their medicinal uses with Dr. Charis Boke, we think this is the year to start this project.
Centura Churchill, Dan’s daughter, has offered the use of her property as a site for the garden. If you are wondering why we aren’t doing this at the Museum, it’s a combination of lack of space, a lot of shade, and a major oil spill alongside and behind the building in 2023.
Years ago Dan, Churchill, while CHS president, offered the former Duttonsville School building, then his home and location of his business Commercial Radio, as a place to house CHS’s archives. That way we could work year round. Centura’s offer is a generous one and it seems a good fit to locate the garden there. It’s become a home away from home for CHS.
If you can help with any of the following, please let us know by using the contact information above:
• Wood for raised beds and construction
• Plants
• Assistance with plantings
ANSWERS TO THE ROCK HEART CLUES
Cavendish Village: 1) Stone wall behind the Cavendish Post Office; 2) Black River Health Center Building; 3) Academy Building (High St. & 131); 4) Mill St. Bridge 5) Cavendish Fire Dept.
Proctorsville Village: 1) Golden Stage Inn; 2) Rich Svec Dedication Marker; 3) Depot St. Bridge; 4) Hillcrest Cemetery 5) 73 Depot St., former Crows Bakery
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
__ Individual Member $10 __ Senior Member 65+ $5 __ Sustaining Member $500
__ Household Member $15 ___ Contributing Member $250
Volunteer
___ 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:
__ For general purposes __ Young Historians __Publications
__ Archaeological Activities _ Museum & Archival __ Special Events
__ Rankin Fund __ Williams Fund __ Solzhenitsyn Project
__ Other (please specify) __ Cemetery Restoration __ Preservation Projects
Cavendish Historical Society
PO Box 472
Cavendish, VT 05142
