Scribble II-Summer 2015

Upcoming CHS Events

The Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) Museum is open on Sundays from 2-4 pm until Columbus weekend. The Museum can be open at other times by request. Contact information is above.

• Sept. 12: Visit the CHS booth at the VT Golden Honey Festival, where we will be teaching a beeswax candle making workshop. The Festival takes place at the Golden Stage Inn, intersection of Depot and route 103 in Proctorsville, from 10-4.

• Sept. 13 (Sunday): Annual Phineas Gage Talk and Walk, 2 pm at the CHS Museum.

• Oct. 11 (Sunday): Annual Cemetery Tour. In keeping with the serialization of  Coming To Vermont (Cavendish): Memoirs of Philip Tiemann, we will be visiting the Center Road Cemetery in Cavendish where the Tiemann’s are buried. Meet at the CHS Museum at 2 pm to carpool to the cemetery.  This is the last day the Museum will be open for the season.

Pick Blueberries to Benefit CHS

We are fortunate that CHS board member Bruce McEnaney, better known on Facebook as Bruce’s Berries, has the best blueberries in Vermont (100% organic) and they’re ripe for the picking.

As Bruce notes, The picking procedure is the same as last year...scale on the porch...honor system...blah, blah, blah. Half of the proceeds will go to the Cavendish Historical Society to supplement the funds that the good citizens of Cavendish voted to give the Society. The money will go into a fund to repair and paint the former Cavendish Baptist Church that is now the museum. Pick delicious, healthy, never any sprays (except water) blueberries and help refurbish one of the towns beautiful buildings. And remember Bruce's Berries are the freshest and tastiest because YOU PICK THEM YOURSELVES!!!

Bruce’s berries reside at 354 Minor Rd, which is just off Smokeshire Rd in Chester. Smokeshire is just over the Cavendish border off of Route 103. Bruce is very quick to remind us that his home was originally part of Cavendish, but due to some “redistribution,” it’s now part of Chester. If you need additional directions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at the numbers above.

Plant Sale Then and Now

No one seems to remember the exact date, but at least 35 years ago, Craig Rankin started a plant sale to raise money for CHS. Craig came to Vermont from Long Island where he was a landscape architect working on a wide range of high-profile projects, including Yankee Stadium, the Wollman skating rink in Central Park, Jones Beach, and  the New York State Thruway.

Craig was to hosta as Johnny Appleseed was to the apple-everyone needed to have one. As a result, nearly every home in Cavendish has a hosta plant.

In the early days of his sale, Craig had to transplant thousands of plants, as it wasn’t uncommon for him to make $3,000 at a sale where most plants were $1. This was one of his price lists as photographed by his daughter Nancy McMillan.

With Craig's passing in 2008, his legacy of the plant sale continues.

Many thanks to all those who made this year’s sale a great success-Pieter van Schaik and his team (Norma Randall and Brian Pelkey); Steine van Schaik;  Kem and Svetlana Phillips; Bruce McEnaney; Lou Choinere; Jen Leak; Gloria Leven; the Tings and Moonlite Meadows Farm (best compost ever); Anna Shapiro; Bob Naess; Cooper Naess; and Margo Caulfield. 

Even though it’s August, we’ve already started plants for the 2016 sale.

Summer Visitors

With many people on vacation, the Museum has had a number of visitors from all over the world, the farthest being from Siberia, Russia.

In June, we heard from the Johnson family who lives in California, but were originally from Illinois. Going through a family photograph album, they found a number of pictures from Cavendish circa 1925.

They e-mailed CHS asking, “did we know the Kingsbury family?” They also sent a number of photographs wondering if we knew where they were taken.

It turned out that Emma Johnson Kingsbury, came to Vermont as part of a Christian group from Chicago to hold revival meetings. She married Bradley Kingsbury in 1908 and lived with him on East Road-the white farmhouse that was moved. In 1925 various members of her Chicago family came for a visit and the photographs included familiar landscapes, as well as a visit to the Coolidge store, all the more interesting because Calvin was president at the time.

Many of the photographs supplied by the Johnson family have been posted to the Cavendish VT Facebook page. They also brought more photographs with them when they visited Olive Kingsbury.  

In true welcoming fashion, the first thing Olive said to the Johnsons was, “how nice of Emma’s family to come all this way to visit her.”

Olive was able to provide names of various people in the photographs and talked about how much she loved her Aunt Emma, “who was a wonderful person.” Since Emma died in the 1950s, Olive provided an escort to the Cavendish Cemetery so they could pay their respects.

The Original Door to the Museum

For quite some time, the board has wanted to replace the door of the Museum with double hung doors. Since Yankees never through out doors and windows, a few weeks ago, the original doors, as seen in the picture, were found in the basement, along with what we believe is the original weather vane.

The initial assessment is that the doors can be restored. However, it’s like many preservation projects, you start thinking it’s just a matter of making a few changes and then discover much more is involved. Since the goal is to have new doors hung before the “snow flies,” (by Thanksgiving), we have a set of back up doors in case we can’t reuse the original ones.

Solzhenitsyn Project

CHS was pleased to receive a grant from Jeld-Wen Foundation to help with the preservation of the Cavendish Stone Church, which will be the permanent home of the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exhibit. These funds will be used to help restore the belfry and cupola area. Unlike other projects, where a good carpenter can do the work, we need to hire a steeplejack and so requests for proposal are underway.

In the spring, we were fortunate to receive the donation of a book collection that included biographies and essays about Solzhenitsyn, as well as a number of copies of his books that have been translated into English. You can stop by the Museum, pull up a chair and enjoy reading some of his prose poems, plays as well as biographies.

The CHS children’s book, “The Writer Who Changed History: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,” is due to be published this fall. All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the CHS Solzhenitsyn project. Written for students in grades 4-7, the biography includes many photographs and excerpts from his writing.

A website is now on-line and includes a study guide for teachers and others to use. Also available on-line are a Pinterestsite and a Facebook page. It is through the latter social medium that students can discussion their impressions of the book and related topics with other students from around the world. This will be a monitored site.

Cavendish Historical Society Board: Dan Churchill, Jen Harper, Bruce McEnaney, Kem Phillips, Gail Woods. Coordinator: Margo Caulfield

Cleaning Gravestones: Orange Lichen

During the spring, summer and early fall, CHS volunteers work in the town’s seven cemeteries to clean headstones. This year we’re focused on the Cavendish High Street Cemetery as it has a unique problem-orange lichen.

Algae, lichen, fungi -- that may be green, black, gray, yellow, red, orange, brown, or blue -- can be hazardous to gravestones because they trap moisture on and under the surface of the stone. They also secrete acids that can dissolve limestone, marble, sandstone, concrete, and mortar and can insert their "roots" into the pores of the stone. These growths will swell and shrink in response to moisture, leading to cracking and “spalling” of the stone.

Limestone and marble headstones become weathered because the elements slowly dissolve them. This is a natural process as the calcium carbonate they are made of is slightly soluble in water. “Acid rain” speeds weathering, resulting in stones being permanently damaged, as it leaves a rough, pitted surface, making writing and art harder to distinguish.

The openness of the Cavendish Cemetery, combined with the position, type and age of the stone all contribute to a number of headstones that are heavily damaged. Unfortunately, once the marble is "spalling,” the recommendation is to replace the stone as it's almost impossible to repair.  

We’ve tried various techniques, all recommendations of the National Park Service’s guidelines for cleaning monuments, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Once the orange lichen is on it, the stone beneath turns a reddish color, some of it being worse than others. 

While many of the graves we clean have no descendants that can maintain the stones, many “modern” headstones are not cared for. Please know that if you pay for “perpetual care” that only refers to the grounds and not to the individual stone. So the next time you leave flowers on a loved one’s grave, make sure you check the condition of the marker. If you need assistance in cleaning a gravestone in one of the town’s cemeteries, please contact CHS.

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    __ Hands on History

Donations are always welcome and can be designated as follows:

__ For general purposes               __ Educational Programs           __Publications

__ Archeological Activities             _ Museum & Archival             __ Special Events

__ Rankin Fund                           __  Williams Fund                          __ Hands on History

__ Other (please specify)                        __ Cemetery Restoration       

Chapter 23: Tiemann Memoirs/Dust Bowel

Following Chapter 23, is a brief history of the Dust Bowl. For the prelude and links to all of the chapters go to Coming to Vermont(Cavendish): Memoirs of Philip Tiemann

January of 1936 was notable for its heavy snow-fall, Again the town plow broke down just as it was most needed, When grain-delivery time came I couldn't get out with the car and had to ask a neighbor to bring mine up with his. Most of us bought thru a co-operative which shipped in farm supplies monthly by rail. I went along down and helped unload from the freight-car on the siding. Toward the end of the month the weather became so bad that for a time there, was no school. During this period I enjoyed well enough being indoors, studying seed catalogs and writing while the wind roared in the chimneys.

At last there came a few nice days, and we invited some friends from the village to come and have a dinner cooked in the brick oven in the chimney-.place. We had tried this only tentatively, and it was to be the first meal done in the old style. On the previous evening I made up a good hard-wood fire in the large vaulted oven and continued it next morn­ing until there was a great pile of glowing embers; toward noon I raked them out and shoveled them into the pit underneath, Into the oven Isabel slid a ham and a pot of beans, and we closed it up - and waited. Rather to our amazement (and relief) our ancestors knew what they were about! when the six o'clock dinner hour arrived the things were done perfectly and were delicious. With the main items we had fresh warm gingerbread , (which we, preferred to brown bread) and cucumber relish and, for desert, lemon pie, and of course coffee. After this, we occasionally tried baking different things; it was practical enough but more time consuming than 'we could afford. Yet it was nice to know we could do it.

By the advent of March it was thawing. The snow was too soggy even to use snow•-shoes and the roads were terrible. To our puzzlement, one day the snow had turned brown, it was caused by dust from the western plains carried all this way by the winds. We could hardly believe this but it was verified, It never has happened again. (But there frequently is an infestation of tiny flies (?) peppering late snow-banks.)

Then flood conditions developed, The brooks and rivers overflowed and many bridges and roads were under water. The snow had disappeared and the ground was thawing, For several days there was no mail delivery, which is an unheard-of situation; the mail may sometimes be late but it gets thru. - There was almost a foot of water in our cellar; and it was warm enough so that when the children splashed out to the brook-side they found pussy-willows, No sugaring was possible.

After such a warm spell it would have been normal if there had been more freezing weather, but it turned out to be an early spring. When trout-fishing opened on the first of May grass was greened and starred with dandelions,  contrasting with other years when there still may be snow along the brooks. So we had some early-bird friends up and went fishing. It was fun but not very productive. The brooks still were full and rapid.

The warm weather permitted an early start on the gardens. Also I was determined to improve the quality of the hay so seeded down a good-sized piece in the mowing with an oats-hayseed mix, The time had come when I needed all the hay I could raise. In addition to reading up on the subject, I consulted the County Farm Agent (representing the Department of Agriculture) and got some good advice. This resulted in a program of top-dressing and re-seeding, which I carried out over a number of years. The objective was a three-ton yield per acre; by the most optimistic estimate I came close to it on a number of acres but the average was probably not over, two tons per acre, and less on parts of  the mowing. Over the years, plowing had turned so much topsoil down-hill that ledgy outcroppings wee close to the surface, and whereas loam is deep along the bottom wall the up-side (west) wall is exposed below its foundations and much has fallen over. However, my efforts resulted in some improve­ment, especially on some acres given to birds foot trefoil which is a fair substitute for alfalfa and can better be grown under our conditions of soil, which lacks a limestone base, 1 also experimented with millet that year, but found it about the most difficult crop to cure. Poor judgment was only partly responsible: I mowed it in anticipation of a frost but it rained instead. We had, quite a time with that millet. It was dense and heavy, rather green, and very wet. A neighbor took one wagon­load to feed out to his cows.

Then I spent considerable time building a summer chicken-coop,- really a small house. Located between First and Second brooks for the purpose of saving fencing, it proved very useful, Twelve feet square, it was a good size to brood about 100 baby chicks. They were started under a canopy warmed by a small oil heater, during the spring, and soon learned to push their way under the hangings to reach the feeders or if they got warm. As they grew larger and the weather warmed up, they were permitted

to go out of the house into a small fenced enclosure; and soon this was removed and they could roam at will, protected by the brooks  on two 'sides and fence on the other two, We were fortunate not to be bothered by. four-legged depredators, but occasionally a hawk or owl took-tribute. In late summer I installed nests and the pullets wore laying when the time came to move them to the shed next the barn for the winter, Cockerels meantime, after being confined in a fattening pen, had been either eaten or marketed, with a few in special quarters to provide Sunday dinners. The ones sold, at 30c a pound, need a nice profit.

The Dust Bowl: How surprising it must have been for the Tiemann family to wake up to find brown snow. Further, it may have seemed unbelievable that the cause of it could have been from the Great Plain, the 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico

Intense cultivation of this area in previous decades was one of the causes of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Native prairie grasses have deep roots that keep soil in place. When these plants were tilled up, shallow-rooted plants like wheat and corn couldn’t stop erosion. The drought from 1934 to 1937 along with the lack of a stronger root system of grass to act as an anchor, the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” One such storm, created a 2 mile high storm, which hit the east coast on May 11,  1934. For five hours, a fog of prairie dirt enshrouded landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and the U.S. Capitol, inside which lawmakers were debating a soil conservation bill.

The Dust Bowl remains the largest migration in American history in that short a time period. Approximately 15 percent of the population of Oklahoma alone left the state. Conservation programs initiated by the Soil Conservation Service, as well as farming practices like terracing and contour plowing, helped stop erosion and end the Dust Bowl.

While many areas of the country were suffering considerable hardship from both the Dust Bowl and Depression, economics were improving in Cavendish. The number of people receiving help from the town began to go down.

Chapter 22 Tiemann Memoirs/Tourism

Following Chapter 22, is a brief history of the Black River Snow Carnival of 1936 and the beginning of tourism in Cavendish. For the prelude and links to all of the chapters go to Coming to Vermont (Cavendish): Memoirs of Philip Tiemann 

The first snow fortunately was late, and was taken off by two days of rain, I discovered that a strip of carriage-house roofing had blown off and I felt should be replaced at once, but this was delayed while I wait­ed out another snow storm. Snow soon melts off the sunny side of a paper­ed roof; but in cold weather the roofing becomes stiff and hard to handle and I had to bring the roll into the house to get warm before it could be unrolled without cracking.  So I cut it to length and warmed the tar and put up the ladders, and on a relatively mild afternoon got the job done. (There have been many repetitions.).

Somehow or other I found time for a bit of writing, trying to do it in the mornings when I was fresh; but things kept coming up. The next difficulty was the car radiator, It had leaked        [unable to make out words] in the spring so I drew it off to keep and refilled with water as needed. Come fall I was busy with other things and procrastinated, draining the radiator on cold nights. "You'll be sorry" Isabel predicted; and I knew it was taking a risk, but got away with it until finally I got around to dismounting the thing and 'soldering' it; only to find it still leaked. So it required a garage job after all, and I hated to spend the money.

As the holiday season approached Dinah dropped a bull calf, promptly named Carol (for Christmas) by Joyce. The, poor little creature was pretty cold out in the barn, but Dinah was a good mother and soon lapped him dry with some assistance on our part using burlap bags, Everything turned out well and we soon had an abundant milk supply. Isabel had learned how to make cottage cheese so we were well off for dairy products.

It was only a week before Christmas when we butchered the pig. I had a man come over to help, The brick arch and the huge iron kettle in the little old butchering house still were use able so I filled the kettle with water and built a fire under it very early in the morning. A temp­orary plank table had already been set up and the several knives ground to a fine edge. I very much disliked the killing: a pig especially is so vocal in a very human way that it is quite appalling, This one was duly stuck, and after being well bled was dipped in the almost boiling water for what the man thought was the right time, and then stretched on the table to have the bristles scraped off, I now discovered why a number of old tin candle-sticks had adorned the place: the sharp edges of the bell--bottoms are excellent scrapers and the stem of course makes a good hand-hold, A thoro job is important and is the hardest part, and so we used my Gillet [Gillette] safety-razor to finish. This finished, the creature was split open and eviscerated and hung up to cool. He wasn't big as pigs go, dressing only 125 pounds, but still was quite a bulk to handle. A couple of days later I cut him up as recommended by the government bulletin on the subject, and we had spare ribs for dinner, a tasty treat. We got two ten-pound hams and ten pounds of bacon, which I smoked over a fire of maple wood and corncobs in the bottom of a metal drum. Two five-pound shoulders were left fresh and two five-pound butts salted down; the two loins were frozen thanks to a five-below zero night; and there was ample scrap for sausage and fat for lard. This added considerably to our experience as well as to our larder.

Altho there was another big snowstorm it was very wet and did not last long; in fact, until the end of the year the winter was unusually open, This permitted rather late outdoor activity. I spent a couple of days helping neighbors saw as well as advancing my own work. And in the house it was very comfortable, with the new stove sending out controlled heat from its place on the living-room hearth and our recently acquired sofa facing it from the opposite wall.

The Ladies' Club served a dinner at the church to which everyone of course went, Then Isabel was entertainment chairman for a Christmas play in which all the children took part. There was also of course the local school party, but one of the kids was sick and I stayed home for company, and we rather mournfully watched the others, drive off in a jolly sleigh-party.

Naturally,' our own preparations for Christmas were as lavish as we could manage. We were able to afford a turkey and all the fixin's. It already seemed customary to go up in the pasture for a tree and greens some of which we shipped "home." Then on the Eve the Crèche was set up and the stockings hung and the tree trimmed; and, as before and many times since, we had a lovely time.

Black River Snow Carnival and Tourism: As has been seen in other chapters, as well as in Chapter 22, the Tiemann’s exported greens, maple syrup and other “made in Vermont” items for profit. In February 1936, the idea of “selling” the state to tourists began in the Black River Valley when over a thousand people came to the Black River Snow Carnival.

Skiing was on one run at the newly built Okemo Mountain while the bobsled competition took place on the 700 foot run built by the Civilian Conversation Corps in Proctorsville. The “Vermont Tribune” singled out the bobsled run as “the only one of its kind in New England and already attracting many winter sports enthusiasts to this locality.”

1930s Postcard of the Gorge

In that same year, while efforts were being made to build a new highway along the ridge of mountains-the Green Mountain Parkway-as a means to attract tourists, Cavendish, along with most of Windsor county voted against it

By 1937, there was a “vacation supplement” in the “Vermont Tribune,” which featured the Cavendish Gorge. Even though both the Gorge and Bobsled run were touted, Cavendish did not go about trying to advertise for tourists, yet more and more people started coming to the area for a week, the summer, and eventually the emergence of “second homes.” 

Unlike the Tiemann era, when most of the property was owned by year round residents, today, over 50% of Cavendish property is owned by non-residents.