Travelog, part 4: family history in the Northeast Kingdom

 Wikipedia explains:   The Northeast Kingdom is the northeast corner Vermont comprising Essex, Orleans, and Caldedonia Counties. The population is about 65,000. . The term "Northeast Kingdom" is attributed to George D. Aiken, governor and senator.  He first used the term in a 1949 speech. The area is often referred to by Vermonters simply as "The Kingdom." 

 The Stevens and Woods families settled in and around St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in the early 19th century.   The Hilyard children spent every summer in their mother's hometown in the late 1940's and early 1950's.   We hadn't been there since 1998. 

Tuesday:   

We spent some time at the St. J Heritage Center on Summer St.  and made new family history discoveries.   We found out that the Heritage Center house was built by Stevens’ great-great-grandfather John Stevens. Just up the block is the house where the Hilyard children spent all those summer vacations—their mother’s childhood home, at the time occupied by Aunt Jo (great aunt Josephine May Woods).   We learned that that house was built/owned by Asa Cummings Mitchell, another GGGF….so the Stevens and Mitchells were childhood neighbors.  

Upper left:  North Congregational Church.  Marjorie and Harry were married in the pastor's study because Harry was divorced. Upper right and lower left: Summer Street School, now housing social services agencies. We have Marjorie's grade school photo in front of the arches.  Middle:  the Mitchell/Woods house (then #75 Summer St., renumbered in the 1960's). Bottom: the Colonial Apartments where Grandma Nellie Stevens Woods and her sister Aunt Anna Stevens Baker lived. Stevens remembers taking the elevator (!) to the their third-floor apt. 

Tuesday:  cemeteries.   Passumpsic, south of St J, is where the Woods grandparents and cousins, and Stevens’ parents are buried. (And eventually, us.  One of the purposes of this trip was to mark our spaces in the Hilyard plot and to order our grave markers, which we did.)   

(Once when we visited Marjorie and talked about cemeteries. I said my family didn't have a plot (PA, CA, IL). She invited me to join her at Passumpsic and enjoy the view from the hill.  I have accepted that invitation.  :) )  

Mt. Pleasant is in town—very wooded and very, very hilly—where the Stevens side and all the prominent StJ families are buried. We found several sets of relatives but not Asa And Julia Mitchell. (I know what the headstones look like from Find a Grave, but the cemetery is  big and there is no chronological rhyme or reason.)    

  

Wednesday, part 1: west to Joe’s Pond in Danville. There was a Woods cottage here and the Hilyard kids went swimming here.  (Marjorie and Harry spent their wedding night at the cottage—January, 1933–and Marjorie later recounted that Harry did a polar bear swim. Bravado for his bride?). Then north to Lyndonville, where we drove around, visited a quilt shop (more on my fabric acquisition later.)   

 

Wednesday, part 2: the Fairbanks Museum was founded in 1891 as a “cabinet of curiosities” spanning natural history, geology, and anthropology. There is a planetarium, too. What a treasure for generations!  

(Polar bear and Bowdoin polar bear!) 

 The specimens are the same as they've always been though labeling has been updated, with references to conservation and endangered species. 

The anthropological displays have new text, too. 

Wednesday, part 3: the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. It is both a public library and an art gallery. The building is beautiful, the staff is friendly (I talked to the circ clerk and the reference librarian), and the art is incredible. (The Fairbanks family established the Athenaeum as well as the museum.   The company founder invented the platform scale.)

Athenaeum reading room.  (The balcony shelves are used for overflow collections.)    The children's room and the gallery are also on the main floor. The second floor was once a meeting room; now adult nonfiction and audiovisual.  

 Domes of the Yosemite by Albert Bierstadt (1867)is the showpiece of the art gallery.   The financier who commissioned it paid $25,000. He went broke and Horace Fairbanks purchased it for about $5,000.  

 More paintings.  The gallery is arranged as it was in the later 19th century.  (It reminded me of the Renwick in Washington, DC.)

Next:   on to New Hampshire...