The Elm House Hotel

Partial history authored by George Cahoon, Jr.

The Elm House Hotel sat on the south side of the Common facing North. It was built in the late eighteen hundreds and was the largest building in town. It got its name from the large elm tree that grew beside the front walk, (east side) and close to the road. It was a huge tree by the time that I stayed there during my four years in high school. Unfortunately, the Dutch Elm disease took it along with several other elms that graced the "Green.”

My father's brother, Walter Cahoon, and his wife Viola bought the hotel in the 1920's and lived there until it was closed and sold to Howard Calkins in the late forties or early fifties. Calkins’ crew tore it down and used the lumber to build the two small houses on the east side of Hill Street and the one on the south side of Grand View Drive.

Walter and Vi's oldest daughter, Gladys Cahoon Peck, came in to help with lunches and dinners. Her two daughters and I had noon lunch there during school. I was mostly a permanent resident during school time, going home to the Walden farm for vacations and some weekends. My job was to keep the wood boxes filled.

I am not sure of the dimensions of the building, but I would guess it was close to 140 feet long and 40 feet wide. There was an ell at the east end for a horse and carriage barn and woodshed. The main building was three full stories high. The first floor held the office and registration desk immediately to the right of the front entrance. Going straight through the front hallway, one came to the door into the big kitchen with two big stoves used for large dinners. East from the kitchen through a short hallway was a big dining room furnished with large, round oak tables that would be worth much money today. Two walls had several large stuffed and mounted moose and elk heads. I remember being afraid of them when I was quite small.

Upstairs from the front hall were the guest rooms. I never counted the number but there were several on both sides of a long hallway. There were two common "necessaries" near the top of the stairs. The only bathtub and lavatory sink was in the ladies room. There was no shower in the mens room -- only a commode and urinal. There was also a small cement sink for water for mopping the floor. There was hot water from a large tank behind one of the kitchen stoves heated by what was called a "water front" located on one side of the fire box. The third floor was given over to a large dance hall or party room accessed by a rather steep and narrow stairway from the second floor. There was a large wood stove near the far end of the long hallway. Otherwise the guest rooms were unheated. There was also a rather spooky back stairs that accessed the loft over the carriage barn and down to the ground floor of the barn.

The third floor had been long unused by the time I stayed there during high school and there were only a few occasional people who stayed overnight. There were occasional noon meal guests and the bank directors came once a month for a noon meal. These people were accommodated in the family dining room directly behind the office and next to the kitchen.

There was a large cellar under the west end of the building with stone walls and a dirt floor. The cellar stairs went down from a short hallway between the kitchen and dining room. There was also a bulkhead to the outside under the kitchen. It stayed cool in the summer and only on an occasional very cold winter got below freezing. Beer for the tavern was stored there, and I often carried cases up for the tavern trade.

There was a separate outside door to the dining room/tavern and Walter had an entrance "coop" built over that door and a larger one over the front door. Rolla (Rol) Hebb was a more or less indigent elderly permanent resident at the Hotel after he separated from his wife. He was primarily a blacksmith and carpenter in earlier days and had a shop on Railroad Street. He was old and slow but he finally finished building the two entrances probably pretty much for his board and room. He was an excellent workman, despite his short­comings. He passed away some time after I finished school, but I have no recollection of when it happened.

My father raised potatoes for a cash crop in those days. After they were dug and bagged in the fall, a trucker was hired to take them down to the hotel for storage in the cellar. There could be as many as fifty bushels, weighing sixty pounds each on a load, and I had to carry them down the bulkhead and to a far corner of the cellar.


To view a photo album related to this article, click here.
This article was first published in the June issue of the North Star Monthly.

Lineage Library Given to Danville Historical Society

Helen Staley hands Paul Chouinard, President of th Danville Historical Society, one of the volumes from the library. 

By Sharon Lakey, Director

A rainy day in May was the perfect opportunity to light the fire at the Historical House in Danville where a meeting, luncheon and gift of a lineage library transpired. Helen Staley, chapter president of the National Society Daughters of Founders and Patriots of America, was pleased to present the gift to Danville Historical Society president, Paul Chouinard. Also present for the celebration was the National Society President, Donna Chilton Derrick, from San Diego.

Below is the speech given by Helen that explains more about the society. It is Helen’s belief that there are likely more residents in our area that would match the lineage requirements to become members of the group, and encourages people to look into their own lineages. At present, three members from Danville have documented their lineage and are included in the volumes: Thelma Hartshorn (Volume 41, a future printing); Luella Sanborn Kirker, volume 39; and Helen Ross Staley, volume 38.

Helen’s speech:

“The Northeast Kingdom Chapter of the National Society Daughters of Founders and Patriots of America is giving a set of their Lineage Books, volumes 26 through 40, to the Danville Historical Society.

“The NSDFPA is a hereditary society made up of women, unique because eligibility requires that in an unbroken line is an intermediate PATRIOT ancestor who gave military or civil service in establishing American independence between 1775 and 1784.

“This 112-year-old small society aids the military in times of war and promotes genealogical, historical and patriotic projects. Printed volumes of proven lineages of society members, published every 500 new members, are placed in libraries throughout the United States. Each lineage gives valuable known birth, marriage and death dates and the colonies or states in which these occur, along with the references from which they were extracted. This information is invaluable to genealogical researches.

“Also included is an Index of Lineage Books, Volumes 1 through 34, labeled: ‘Founders and Patriots of America Index.’ The project of DFPA National President, Donna Chilton Derrick, during her three-year administration is to collate and print DFPA Index to Lineage Book Volumes 35 through 40, a copy of which we will give to the Danville Historical Society.

“The Northeast Kingdom Chapter was organized in 2006 and chartered in 2007 with 14 members, including locally: Thelma Hartshorn, whose PATRIOT, Aaron Hartshorn was in Danville before the conclusion of the Revolutionary War; Luella Sanborn Kirker, whose patriot’s son, Jonathan Hobbs Sanborn was in Tampico, North Danville, about 1780-1790; and Helen Ross Staley’s patriot’s son, Jonathan Ross was in Waterford in 1792. Other chapter members’ Founders and Patriots were from the colonies or states of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven and Maryland.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how this library might help those who have no chance of matching the lineage guidelines for this organization. Personally, my side of the family has no long roots in America, but recently my husband reopened his family tree folder, and there is one man who does. On his mother’s side, John Clay, known as the British Grenedier, captained a ship to Jamestown. At least, that was the information he had gleaned from family notes and the Internet. Thinking I might find that man in the library, I looked in the Index. There, I found an entry for him that sent me to Volume XXIV, 187.

The short entry in that volume reads: “John Claye, son of Sir John Clay of Wales, came from England in ship “Treasurer” in 1613. Resided in Charles City, Virginia in 1624, finally settled near Jamestown, Virginia. Married Ann, who came in the ‘Ann’ in 1623.”

Now, that was interesting!

 

To see the photo album associated with this article, click here.
This article was first published in the June, 2010, issue of the North Star Monthly.

Enter Your Name Here

Ancestry.Com takes Betty Bolevic for a ride

By Sharon Lakey

As a child, Betty Beattie listened raptly to her favorite song on the radio, “Far Away Places with Strange Sounding Names,” and dreamed of becoming a world traveler. “I just didn’t know how it could be done.” Sometimes dreams do come true, though.

Betty was the first child of Harold and Phyllis Beattie of Lyndonville, VT. When the couple divorced, Harold kept custody of their four children before marrying Catherine Beattie of Danville, to whom the couple would add ten more children. Those in Danville associate Harold and Kate with the McDonald farm, Kate’s family home, in Danville near Dole Hill where the couple moved in 1947. But Betty’s memories span both towns, including her first home on Red Village Road in Lyndonville.

 

She graduated from Danville High School, and then attended Lyndon Teachers College where she earned an elementary education degree.  That degree became her golden ticket to those faraway places. She joined forces with teachers who taught overseas in support of American children at military bases. These teachers entered with the pay of a lieutenant with the rights and privileges associated with an officer’s rank.

“The pay wasn’t that great,” said Betty, “but our living expenses were near to nothing, and we had weekends and vacations to travel and sightsee.”  Her first overseas duty was at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her next was in Japan, then to England at Fairford (North of London) where she and her friends could bike to Stonehenge. “I have such wonderful memories from there, like attending Shakespeare’s plays at Stratford on Avon.” She spent her last year abroad in Bitburg, Germany, where she had an opportunity to take a bus tour into East Germany before the wall came down.

When she returned stateside, she was hired in Fairfield, Connecticut. It was in Fairfield that she met William Bolevic, her husband to be. They raised their family of five children in Ansonia, CT, with Betty was able to take time off to enjoy the job of mother after each child was born. All their children have stayed in New England, located in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. In 1999, she and Bill purchased a home near the farm in Danville in 2002.

 “The farm was always a draw for us,” she said, “and we often visited here during summer vacations.” It was during the summer of 1997 that Betty became hooked on another form of her “faraway places” dream. This time the dream was triggered by Aunt Elnora (Beattie) Morse, Harold’s sister.

 “She was quite a character,” said Betty. “Elnora was a short woman with a powerful personality,” she explained. “She was the town clerk of Jay, VT, and lived in Richford on a farm. When she retired and came to visit Kate and Harold, she would peruse the Danville Town Report, looking for errors, finding both clerical and mathematical ones, which she would announce aloud to all who were gathered there. One of the favorite family stories of Elnora is how she pronounced the family name-- “Bee-tee, not Be-at-tee. One time she answered the phone at the farm and when the party on the other end asked for Occie Be-at-tee she said, ‘There is no one here by that name,’ and hung up.”

This same Elnora, while seated around Kate’s table conversing with those gathered there that summer morning in 1997 said she would like to go to Canada to visit some cemeteries near Lennoxville, Quebec. The lure of travel called to Betty, who spoke up. “I’ll take you.”  Before going, though, Betty took her aunt to the Middlesex library where Elnora was introduced to microfiche. “She loved it,” said Betty. “Finding lots of family names was like discovering a mystery for us. She was so excited, and I got caught up in it, too.”

Armed with new information about her father’s mother and father, Tom Beattie and Betty took Elnora across the border. “We ended the day at St. James church cemetery in Leeds,” said Betty.  “It was dusk when we found them—two old stones, barely readable: Mary Livingston and Robert Beattie.” The two Irish immigrants, the object of Elnora’s search, lay before them.

 But Elnora’s reaction to the discovery astounded both brother and sister. “If I knew which vein in my body ran the blood that came from Ireland, I would cut it out!” she exclaimed, in an emotional outburst. Tom and Betty were taken aback. “It was such an odd exclamation coming from a woman whose normal behavior was that of an open-minded woman, never speaking in a prejudiced way,” said Betty.

On the way home, Elnora explained that her father was an Orangeman and hated the Irish. It was a deep-seated prejudice.  Elnora remembered bringing home a shamrock as a child and having her father order its removal from the house immediately. “Who knows what stories lay behind such strong emotions?” said Betty, who began who own research into the Orangemen and the Irish.

“I was intrigued by the family stories,” said Betty, “and Elnora was eager to tell them. There were lots of relatives still living in the area, and I began visiting them, asking them to tell me the stories. I encourage others to do the same with their family, because these family members have since passed. Do it now, before they are gone,” she said seriously.

Sensing Betty’s excitement, her husband Bill did a surprising thing. He came home with a gift for her, an Ancestry.com CD entitled Family Tree Maker . She was two years from retiring, so she tucked it away on a shelf, but when she retired in 1999, she rediscovered it. The CD opens with a simple window . “It’s amazing,” she said, dismissing the countless hours and corridors it has led her down with a gesture, “how quickly I was off and running.”

Of the many hours of research, she said, “It’s like you are a detective solving a mystery puzzle. Sometimes, you run up against a brick wall but months later you will find a clue and you’re off again. Many of the connections come from unexpected sources. Canadian family members, also working on Ancestry. Com, have helped her solve many of them.

“One of the serious roadblocks I’ve experienced,” said Betty, is in Ireland itself. “In the wars between the English and the Irish, the records were burned. I can get no further back than Mary Livingston and Robert Beattie, the same two who started my search.” One can’t help but think the inhabitants of the quiet graves in St. James cemetery must be pleased that they started an avalanche of paper that traces their subsequent family in America. Betty has been working at her family tree now for 11 years. “I’ve gotten just about all that I can,” she said.

The outcome of all those years of gathering is about to take flight. With instructions from a companion book,  Family Tree Maker, Betty is about to embark on making a book. Along with the facts about the family, she has gathered photos, stories and anecdotes that will add human interest to the book.  It’s a giant step forward from that little Ancestry. Com box on the computer screen in which Betty was first asked to place her name.

An invitation: if you are interested in getting started on your own family tree, Betty would be willing to lend a hand, encouraging you and steering you in possible directions when you run into a roadblock. Call the Danville Historical Society (802.684.2055) to set up an appointment with her.

To view the photo album associated with this article, click here.

This article first appeared in the June issue of The North Star Monthly.

Life Took a Sudden Turn...

Reg and Mabel Peck and their three children: (l to r) Winona, Nancy, and Ronald "Joe"

Two sisters remember their brother, Joe Peck

Ronald “Joe” Peck

January 15, 1940 – April 19, 2010

By Winona Peck Gadapee

Life took a sudden turn, and this is the way I am healing.

My brother, Joe Peck, and his wife Pat had just arrived home from Florida in time to help deliver a breech calf. The cow bolted, pinned him in a doorway, and broke a rib. We heard on Friday that he was hurt, so Saturday night we went to visit and take up some of my "green ambrosia.”

 We had a great visit, but it was easy to see that he was in great discomfort whenever he moved and was having difficulty breathing. He was concerned that he was aging, slowing down, and should think of giving up his beloved cattle

 A week later, April 19^th, he was doing chores and couldn't breathe. Mid-morning we got a call from my brother's daughter, Dawn, who explained they were rushing Joe to the hospital by ambulance, and he was in a very serious condition. My husband Arnie just had time to call my sister, Nancy, to let her know, when Dawn called us back that Joe had died. Blood clots in his lungs had moved, blocking oxygen to his heart.  I couldn’t believe it. In just those few moments he was gone!

Visiting hours, where some waited for over two hours outside, were eye-opening for me. I heard stories about how Joe was a "teacher" and a "healer of broken souls." I heard stories about how he helped some get started farming, showed them how to set up their books, how to build a portable saw and help design a barn. So many young men told me how he had pulled them out of the wrong crowd and straightened them out.

 I woke up the next day realizing I didn't even know this man. Do we ever really know a person and all the many facets of their lives?

At Arnie's suggestion, the funeral was held in the gym at Danville High School where for over 20 years Joe coached basketball, little league, Babe Ruth, high school boys baseball and a baseball town team.  There were over 300 people there.

Joe was cremated, and they used his last game ball from his last state tournament to store his ashes. This was set along with his state championship jacket and the Uno cards he played with granddaughter Cassie on the floor under the basketball hoop. These were buried at his cemetery site.

My sister Nancy said as soon as she arrived, "Joe will never have to be in a nursing home and he died still able to do what he loved.” He was 70 years old on Jan 15^th of this year. I cannot let myself feel badly. Joe did not have to make the decision to get rid of his precious cattle or change his way of life. He followed God's way of caring for his earth and maybe left it better than when he came into being. Thanks Joe. I love you so much.

By Nancy Peck Jones

He was my big brother, and we did so much together.

We used to climb up to the top of the silo and play with the baby pigeons.  It still surprises me that the mothers didn’t seem to mind that we held their babies.

 I remember picking wild strawberries together on the bank next to the brook up in the pasture. Together we picked a whole metal measuring cupful and brought them home to eat on cereal.

At that same spot in the brook, the water flowed between two flat rocks. It sort of resembled a sink, and we even called it “the sink.”  We used to put our hands in the water and make a basket with our fingers and a trout would swim into our fingers.  We would pull out our hands, holding the trout, just for a few seconds before putting him back in the water.  We would go back there on another day, do the same thing, with the same result.  This trout seemed to like being taken out of the water.  Eventually, I guess we and the trout lost interest in this.

Once when I was six and he eleven, he pumped me up on the swings on the playground at school.  I don’t know whatever possessed him, but when he got us up really high, he decided to stand on my shoulders.  It’s amazing that we both didn’t get hurt, because I just sort of crumbled under his weight, and we both came crashing down.

We raised rabbits together.  We started with two and a year later we had 99.  We both loved getting inside the rabbit hutch, watching the mothers with their new babies.  We thought we were going to make money by selling them, but we couldn’t even give them away.  We ended up letting them go up in the woods, not knowing that they wouldn’t survive in the wild.

We spent a lot of time down by the pond.  We both loved frogs and we loved looking for frog eggs.  It seems like we would spend hours just sitting on that big rock, watching the water. He built a raft, put an inner tube under it, and poled us around the pond.

To this day I have a phobia of fish hooks.  Joe took me fishing in our brook, quite a ways from our house.  When he cast out his line, the hook went right through my ear.  I think he removed the worm and then we took the long walk back to the house with me attached by hook to the end of his line.  I think Mom cut the hook, and then pulled it out with pliers.

Then there was the time we were sliding on the hill behind the house.  He had been taking me down the hill on his sled, with him steering.  I guess he got tired of going cautiously down the hill with a little kid and wanted to go faster with a bigger kid.  At the top of the hill he handed me the sled and I thought he said, “Here, you go ahead” and then he took off down the hill on a toboggan with someone bigger. I couldn’t believe he was letting me go by myself, but I did it anyway, not even knowing how to steer.  I slid right into a barbed wired fence at the bottom of the hill and got a big gash in the side of my face, almost taking out my eye.  He ran over to me and yelled, “I told you to stay put!”  Leaving a trail of blood, we headed back to the house, and then had to wait while Mom finished up her order with the door-to-door Grand Union man before she could take care of me.

I know now that Mom was really afraid of lightning.  When I was little, she used to wake us up during a thunderstorm, saying, “Come and watch the pretty lightning.”  We would all sit on the porch, bundled in blankets until the storm had passed.  I’m guessing now that he was probably old enough to realize the real reason we were doing this, but he never let on.

Sometimes when Joe was with the Hale boys he could be really mean!  We were all in the hay loft in the Hale barn, and they all went down the ladder first. Then they took the ladder away and told me I had to jump.  They left me up there for what felt like hours. I peed in my pants.  Finally he, or somebody else, came back and put the ladder up and helped me get down

He and I would scheme against Winona, because sometimes we resented her big sister bossiness, and she was way too sophisticated for our tastes.  One time he pretended to have shut the shop window on me, and my top half was hanging out the window and my bottom half was inside, and I was screaming like I was trapped.  Winona came running to “rescue” me, and when she got there we both just laughed at her. She was not amused and told us both off

One fall day we were all digging potatoes in the potato patch. At the end of the day, our parents had gone somewhere, and we were cold, dirty and tired.  Joe cooked up some small, just out of the ground potatoes and added butter, cream, salt and pepper.  It was the best meal I ever tasted and still is to this day!

Joe actually built a sugar house amongst the maple trees on what was the Calkins land.  Together we had a maple sugaring operation.  We would collect the sap on a stone boat that was pulled by our horse Babe.  I remember how deep the snow was back then, because it was at least up over Babe’s knees.  I might have been 10, and he was probably 15.  I remember falling asleep on the stack of cedar slabs that he had piled up inside the sugar house for the fire, and waking up all sticky from the sweet steam.

At the end of a hot summer day, Joe drove us up to the beach at Joe’s Pond.  We dove in, (there was some sort of dock back then), and when I came back up he asked, “Where are your glasses?”  I had forgotten to take them off, and now they were gone.  We searched and searched, but the water was all murky because of all the swimmers there, and we couldn’t find them.  He had to take me back home, and I was so scared because I couldn’t see, but mostly because I was going to be in big trouble.  Joe woke me up very early the next morning, and we went back up to the beach.  He found them!!  From the end of the dock, he looked down into the water and could see the outline of my glasses where the sediment had settled.  Not only did he retrieve my glasses, but he also kept my secret.  My mother never found out that I had been so careless.

Later in life, Joe had quit college and was farming.  He watched his cows coming down from the pasture and knew something was not right.  At the top of the hill above the pond one of his cows dropped.  She had tangled in some barbed wire and had severed one of her teats.  He tried really hard to save that cow, but eventually she died from the loss of blood.  I can vividly remember his desperation and his sadness, as much for the cow as for his financial loss.

I trailed after him for many years, and except for the “Hale incident,” I don’t remember him ever acting like he resented it.  I wish we could have gotten that back, but I’m glad for these special memories.

This article was first published in the June, 2010, issue of The North Star Monthly

To see the photo album associated with this article, click here