Finding Answers through the Fragments

Bruce Badger’s Memorial Album Comes Home

Bruce L. Badger

By Sharon Lakey

Jean Dutton, sister of Danville’s only soldier killed in action in Vietnam, Bruce L. Badger, made a decision. She would send the album she created detailing the events surrounding her baby brother’s death. “I think it should be in Danville,” she said over the phone. Before sealing the box, she added his Vermont Patriot’s Medal and the last two letters he wrote to his mother before his death on April 2, 1968.

When the box arrived at Historical House, we unpacked it, set it on the table and reverently turned the pages. It exudes a certain solid silence. The cover is a deep brown color with an embossed mandala on the front, and every piece the album is covered in protective plastic, smooth to the touch. Even the glues she used on the contents are of archival quality; it is meant to be handled and read and be accessible for many years to come.

Perusing the book, it seems stark at first. The content is straightforward, unembellished.  But when you take time to read each page, skimming over the repetitious elements of newspaper clippings, each chosen fragment adds a little more depth to the mind-numbing loss the family must have experienced at his death.

It opens with a senior photo of Bruce, a black and white 5 x 7. The photo is of a clear-eyed, serious young man, dressed in a suit, a white kerchief peeking out of the lapel pocket. It is this photo the family gave to the media, and it is repeated time and again in the succeeding newspaper clippings. Page two opens with a 5 x 7 color photo of Bruce in his army uniform. He wears the same serious look, but there is a hint of pride the young man felt in wearing the uniform.

On the army photo page, Bruce’s senior photo is repeated, heading two newspaper clippings. The first is the smallest column: “IN VIETNAM—Sp/4 Bruce L. Badger, son of Mr. and Mrs. Philip M. Badger Sr., Danville, arrived in Vietnam March 3…” Right next to it is a slightly larger column with the same photo: “Danville Man Killed in Vietnam—A 21-year-old Danville man has been reported killed in action in Vietnam...April 2…”

Bruce was a shy, intelligent youth, renowned locally as a sterling baseball pitcher and avid outdoorsman. At university in Logan, Utah, for two years, he enjoyed hiking the wild country there. But, as the war raged, he felt the call to enlist.

Most of us in Danville know his name because of the Bruce Badger Memorial Highway that connects Danville from Hill Street to North Danville.  The highway naming was the result of efforts by Louise Lessard. Her brother, Roger, was Bruce’s classmate, and she had been haunted for years about something that took place on Bruce’s last leave before leaving for Vietnam. She remembers a February day in 1968 when Bruce stood in the Danville General Store greeting those who entered. In this memory he is shaking hands with all who came through the door, telling them goodbye. His message—“I won’t be coming back.”

“I just couldn’t get this out of my mind,” said Louise. “I didn’t want him to be forgotten.” She took it on herself to ask the Select Board to change the name of the highway, and it was granted in 1983. There is a photo of this celebration in the album, the family gathered under the sign. Geneva, his mother, is in front, dressed all in white, holding a black purse.

She was an elementary school teacher in Danville and Walden. Bruce was her surprise child, she told Louise in an interview for a North Star article in 1991 , coming when she was 42-years-old. “Bruce was the easiest of my five kids. He was such a good boy and never gave me any trouble.”

Though all family members were deeply affected by Bruce’s death, it is Geneva that emerges in the album as the most stoic of figures. Both of his letters, now included at the end of the album, begin with “Dear Mom…” Page four of the album begins with a newspaper photo of the honor guard presenting the American flag to her. She stands straight, hand raised to receive the folded flag, head tilted upward to look at the tall man before her.

Toward the end of the album, Jean has included a piece written by Geneva. Jean entitled it “A Mother’s Remembrance,” but the strangeness of the writing is that there is literally no emotion in it; it is an exacting list of facts:  “Bruce left Danville Feb. 13, 1967 by bus for Manchester, N.H. He was sent to the U.S. Army Reception Center Station, Fort Jackson, S.C. Feb. 14, 1967…”

It ends with: “March 17 [1968], he was sent out on armored assault vehicle. He was injured by an enemy mine April 2, at Tam Ky at 8:35 a.m. He was taken to 2^nd Surgical Hospital by helicopter and died at 11:50 a.m. We were notified by Sgt. Webb April 3, 9:50 a.m. He arrived in Maryland April 8 and met by Duncan McNaughton. He was brought to Desrochers & Sayles funeral Home April 9 where he remained until April 13. His funeral was held April 13 at Congo Church. Military Honor Guards came from Camp Devens. His personal possessions came May 24. Stone was set May 25. Marker arrived June 28. Money came July 25. Lt. Golding presented his awards Mon. Nov. 3, 1968. He helped us with military affairs. History of 1^st Cav. and second lot of patches came from Col Treadwell Jan. 3, 1969.”

She was a mother looking for answers, and facts were as close as she could get. In a letter dated May 15, 1968, from a Captain of the Armor Commander, she received the following information: “In the mid-morning hours at approximately 8:35 a.m., your son was on a search and clear mission three miles north of Tam Ky, Quang Tin Province, Republic of South Vietnam. Bruce was assigned as the machine gunner when his Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle ran over an enemy mine, severely wounding Bruce and two fellow crewmembers. Within seconds the platoon medic was administering aid to Bruce and within minutes he was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital. Despite the best possible medical care, Bruce died at 11:50 a.m. at the 2^nd Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai, Republic of South Vietnam…Bruce’s personal property is being collected and will be shipped to you immediately. I know you will treasure his personal property, and I hope that it will reach you without delay.”

Evidently, she pushed for more information as the following letter shows. In a response to Geneva’s questions, the Squadron Chaplain writes: “Dear Mrs. Badger, Your letter has been referred to me. Since I have just recently joined the squadron, I did not have the privilege of knowing your son, Bruce.

“I have checked with his troop and the men who knew him. They thought very highly of Bruce and were very saddened by his loss.

“Bruce was a side gunner on an Armored Cavalry vehicle which struck a mine during a mine sweeping operation. Two other men from C Troop were killed with Bruce along with three Marines.

“All Cavalry men wear flak vests when on operations. However, the nature of Bruce’s wounds was such that his vest could not save him. He did not regain consciousness after the incident and so was granted a painless death…”  With this information, she would have to be satisfied. To find spiritual peace, she had to look elsewhere, and Jean reports that she made daily visits to Danville Green cemetery for many months after his burial.

Glued into the album are five Polaroid photos that are from an unknown source.  Jean has no remembrance of where they came from, but there they are, reminiscent of photos we have all seen from Vietnam--a brown landscape with young men, war machines and village hamlets. They illustrate the type of military vehicle and activity that Bruce and his squadron were undertaking. In the upper left corner on the page is a particularly odd image; it is of an armored vehicle that is all out of alignment, disjointed, pieces of it lying on the ground. Is it Bruce’s vehicle?

As an old woman, Geneva visited the Washington D.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial. One of the family members snapped a photo of her reflected in the glossy granite where Bruce’s name is engraved. It is titled by Jean as “Geneva Badger at the Vietnam Memorial.” She is seated in a wheelchair in a red dress, looking at her sons name among all the rest.  On that same page is a photo of bronze figures--three soldiers, dressed for the heat of Vietnam and wearing their flak vests.

Like many before and after him, gentle Bruce was lost for a cause that was stated simply in a letter from the White House to Mr. and Mrs. Badger, dated April 12, 1968: “Americans throughout our great country are eternally indebted and humbly grateful to your son for his selfless courage in fighting to preserve the ideal of freedom for all men…Lyndon Johnson.” In the album are many such letters of condolence from high sources as well as listings of medals and commendations given to him posthumously. On one of the pages is a newspaper column listing Vermonters who were killed in Vietnam: 114, including two that Geneva added in her own handwriting after the column was published.    

Glenn, Bruce’s older brother, spoke at the funeral: “Bruce…We remember your love for the picturesque hills of Vermont and Utah and your appreciation of the lovely things of life. The sun streams in golden shafts on the mountains and streams that you loved. You were close to nature, because you understood the beauty of life’s precious gifts which we take for granted…You were tolerant and understood that these were times of few convictions, but days of great causes and passions.”

Bruce’s album and Vermont Patriot’s Medal will be on display at the Danville Historical Society during the month of November. Hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 7:00. 

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

For more photos related to this article, click here. 

   

The Danville Name is Not What it seems

By Stephen McDougall

DANVILLE – This year, the historic town of Danville celebrates its 150^th anniversary, but few residents know the origin of the name for their town. Sure, a few know that it came from the town of Danville, Vermont because of  pioneers who came north of the border in the early 1800s at the invitation of the Lower Canada governor who offered them free land to settle.

But over the years, many residents assumed the name had to do with someone named Dan. Few realized the name had a more complicated past and is not an English name, but rather a derivative of a famous geographer and map maker from France.

In the 1790s, the founding father of Vermont, Col. Ethan Allen, was searching for names for some of towns he wanted to establish in his newfound state, which had broken away from the larger state of New York. Because the northern half of the state had once been the lower part of the former New France up until the British conquest in 1760, the French influence on the state was still strong.

After the Americans won their independence from the British in the early 1780s with the help of the French government, Allen wanted to thank them by using French names for some towns. Under the advice of expatriate French author Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, Allen took the name Danville from Jean-Baptiste de Bourgignon d’Anville, a cartographer for the French king Louis the fifteenth.

D’Anville was famous in France for redrawing most of the world maps based only on reports from explorers he recieved at his office in Paris. He died in 1782 at the age of 85. The name was anglicized by removing the apostrophe and leaving the D in place at the front of the name.

Despite his working for the King of France, d’Anville did not have an aristocratic title, unlike that of Duc d’Anville, the son of a former Huguenot who became a vice-admiral in the French navy. Known as the Duke, this d’Anville tried to retake Acadia from the English in 1746 using an amarda of ships and a regiment of soldiers from France. But before he could attack the English in what is now Nova Scotia, the hapless aristocrat died of a mysterious poisoning at Cape Breton. The two d’Anvilles do not appear to have been related, given that the map maker was a Bourguignon and the vice-admiral was from the Rochefourauld family.

The story would have ended there if not for the exporting of the name to Quebec via the first Vermont pioneers to leave and form a similar town in the Eastern Townships 150 years ago. But an extensive look at our neighbour south of the border indicates there are also 17 Danvilles in as many states in the U.S. Most of the Danvilles are small communities similar to those in Danville, Quebec and Danville, Vermont. The next closest Danville is in New Hampshire, about an hour’s drive north of Boston.

Besides these two New England towns, there are Danvilles in the states of  Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

What is not known is why these other states chose the Danville title for their towns. Do they know the origin of the name?  Past attempts to contact these towns via the internet have not been successful. The Record will endevor to find out for a future article.

EDS : Pics of the historic characters are hard to find. Allen is on wikipedia, but Bourguignon d’Anville is not.

Senator Jane Kitchel, Paul Chouinard, Alice Hafner and Stephen McDougall in Danville, Q.C.

Note from Sharon Lakey, Director of Danville Historical Society :

This summer, when our Danville, VT, tour went to Danville, QC, one of the events we enjoyed was a display of historical photos set up in a room in the school. Several historical articles were on display in the hall as well, and this one was pointed out several times as a new piece of information about our town’s name. The author of the above article, who writes for the local paper in Danville, QC, was recently at Autumn on the Green with a contingent of citizens at a booth sharing information about their town and it 150th anniversary. We hope you enjoy this article; McDougall says he has more!

This article was republished in the November, 2010, issue of The North Star Monthly.

The Campico Story

Hubert Simons working on the first camp.

By Eleanor Bonney Simons

On a beautiful October afternoon, about 1950, Hubert and I drove around back roads as we often did. As we went by the Ward Farm in the Tampico area, we stopped to visit with Leon Crawford. Hubert asked him if he knew of a piece of land for sale where he could build a camp. Leon said, “I know just the place. Come. I’ll show you.”

He led us up to a height of land in his hay field with almost a 360 degree view of the Presidential range of the White Mountains to the East, Mt. Moosilauke to the South and Burke Mountain and the Willoughby gap to the North, with a scattering of Vermont farms in the foreground. Hubert had grown up on a farm on what is now the McDowell Road, so it was all very familiar to him. Leon insisted that we should have the land forever “as long as rivers run downhill.” They would only like the opportunity of taking their supper up there occasionally. As far as we know, they never did.

We found a Sears-Roebuck building, probably meant for a garage or a utility building that we thought would make a good camp. Since $1000 seemed like a lot of money, our good friends, Velma and Winona Hall and Mary Stewart, who also wanted a camp, agreed to help pay for it. We’d all use it.

Hubert did most of the building, and a mason from Barnet built a chimney and fireplace. We often stopped to buy a loaf of Pauline Crawford’s home-made bread on our way up to spend evenings working on the camp. Since there was no water, we always carried it, and we found some Aladdin kerosene lamps like those that Hubert remembered from the farm. We shopped yard sales for kitchen equipment and friends contributed so much stuff, we were in danger of overload. Friend Rebecca Skillin donated red material with Pennsylvania Dutch figures that I made into curtains. Hubert and I spent our first overnight in the camp in mid-July and nearly froze, proving the futility of heating with a fireplace. Later, Betsy Chamberlin gave us an old parlor stove from her family homestead in North Haverhill, NH, which actually made it comfortable.

Cousin Theodore and Belle Perrigard also had a hand in the building and furnishing of the camp. Theodore helped Hubert build a privy, which was placed just over the brow of the hill in back of the camp. We discovered that if you left the door open while using the privy, you were looking directly into Archie Champagnes’s dooryard in the road below!

The next summer we added a bedroom, which made room enough for Cecil Brown and me to invite our Girl Scout troop for an overnight trip. Other visitors were hunters. Hubert, brother-in-law Jack Young, and friend Dean Romig, enjoyed the hunting season, but thought it was a pretty cold, windy spot. We girls, Mary Stewart along with Velma and Nonie Hall, had planned a winter weekend, which was memorable; we had a January thaw that was very dreary. Fran Sayward braved the long, dark back-road approach, coming all the way from Portland, ME, bringing a homemade meatloaf.

Just as we were beginning to enjoy owning a camp, the Crawfords sold the farm to Scudder Parker and family. They didn’t need strangers in the middle of their hay field, so we sold the camp to them. Velma, Nonie and Mary soon bought a small camp at Joe’s Pond, which worked out well for them; the lake provided more opportunity for fun for them.

And before long, Hubert and I found another spot just down the road and bought half an acre from Bub Dresser for $50. There we built another cabin—mostly Hubert’s work, but as our dear friend Cay Spencer said, “He couldn’t have built it without us. We helped him put up the walls.”

Hubert had saved the cross-arms from the telephone poles on Main Street in St. Johnsbury from when the wires were put underground. A telephone cross-arm, when sawed in half, makes a perfect two-by-four, and the holes were convenient for putting wires through. We had electricity from the start, because there was a transformer right across the road.

Cay Spencer gave us two big storm windows, which made wonderful picture windows. The two small windows on the roadside of the house were from a hen house. The foundation was made of railroad ties and some big rocks. Even the nails were recycled from the foundation of our house, which we were building at that time. Winter evenings Hubert spent in the cellar straightening nails. Jack Young built bunk beds for the bedroom, a trestle table and two benches. The furniture made a convenient spot to sit and enjoy the spectacular view of the Presidential Range and the big field in front that belonged to the Patterson farm.

Labor Day weekend that first year, Betsy Chamberlin and Kay Scott dropped in and stayed for supper. Hubert suggested we go see the Parkers, as he had already gotten acquainted with Scudder. That was our introduction to a wonderful family with four children, who had just moved from a New York City suburb and were trying to make a living farming. We became good friends with the family: Scudder, a newspaper editor; wife Bets; young Scudder (12), called Deacon;  Stephen (10); Sally just starting first grade, and Alan (3) called Punky (short for pumpkin).The family had been chosen by the Ladies Home Journal to be interviewed, and they had been given the offer of a remodeled room. We were surprised to discover that the pictures in the magazine had been printed before the remodeling had actually been done.

Hubert and Scudder hit it off immediately. Bets and I had a lot in common, and we chuckled about their long conversations. Hubert was pleased to be able to help Scudder learn about farming, and he was delighted to have a chance to handle the horse and cow that the Parkers were farming with. They had a joke about the hired man. When Scudder asked him to let him know if he was doing anything wrong, the answer was, “I don’t want to be shooting my mouth off all the goddamn time.” Hubert had a jeep, and we would drive up to visit the Parkers on snowy evenings when traveling was difficult.

The hunters liked the new camp much better, because it was less windy, and the electricity was an added enjoyment. My brother-in-law Jack Young and Dean Romig came many years for deer season. Dean’s son, young Dean, is still coming. They collected water in big milk cans from the Bennett spring and later from Fink spring.

Over the years, we added another bedroom in the northeast end, and for a few years we even had a flush toilet. Hubert rigged up a pump halfway down the hill, with water piped from the swamp. It didn’t last long, as it could only handle a few flushes.

When our son Tom arrived in 1956, he soon loved coming up to camp. He would holler “Campico!” as soon as the camp came into view. When the government offered money to plant trees, Hubert took advantage of the offer, and we planted thousands of trees on 12 ½ acres of land that we bought from Harley Brown. He owned the farm now owned by Van and Lucille. Tom was about three when he followed his father down the rows with the planter, seeding the pine and spruce trees that make up the current forest.

We enjoyed the camp for many years. Because Hubert was a fireman, he couldn’t be out of town. Campico was close enough to St. Johnsbury to allow us to slip out there whenever we found time.  He had a radio in the truck, and if anything was amiss, he would get the call and could get back to town quickly.

Time there was a luxury of simplicity. Indoors there was nothing to do but read and do crossword and jigsaw puzzles.  Outdoors, we loved to ride the back roads in Hubert’s jeep. We thought we discovered Cole’s Pond before it became a resort; maybe it had already been discovered, but it was new to us.  Sometimes, if I can’t sleep at night, I close my eyes and see once again the sweeping view of the White Mountains as they rose beyond Heath’s pasture. It’s a lovely vision.

This article was first published in the November, 2010, issue of The North Star Monthly.
For more photos related to this article, click here.

Circulating Books on the Back Roads of Vermont

Eleanor Bonney Simons remembers her bookwagon days as Regional Librarian

Bonney Simons (in the kerchief) helps customers look for titles in the back of her bookwagon.

By Sharon Lakey

“The one-room school in Stannard was a dark building,” 91-year-old Eleanor Bonney Simons (known as Bonney) remembers. “The windows were regular house windows, not the large ones you would see in typical schools at the time. I thought, ‘How horrible for these children to have to attend a school like this.’”

As she entered the building, she noticed a man in the back of the room, kneeling there to help some child. When he stood up, he came forward with his hand out and introduced himself as Superintendent of Schools, John Holden. Later, he became Vermont’s Commissioner of Education.

According to Bonney, that event changed her attitude. “I understood that these children could be as well-served in a one-room school as any other. Like today, it all depends on the quality of instruction.”

For young Eleanor Bonney, fresh out of Simmons Library School in 1941, moving to Vermont to become Regional Librarian in St. Johnsbury was like going back a century. “Pot-bellied stoves and a teacher who had to do everything--all eight grades in one room!” she exclaims, obviously still impressed with the difficulty those brave teachers faced.

The Regional Library system came into existence as a response to the Great Depression, which had taken its toll on Vermont libraries. With financial support reduced, a State Free Library Commission came up with a plan to set up a system of five regions that would circulate books throughout the state, both to schools and public libraries. Bookwagons would deliver the books, consistently exchanging collections to get the most use out of each book. It was a brilliant plan that would serve Vermonters well.

When she interviewed for the job in Montpelier in the spring of 1941, she remembers being asked, “Have you ever driven in snow?”

“Once,” was her reply. She had just gotten her driver’s license.

Mrs. Wells, the governor’s wife, and O.D. Mathewson, a prominent Lyndon Center educator and founder of Lyndon State College, who had sponsored the bill to set up the regional system, were on the board who interviewed Bonney. She remembers Mathewson saying during the interview, “the reason Vermonters get so much done is they have to get up before breakfast.” No doubt, that comment meant that if she got the job, it wasn’t going to be easy.

Young and unfazed, Bonney was hired and served in that position from 1941 to 1947. She moved to St. Johnsbury, finding an apartment down the street from the Athenaeum where the regional collection was housed on the upper floor. The Athenaeum librarian at that time was Cornelia Fairbanks, the last of the Fairbanks family in St. Johnsbury. “She was a very mild woman, polite,” remembers Bonney. “At the time, Cornelia still used record writing, even though she had a typewriter.“  In school, Bonney had learned this type of writing, but she had also had a course in typing. “I think the Athenaeum still has some of Cornelia’s cataloging cards.”

It was the end of the depression when she started and before WWII, and she was lucky to have two local men who were employed by the WPA to go with her on those early trips as drivers. They were Francis Mayo from St. Johnsbury and Lee Blanchard from Groton. The bookwagon team was set up with a new Plymouth, a small panel truck that had a big lazy Susan shelf in the back that held 600 books. “We’d go out about 15 days a month. The rest would be working on the collection back at the library,” said Bonney.

Lunch was on the road in the bookwagon. Bonney ate from a metal lunch pail that her landlady packed for her. “The state paid on-the-road costs,” said Bonney, “50 cents for breakfast.” Bonney and her drivers visited 53 towns, which included towns in Essex, Orleans, Caledonia , Orange and Washington counties.

Most of the driving was on dirt roads. “No matter what the weather, if we planned to go out, we went,” she said. Of course, there were times when they bogged down, either in snow or mud. She remembers “burying it where Steve Parker now lives on the Old North Church road to Tampico one September. An old man came with his horse. Mr. Blanchard pushed from behind, and the man asked, ‘Can you team it?’ I guessed that meant ‘Can you drive it?’ I nodded and slipped behind the wheel to help guide the car out of the mud.” There were many such events on the back roads of her routes.

She fondly remembers her WPA men. “Mr. Mayo was an avid reader, and I relied on him heavily.” People would gather around the books in the wagon and pepper her with questions about the titles. “I hadn’t read most of them, but Mr. Mayo would help me through. A customer wanted to know if the book they were taking out was any good, and he had read most of them.”

“Mr. Blanchard loved it when we went to Groton. He used to own a store there. He would go into the school and announce, ‘I bet I can name every family represented here just by looking at your faces.’ And he would do it; the kids would be so pleased.” She also remembers that as they drove along the roads, he would count and announce how many head of cattle were in each field along the way.

Her drivers helped her through that first year, but when war was declared in 1942, the WPA was disbanded. There were plenty of good paying jobs to be had in support of the war effort. Not only did her WPA men disappear, but so did many teachers. “They were making a pittance as teachers but could go out and work in factories and make good money.”With her drivers gone, Bonney went it alone or with Isabelle Sargent, a St. Johnsbury girl that graduated from the Academy. “We had to cut back on some of the runs because of the gas coupons,” she said.

She most enjoyed going to the schools. “If a teacher was organized and creative, the kids had a good education.” As a sterling example, she mentioned Dorothy Stanton, who taught at the Tampico in North Danville. “The thing I noticed most about her room was that every time I came, the chairs were often put in a different setting. There was a feeling that the students were always busy, involved in some project they were working on.”

There were schools that were not so fortunate, particularly during the war years when some schools were led by substitutes due to the teacher shortage. She remembers driving into one one-room schoolyard and seeing a boy jumping out the window. The substitute there told her, “These kids can’t read; they just stumble along.” The worse such story she remembers was when a Superintendent came to visit one school, sitting among the students participate in the lesson. “You don’t need to expect anything,” said the substitute. “I’m just keeping the door open.” The teacher shortage was the turning point for the numerous one and two-room schools as consolidation became more prominent.

“I liked going to schools the most, because of the interaction,” said Bonney. “When I went to public libraries, it was mostly to help with book classification and weeding.” A librarian weeds a collection when there are too many books on the shelves, but weeding may or may not be seen as a good thing by the local librarian. “I went to the Barton library to weed. It was a nice building, but books were piled high, even stacked on the windowsills. I don’t know how many boxes were filled that day from the collection as I worked my way through it. I heard later that the librarian came in the next morning, sat at the desk and cried all day. I don’t know if she put them all back on the shelves or not.”

“Sometimes I was asked to go to individual houses to deliver books, and I would do that, too. I remember Mr. Miller in East Topsham, who ran the famous Miller’s store there. He wanted books about the Phillipines, because that was where his son was located in the war. A customer came in the door and asked if he served coffee. ‘Hell, no,’ Miller responded. ‘I don’t deal in antiques.’ There was no coffee, because of the war,” Bonney said in explanation.       

When the war ended, Bonney was in for a life change, too. Before the war she had been introduced to a young fireman when he came to douse a fire in the Athenaeum chimney. Evidently, another type of fire had been lit at the same time. When he returned from the war, he returned to his job at the fire station and began to find ways to engage the beautiful Bonney in conversation. One day, he sauntered by to ask if she had any good books to read. “Oh, can you read?” was her reply.

They were married in 1947, and she quit her fulltime job as Regional Librarian. “He wanted me to,” she said. “It would have been a poor reflection on him if I had to work. Those were just the values of the times.” He went on to become St. Johnsbury’s fire chief for ten years; Bonney worked part time for the new Regional Libarian, Mary Stewart and her assistant, Les Smith, who would become the well-known area bookmobile man.

Michael Roche, our present Regional Librarian, shared the following interesting statistics about Eleanor Bonney Simons’ last year on the job: the St. Johnsbury bookwagon travelled 14,385 miles on 136 working days, averaging 105 miles a day, rain or shine. She delivered to over 100 schools, 58 public libraries, 35 individual stops, 20 stations and 14 private homes for a total of 1,153 stops.

For more photos related to this story, click here.

This article was first published in the October 2010, issue of the North Star Monthly.

   

  

The Morrill of the Story

Duane Whitehead (l) and George Morrill, after coming back from their jaunt in the Bennett cemetery,

.

Thanks to Janice Morrill, we found Samuel on the family tree. George was able to fill in some missing information.

Plan your trip to Historical House

By Sharon Lakey, Director

With travelling an expensive item these days, it pays to preplan your adventures. That’s what George Morrill of Saxtons River, Vermont, did this month. I received a call from Duane Whitehead, an antique bookseller in Bellows Falls, who had struck up a conversation with Mr. Morrill when he visited his bookshop. Duane followed up with phone calls to the Historical House, and that’s how we get to the Morrill of this story.

He explained that George, who is 90 years old, wanted to see the cemetery where William Morrill, a Revolutionary War soldier, was buried. He also wanted to stop by Historical House and learn what we might know and be able to share with him about the Morrills. Wanting to help make the long trip valuable to him, I began to do some searching.         

Those who know Danville history, recognize the Morrill name as one well-connected with the town. When my husband and I arrived here 30+ years ago, we associated it with Nate Morrill, a tall, white-haired gentleman, who passed in 1990. Both he and his wife, Janice, were active in town affairs. Janice has been kind enough to share some of her family’s history and photos with Historical House, and I immediately thought she might be a resource.

The name Morrill is connected with places, too, especially in North Danville. If one looks at the index in our history book, Village in the Hills, there are 20 entries under that name as well as map entries on both the Wallings and Beers Atlas. The former Morrill schoolhouse is located on the Bruce Badger Memorial highway between Danville and North Danville. It is in the hollow on the left, just before you cross the bridge. The next two roads to the left are associated with the Morrills; the first is named Morrill Road and the second is McDowell, which will lead you to the Old North Church. Morrills had farms in that area.

The first thing I did was check a wonderful website I inadvertently discovered. For those of you who use the web, the address is: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vtcbarne/danville.htm  This site is amazing. Included in the information there is a complete cemetery listing. I found a William Morrill there, who is buried in Pope Cemetery in North Danville. Unfortunately, the time period for him as a Revolutionary War soldier did not match up.

Questioning why, I was off to the Town Clerk’s office to check their records. For those readers who have not seen the Town Clerk’s historical records room, it is well worth the trip. What a wonderful job our community has done in keeping historical records! Looking in the births file, I found no William, but was astounded at the number of Morrill cards that were filed there. Sharon Daniell, Assistant Town Clerk, also showed me a book entitled The War of Rebellion, which contains the names of all Vermonters who served in that war. A quick glance through that book let me know that one would need to know the company someone served in to find the listing. It would take more time than I had to give.

The next morning, I called Janice to see if she might be willing to meet with George. She responded with a yes and said she would bring some of her information with her. Now, all that was left for me to do was take a look at the Pope cemetery. I have been by there but never with the intention of stopping to walk through it. Janice directed me to take the second left after the bridge and told me I would “run right into it.”

It was a lovely afternoon to walk that serene place. I saw many Morrill stones, but only one with the name of William. He died at 16 years of age. That young man wasn’t the one George was looking for, but the quiet, fall day and the engraved stone made me stop and wonder. What kind of life did this young man have? Why did he die at 16? I wondered how it affected his family. Cemeteries no longer seem sad places to me; in fact, they are lovely and restful.

I called Duane, and he shyly admitted the name George was searching for was Samuel. Now, that was a horse of a different color! I was sure I had seen Samuel listed. Back to Village in the Hills index—no Samuel. Back to the cemetery listing—a Samuel is buried in the Pope and it fit the right time period. Back to the War of the Rebellion book (on that same web address I mentioned)--no Samuel. Well, at least we had one hit and Janice was going to share her history as well.

George and Duane arrived right on time and Janice shortly after. The most interesting and useful piece of information she brought was a genealogy tree, a blueprint-type document rolled up in a tube. She spread it out on the table, and we hovered over the tree headed by ABRAHAM MORRILL; it states under the heading, “Came to New England cir. 1632, first to Cambridge, thence to Salisbury, Mass. M. daughter of Hon. Robert Clements of Haverhill, Mass.” She and Nate had retrieved the blueprint from his father’s brother, who lived in California. There, in blue and white, was Samuel’s name. Under it is written: “Danville, VT. b. 1741 at Sallisbury d. 1845. Was Revolutionary Soldier. m. Rachel Hoyt.”

He brought with him two books of fiction he has written, inscribing them to the Historical Society. Also in hand was a copy of a thick lineage book he had found in a bookshop in Salt Lake City entitled Morrill Kindred in America, Volume Two that traces the descendants of Abraham Morrill of Salisbury through his three sons to 1931.

Janice shared some of the farm photos she brought, and then offered to travel to St. Johnsbury to copy the blueprint for both George and Historical House. Duane and George were off to the Pope cemetery while I copied the important information of his lineage from the book. When they returned, the two were full of fresh air and excitement of visiting not only the Pope Cemetery but also the Bennett. I was shocked, because in bold letters under that cemetery listing on the website is written: “Access to the cemetery requires walking uphill across the field. Please do not attempt to walk to this cemetery if you are not physically fit.”

Ninety-year-old George looked perfectly fine. Before they left for southern Vermont, we sat for a few minutes and once again looked at the blueprint. We were pointing out one person and another on the chart, and I was making notes in the margin to capture where George’s information filled gaps. Then George sighed and said, “We’re all related anyway.”

True, but wasn’t that a lark!

This article was first published in the October, 2010, issue the North Star Monthly