A retired schoolteacher explains the birthday of Vermont in three easy paragraphs.
Vermont’s Lincoln legacy
He never visited Vermont, but Lincoln did visit compassion on her soldiers. Vermont gave Lincoln votes, elections, stone for many monuments, and – finally – a home for three generations of descendants.
House honors Tuskegee Airman, 95
The Vermont House of Representatives today honored Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Woody Woodhouse.
Many young Vermonters unaware of Holocaust
Almost half of young Vermonters know little about the Holocaust.
Louis Armstrong recites “The Night Before Christmas”
Bayside Pavilion, Colchester veteran Louis Armstrong, Jr. recites “The Night Before Christmas”
VT journalist, historian recalls 1965 demise of ‘one town, one rep’ Legislature
Steve Terry remembers when every Vermont town – no matter how small – had its own legislator.
‘Dec. 7, 1941, changed our lives’: Scores of WWII vets venture to Pearl Harbor on attack’s 80th anniversary
80 years later, the survivors of the survivors from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have a story, and a lesson, for younger Americans.
Coolidge historian Shlaes to speak Oct. 2 at Coolidge home
Bestselling author Amity Shlaes will be the keynote speaker at the Ethan Allen Institute Jefferson Day Dinner Oct. 2 at the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth.
VT woman architect pioneered solar home in 1947
Ruth Reynolds Freeman of Burlington, a pioneer woman architect, also pioneered the design of the passive solar home.
Vermonter in NYC recalls ash, horror of 9/11
Vermonter Louise McCarren remembers New York City, September 11 2001.
Daisy Turner ‘non-fiction comic’ published
The life of Daisy Tuner of Grafton, daughter of a freed slave, has been told in a graphic “comic book.”
Black sheriff elected in 1879 kept the peace for 25 years
Vergennes elected a black man sheriff for 26 years, beginning in 1879.
Reeve Lindbergh ends term with Vermont Arts Council
Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974), and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001), has ended her long-serving role as a trustee of the Vermont Arts Council.
Historians, re-enactors celebrate “Breakenridge Stand-off”
Six years before the Battle of Bennington, the Green Mountain Boys were born when a handful of Vermonters frustrated the plans of a posse of New Yorkers in the “Breakenridge Stand-off.” Re-enactors and historians will celebrate the 250th anniversary of this little-known but important event Sunday, July 18.
July 4 in Vermont history honors freedom, faith
My fellow Vermonters, today as we gather to celebrate the glorious history of the Fourth but we too wonder about our nation’s future. Let us take some consolation that many celebrants of bygone Fourths questioned if their nation would long endure.
Vermont general pronounced his own ‘Emancipation Proclamation,’ two years before Lincoln
In 1861 Gen. John Wolcott Phelps of Guilford had no authority to actually free slaves, but his tract became known as the Phelps Emancipation Proclamation.
Lake Dunmore, 19th century glassmaking center
The state’s first glassworks opened along the shores of Lake Dunmore in 1813. The lakeside workings, variously referred to as either the Vermont Glass Factory or Lake Dunmore Glass Company, consisted of a large factory complex that stood near today’s Sunset Lodge.
Remembering June 6, 1944
In the next few years, we will have no living witnesses to what has been described by historians as one of the greatest military achievements of all time – the Normandy landing in France, on June 6, 1944.
George Fox of Thetford, heroic WWII chaplain
The oldest of the four chaplains on the USS Dorchester —Methodist minister George L. Fox—was from Thetford. When America had entered World War I, he had enlisted in the Marines at 17. Trained as an ambulance driver, he won a Silver Star on the Western Front for rescuing a wounded soldier from a battlefield full of poisonous gas—despite the fact that he had no gas mask. He stood just five feet seven; after Pearl Harbor, Reverend Fox enlisted in the Army the same day his 18-year-old son Wyatt, who survived the war, joined the Marines.
Baseball & Reconciliation
There was a lump in my throat as I sat in the stands at the Recreation Field when I saw this elderly, slightly overweight man, stroll, with a slight shuffle, to the mound with a borrowed glove on his left hand and toss the ball from the pitcher’s mound to the Mountaineer’s catcher. It was apparent that he no longer had a blazing, big-league fastball, but his pitch, slightly wobbly and off center, did reach the catcher mitt on the fly and was softly embraced. And I instantly thought back to memorable and poignant times of decades ago, when I sat transfixed, watching this ace take on my beloved Dodgers.
UVM students reno Kent’s Tavern
In cooperation with the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, UVM gave a group of civil engineering students an important task to prepare renovation plan for one of Kent’s Corner buildings.
Rediscovered St. Albans fossil excites scientists
A recent rediscovery of a classic, 19th-century fossil site in northwestern Vermont is giving paleontologists a better understanding of Earth’s earliest lifeforms.
As teacher, biologist, archaeologist, St. Albans native broke new ground
If Indiana Jones had been a woman, she’d be someone like archaeologist and educator Lucy Langdon Williams Wilson – a St. Albans native and Castleton grad.
Vermont saloon queen died a millionaire
The fight against alcohol in the United States didn’t begin with the passage of Prohibition’s Volstead Act in 1919. It started long before with religious reformers mostly leading the way to ban liquor nationwide.
Historic bank vault recalls gilded age of Bradford
This bank vault is empty, a relic of a history almost invisible to passersby. The one-time bank vault within the Bank Block is a welcome sight for most. Visitors entering Village Eclectics 2 have a hint to its presence in the form of a dollar sign engraved in the granite keystone of the building that once stored the riches of 19th and early 20th century Bradford businesses.
Does inventor’s steamboat rest at bottom of Lake Morey?
The bottom of Vermont’s 548-acre Lake Morey, originally known as Fairlee Pond, is alleged to be the watery grave of the world’s first steamboat.
256-year-old Hell’s Half Acre treasure legend alive and well
by Lou Varricchio Republished from the March 20 Sun Community News BRISTOL | How a legend grows over the centuries is a subject worthy of a university dissertation. In the case of […]
Since colonial days, police have been shields against crime
In colonial Vermont and New Hampshire, constables were authorized to “pursue, or hue-and-cry after Murderers, Peace breakers, Thieves, Robbers, Burglars and other capital offenders.” Every able-bodied man was required to respond to a constable’s hue-and-cry. They formed a posse comitatus.
Wooly mammoth fossil discovered 1848 in Mt. Holly
A Vermont wooly mammoth fossil, discovered in a railroad right-of-way at Mt. Holly near Rutland, is still helping paleo-researchers understand what life was like in the Ice Age.
Maria von Trapp: A place called Vermont
The story of the music-filled lives of the von Trapp Family Singers, their performance at the Salzburg Music Festival, how Maria met Capt. Georg von Trapp and his children, and the family’s escape from Nazi-annexed Austria in 1938 (just before war erupted), is well known. The family’s eventual relocation to the USA is also frequently recounted. But what few know is how the Von Trapps came to call Stowe, Vermont, their new home.
When James Bond hunted down a villain on Echo Lake in Vermont
When most of us think of fictional master British spy James “007” Bond, we might imagine the sun-drenched Riviera coast, nasty Karate-chopping villains, or strong female characters played by the likes of actresses Ursula Andress and Honor Blackman. What we probably don’t think about when imagining Mr. Bond is either Vermont’s Echo Lake or New York’s Lake George. Well, it’s time to rethink Secret Agent 007’s fictional espionage playground.
The mystery of the Champlain Stone
Vermonters and New Yorkers know much about French explorer Samuel de Champlain from his brief exploits along the shores of the great lake that now bears his name. The French explorer made it at least as far south as the future sites of forts Crown Point or Ticonderoga; he most likely battled native people along the lakeshore, in 1609, somewhere near the sites of the famous 18th-century British citadels.
Rutland boy became Civil War general, hero
Rutland-born Brig. General Edward Hastings Ripley attained the rank at age 25, and along with Gen. George Armstrong Custer, was among the nation’s youngest generals ever appointed in the War Between the States.
