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Film wins history award
By VDC Staff
A haunting piece of Vermont history — the story of Ascutney farmer Romaine Tenney — has been brought to life in animation and has earned its creator, Burlington filmmaker Travis Van Alstyne, the 2025 Richard O. Hathaway Award from the Vermont Historical Society.
Van Alstyne’s film, Love of the Land, tells the tragic story of Tenney, a lifelong bachelor and dairy farmer who refused to leave his land when it was seized by the state in 1964 to build Interstate 91. Rather than abandon his farm, Tenney set fire to his barns and house and took his own life — an act that has come to symbolize the clash between Vermont’s rural traditions and the march of modern progress.
The Hathaway Award, named for the late historian Richard O. Hathaway, recognizes outstanding contributions to the study and interpretation of Vermont’s history. It was presented Thursday during the Historical Society’s annual meeting at the Vermont History Center in Barre.
“This profoundly moving film humanizes an event often seen as a footnote to the mid-20th-century transformation of Vermont,” said Stephen Perkins, the Society’s executive director. “In place of the former interpretation of the event as public protest, Travis Van Alstyne’s work instead shows Tenney’s actions as a requiem to a lost way of life.”
Van Alstyne began the project in 2020 and spent four years creating more than 3,000 digitally hand-drawn frames. The short film features narration and voice work by Vermont farmer and actor George Woodard and was supported in part by Vermont Public’s Made Here fund.
Love of the Land is available to watch for free at www.loveofthelandfilm.com/watch, or view right here:
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That story haunts me to this day, ever since Yankee Magazine had an article years ago. And of course, the incident is memorialized in the VT visitor center at the southern border. Every time I drive by Exit 8, I think about it.
I will most assuredly check this out.
More celebration of mental illness. When will it end?
I am a flatlander who fell in love with Vermont in the mid 1990’s, and finally was able to make it my (hopefully last) home in 2019. No, I do not want its natural beauty and way of life spoiled by “progress”, but I certainly don’t think the deification of nature and/or killing myself is an option.
Celebration of mental illness? Say what?
It’s a film about an incident that occurred because this man loved his home and his way of life and was abused by government overreach, he reached his breaking point. Did you even watch this film?
Shame on you.
7th Generation Vermonter here. Unless you were raised here generationally you will never understand how this man felt about his home being taken away. Many of us Vermonters have been born, raised and died on our Vermont homesteads. I know, as my family generations have for over 200 years and our family still own that land.
This story was published a few years ago by Yankee Magazine. Great article and delves into details. Very touching and sad. Hope all the pics are included. One pic shows Romaine Tenney. The “progress of I-91”
https://newengland.com/yankee/eminent-domain-romaine-tenney-farm/
THANKS Tom for sharing this tear-jerking tragic story. I remember reading that story when it was published. Unfortunately, the photos didn’t come through on your link, just the first and last pictures were visible to me.
I was 10 years old when I heard the radio news report that Mr. Tenney had burned his farm and committed suicide. My parents, who each grew up on Vermont farms during the Depression, were very saddened to hear the news, his story was well-known to locals long before his tragic end. My parents (and I) had watched I-91 during its earliest construction days in the late 1950s near Brattleboro. They understood in a very heartfelt way that the interstate highway was going to change Vermont forever, for good AND for bad.
My parents grew up knowing some very eccentric rural Vermont family members who had been born not long after the Civil War, and I was lucky enough to have met several of them before they passed in the 1960s. We all felt a connection of sorts with Mr. Tenney, because his story resembled in some ways my great aunt who refused to have electricity installed on the family farm until 1958, and who still spun yarn from raw wool on her vintage 1825 spinning wheel, until her passing in 1969. As young as I was back then, I came to understand that modern times had erased much of the Vermont our ancestors had forged. My parents and I had some semblance of understanding why he did not want to surrender his way of life for the state’s eminent domain laws and the construction of a highway that would destroy his farm, because we recognized that our own ancestral family members lived similar lives.
As for the “flatlander” who posted a reply here that was so contemptuous of both Mr. Tenney, and of the very thoughtful film that Travis van Alstyne has created to tell the story of a serious event in modern Vermont history: you have demonstrated in spades your lack of understanding about what Vermont once was. Further, you have also demonstrated why you will ALWAYS be a flatlander with your shallow understanding about the roots and the heritage of the Green Mountain state.
Powerful response!!!! Thanks for sharing this intimate story of your family ❤️
I too am a flatlander, when I first came here it was such a spiritual experience for me, I knew immediately that I should have lived here all my life. When I arrived, it was to embrace the cultural ways of life here, I had no intentions to come here and dictate or demand changes… I LOVE IT JUST LIKE IT IS/WAS.
Rearched Yahoo and came across more links to this story. In this link there are more pics of Tenny and a song by Sean Murray in Williamstown VT “The Ballad of Romaine Tenney” https://www.reverbnation.com/murrayandmarion/song/26124871-the-ballad-of-romaine-tenney (5:01)
VT Digger also had an article by Kevin O’Connor September 8, 2024 60 years later. would post the link, but am limited. Seems I’m obsessed by the article as being the difference between right and wrong. Tourists love I-9 and VT government. Phil Hoff (MA) and Senator Aiken loved the opening of that road encompassing Exit 8 Ascutney area, a pic shows their ribbon cutting.
What a wonderful heart felt recounting of this tragic event. Yes, you have to be a Vermonter to fully understand Romaine’s love of his land, animals and place in time.
Today, there are fewer highways planned that would require the State of Vermont to exercise ‘Eminent Domain.’
Yet, today in Vermont, there are thousand of acres of beautiful and productive woods, fields and pastures that are being destroyed to accommodate the cheaply made, inefficient, and eyesore ugly solar arrays that are deemed so necessary by our ‘Green Scam’ politicians and newly arrived ‘Flatlanders’ who do not share the love or appreciation of place in time observed and cherished by Romaine Tenney.
I’ve no doubt that Romaine is rolling in his grave over this asinine travesty…
I feel that most folks kind of skimmed over the rest of my reply after seeing my first statement followed by the triggering word “flatlander”.
It is a sad story indeed. I wish it had turned out differently, and I do see his point of view. As I said, I also do not want this beautiful state spoiled by unchecked expansion in the name of progress. We need housing, we need business, but not at the cost of what makes Vermont the Green Mountain state.
But my original point, which some have missed, is, should we really lionize the path Mr. Tenney took? He had so many people trying to help him, but instead he chose to destroy everything that he loved. Is it a cautionary tale? I don’t know. I certainly don’t feel that the film presented it that way, and that’s what prompted me to post.
But I guess sorting out the “true Vermonters” is more important than questioning, at least on this forum.
Your original remarks were singularly harsh and judgemental. At minimum, a more diplomatic choice of words and tone would have served you better.
Tragic events like this have occasionally served to illustrate a larger set of issues, and have been part of history for as long as it has been written and recorded. No one has lionized or endorsed Mr. Tenney’s terrible choice 61 years ago, but lots of people have acknowledged that his actions symbolized a lost way of life in a Vermont forever changed by the construction of a major highway.
This could have been avoided if the surveyors were not dead set on running a straight line by hie property. They could have swung the highway several hundred feet closer to the village. Sad!
Loved the film, Love of the land! I was a teen in Fairlee, a town that was literally split down the middle by I-91. And neighborhoods were destroyed. The sentiment in this story hits close to home…
I watched the poignant video and read the linked articles (from the commenters) and listened to the song. This is a powerful story all Vermonters should know.
I’m a flatlander who, like many others, never wanted or needed Vermont to change to suit my wishes. I had driven 1-91 and I-89 so many times without considering the cost of human lives it took to build those convenient highways (and all highways in the USA).
In school, we were taught about eminent domain and how devastating it is to the few, in service to the many.
But Romaine Tenney’s heartbreaking story is a perfect example that makes you question the merits of any large construction project that dramatically alters a particular village or town in the name of progress. We should not be so quick to judge Mr. Tenney’s actions until we walk 64 years in his footsteps, at that time in history, not judged through today’s lens. Great job by Mr. Van Alstyne in creating a powerful piece that effectively tells Mr. Tenney’s story with respect.
I believe the road should have been moved, even if that drove up the cost. The eventual human cost was too great a price.
I will look for the Exit 8 memorial.