I realize that this account of my generation in Cabot is quite personal and incomplete.  I think that Archie Stone or Mrs. Gertrude (Wiswell) Wells could have done a better job.  It was thought that Archie was doing this, but it was discovered at his decease that he had not written anything, though he possessed a great fund of information.  So also with Mrs. Wells, I seem to be about the only one left of my generation that might be expected to take an interest in seeing that something is done in this direction.

  I am reminded as to how completely Cabot has changed in fifty to seventy-five years when the only person living where they did in those days from Marshfield line to Mud Pond, is Pliny Smith.  Bert Lyford and wife are two others living, but not in their original homes.
 

  When I was a small boy in Cabot and the time approached for the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the town.  I recall that there was a move underway for having someone compile a history of the town.  The record shows that at the annual March meeting in 1881 a sum of money was voted for this purpose and John M. Fisher was engaged to carry out the project.  About this time, it would appear that other towns in the county, having been settled about the same time, were making a move in the same direction.  These were gathered together and published in a large volume known as Hemmenway's Gazetteer, edited and published by Abbie M. Hemmenway.  I find this volume in the Aldrich Public Library in Barre.  It would seem from a final word by Mr. Fisher that she aided and assisted him in the preparation of this history.  The history of the town of Cabot, as I first knew it, was published in a paper bound volume of about one hundred pages and sold to those who desired a copy.  We had one in our home but I do not know what became of it.  Probably there are some copies still in existence about town.  As I recall, Mr. Fisher dates the completion of his narrative as of July 1881.  Since the town was settled in 1783, it was thus undertaken two years previous to the one-hundredth anniversary of the town. I am probably one of a few of those now living who were present at the celebration of this event.  There my be published accounts in existence, but I know of no such and shall proceed to narrate such recollections of it, as I can recall, and I have quite a vivid memory of the day.

  If the event was celebrated during the one hundredth year, as I judge it was, it would have been in the summer of 1883.  I would have been about nine and one half years of age.  The event took place, perhaps on July 4th, in the sugar grove of the Stone farm on Cabot Plains.  The farm is still the home of the Stone family.  He who now lives there is the grandson of the one who was then carrying the farm.  Well I recall how my two older sisters and older brother and I made the journey that day from our home in the one seated open wagon drawn by the family horse.  The one seat accommodated but three, and one of us boys must sit in back facing to the rear, be relegated to this humble position, we could not agree, so father, who was to remain at home with mother who was ill, imposed his authority as referee.  I was to sit in behind while going and my brother was to drive and those positions were to be reversed on the return trip.  When the time came for the return trip, my older brother seemed to feel the humility of the rear position perhaps more than I had.  He refused to be so humiliated and after my sisters tried to comfort me by saying they would report the matter to father, rather than make a scene, I submitted.  It might not have been as bad, had it not been for the fact that as we came down the hill in sight of the George Webster homestead, the place where C. R. Turner lives, not the big white house that now stands there, but the old red cottage that soon after this time was removed to make way for the present house.  I remembered that here lived Alice Webster, a girl of about my own age whose favor I much desired since we attended the same Sunday School class at the Methodist Church and whose mother was teacher of the class.  To add to my embarrassment, I was barefooted.  I recall that I was quite relieved after passing the house not having caught sight of anyone.

  As for my recollection of what transpired at the celebration, I think the town lawyer, Joseph P. Lamson was master of ceremonies.  His son and only child, Arthur, some seven years of age, spoke a piece which either there or later I memorized:

  There was a bushel basket filled with pieces of boards cut up and split into pieces like kindling wood taken from the first framed house in town.  John Fisher stood by the basket and invited any who wished to take a piece home with them.  "Prof." George Foster from Woodbury who, about that time and for many years thereafter, taught a series of singing schools in Cabot and surrounding towns, sang the song, quite popular at that time, entitled, "I Should Like To Die," said Willie, "If My Papa Could Die Too" etc.  I have seen this touching poem somewhere within a recent time.  I learned to sing this song and many a cry have I had as a boy as its pathos laid hold on me.  There were others, of course, on the program but the years have eradicated them from my memory.  I think there was a band present, probably the Marshfield band as they had a fine one with gay uniforms for many years and played on many occasions.   Of course, at noon there was a picnic lunch and I think lemonade and peanut vendors.  In the afternoon, there was a baseball game, the contending teams I do not recall, but doubtless one of them represented Cabot.  In fact, when one of the Cabot men was at bat, I think it was "Chan" Heath, some small boy ran close to him and as he swung his bat it gave the boy a blow that stunned him.  For a few minutes it looked as though the day might end in a tragedy, but the boy soon regained consciousness and I think was not seriously injured.  Little I then thought that fifty years later at the celebration of the century and a half, I would be one of the preachers on the occasion.  Perhaps there may be a celebration in that beautiful grove on the 200th Anniversary of the town.  It will not be so long, only 32 years.  Wonder if I'll be there  in spirit!

  Going on from this point I shall attempt to narrate in somewhat chronological order such things as I can recall and record from a considerable collection of materials I have at hand.  Some from a scrap book collected over a period of years by my stepmother, Lelia Haines Blodgett, and another loaned me by Mrs. Bertha Pike Wheeler and from other sources, as I may find them here and there.

  Some thing that might be done that would be of great interest for future generations, would be collecting and preserving photographs of people and events that have taken place during these years.  A safe place to store from fire and flood should be provided.  Ours could be the first generation that such a thing would have been possible.  This might apply to the recording of the human voice as well.  We are already listening to the voices of prominent people, long since dead, as they speak to us over the radio.  I know that many such pictures are now in the homes of Cabot families and those who have gone from Cabot.
I shall first try to give a general picture of life as I remember it up until I went away from the town to attend school at Derby Academy in 1891, where a cousin of mine was the principal.

  According to Mr. Fisher's narration the highest population of the township was at the census of 1840 when there were 1440 residents.  From then to the present time, there has been a slow but continual decline until in 1950 it was reported as 826.  As a boy in the eighteen hundred and eighties we called it about 1300.  There was quite a clannishness in those times that centered about ones own school district.  There were fourteen of them at that time.  Each one was a unit in itself.  Each had its annual school meeting and elected some man (never heard of a woman being elected to anything in those days) to serve as "School Committee."  He was expected to have the whole run of the school for the year, hiring the teacher and, if it was so voted, the teacher must "board around," each home entertaining her, or him, for a time in proportion that they had pupils or the amount of the tax they paid.  I plan to later speak of the schools as a division by themselves and only mention them here as a first cell in the organization of the town as a whole.  I think I am correct in saying that the highways were cared for in the same manner  by school districts.  At any rate, one had the choice of either paying their highway tax in money or "working it out."  Well, I remember, one night about the last of May when the suckers were "running" up the brook at the head of West Hill Pond, of getting back home from there at about five in the morning and after eating breakfast reporting for work, with a shovel for all day on the neighborhood road gang.  The fact that it was pretty tough for a lad of fifteen was compensated for by the thought that though I had been out all night, I was credited with doing a day's work as a man along with other men.  About this time, the state legislature passed the law making the whole town the unit for school operation, much as it is at this writing, and along with it the town operation of the highways.  Along with this came the purchasing by the town of the first road machines which were usually drawn by four horses.  This latter move regarding highways caused a lot of dissatisfaction by having only one road gang which, naturally, would give their first attention to the roads in and about the villages.  Those in the more rural districts got little, or no attention, until late in the season, where as under the old system each district would get together early in the season, cleaning out the ditches and piling high the water bars on the hills and with farm plows doing a very satisfactory bit of work.  Perhaps it should be said here that with the incorporation of the village of Cabot, that unit was made responsible for the care of its own streets.

  In the early eighteen hundred and eighties the first roller for breaking the winter roads was constructed and put into operation.  As I recall, it was constructed at the Fowler Ford shop in Lower Cabot.  It was some six or seven feet in height, constructed in two parts, the ends of heavy double planking and the drums covered with spruce 2 x 4's.  A space of about one foot was left between the two drums in the center.  This left a core for the center of the road as well as preventing the roller from slipping sideways.  The total length of the roller was some ten or twelve feet.

  I think it required six horses to haul it over the roads.  It was decided this first one was too heavy and others that were constructed and generally used over town were made lighter and usually drawn by four horses.  Up to this time such breaking of the roads, as was done, was usually a local affair.  Some of which may have been paid for by the town or school district but often was a matter of every one for himself.  Usually ordinary land ploughs were chained to the side of farm sleds and sometimes a wooden scraper made of a piece of plank, with a curved cut out to form a center core in the road was fastened to the front of the sled.  Drifts that were considered too large to be driven through were cut through by shoveling before the team was plunged into them.

  The method of breaking by rolling was continued until the multiplication of autos and advent of tractor plows made a demand for the keeping of the roads open for auto traffic throughout the winter.  Cabot was somewhat slow in adopting the new system and when a clause was placed in the Town Meeting Warning to see if the town would adopt the new method and purchase a snow plough about 1930-35.  Nearly all voters in town were out and the battle raged furiously but the modern method won by a small majority and a vote to purchase a snow plough prevailed.  I understand that with the coming of the snow plough and tractor drawn machines the town has taken this work over from the village.

  While I am considering the matter of highways it may be in place to bring that subject up to date.  When the state began to take over the maintenance of the principal highways of the state in the early part of this century, the one going through the eastern part of the town from West Danville was made a part of this system.  When this was about to be considerably rebuilt and hard surfaced, as it was in the early thirties, Cabot missed one of the greatest opportunities that ever came to it.  It is quite likely that with some political wire pulling, the reconstructed and hard surfaced road might have been brought up the valley from Marshfield to Cabot and either through to Walden Depot or up the lower notch through the center of the town and over the divide and come out near the East Cabot school house, thus putting the villages of Cabot and Lower Cabot on a direct highway from St. Johnsbury to Montpelier.  Of course, it might have been objected by the east part of the town that it could have meant a bit higher grade, though certainly on hills as steep as the Molly Falls hill and the one at the head of the new power reservoir.  As for distance, it would have been practically the same.  Cabot later had the expense of bonding the town for a considerable sum to bring the hard surface road to Cabot village and now finds itself entirely cut off from any public transportation and the only remedy I can see is to complete the hard surface to Walden Depot and then petition the Public Service Commission to route the St. Johnsbury Montpelier busses that way.  This would accommodate a much larger population, taking in the camps on the east side of Joe's Pond, the town of Walden, and the villages of Cabot and Lower Cabot as against the handful of people through East Cabot.  With the likelihood of the passing of the St. J & L. C. and the Montpelier and Wells River RRs. in the near future, there would be the added incentive of making this an established mail route between Montpelier and St. Johnsbury.

  Perhaps I have drifted a bit away from the scenes of the early days of my boyhood which, I started to portray.  In mentioning these railroads lam reminded that they were both constructed and opened for business just about the time that I was born.  Mr. Fisher says the telegraph following the line of the Portland & Ogdensburg RR. (St. J. & L. C.) was brought to Cabot from Walden Depot by a subsidy from Cabot in 1871 and that RR. was opened in 1872.  Evidently the earlier date notes the road under construction.  One of my earlier recollections is that of going to Cabot village with my father on a cold winters day and sitting before the glowing coal fire in the big tall stove at the Sprague & Wells store and listening to the rapid clicking of the telegraph instrument behind the high desk and counter in the Northwest corner of the store and seeing Mr. Wells reel off the messages of dots and dashes on a long roll of paper tape.  Sometimes he seemed to be listening attentively as to some far distant sound.  He was likely practicing reading the messages by sound, as the proficient operators do today.  With the coming of the telephone, this service became less and less important and finally, the year I was born, was cut off at Walden Depot.  The Montpelier & Wells RR. was opened in 1874.

  I have heard my father tell of how he and my mother went along with a great company from Cabot and Marshfield for the celebration of the first regular train as it came into Marshfield Station.  I am wondering if the era of its opening and closing will not just about mark the length of my earthly pilgrimage.

  The first telephone line was brought up die river from Montpelier to Marshfield and Cabot about 1884.  I do not know where the first instrument in Cabot Village was located.  Quite likely, in the Sprague & Wells store.  The one at Lower Cabot was in the house now owned by Mr. Clark, facing the road that turns to Woodbury.  Cornelius Smith (grandfather to Pliny Smith) and wife then resided there and they also had the Lower Cabot P.O. in their house.  I recall that the first day the telephone was in operation my father came home from the village and told how some man from Cabot talked with a man in Marshfield about the purchase of a cow.

  When Mr. Fisher closes his history in 1881 he narrates that there were fourteen school districts in the town, but I believe he does not locate them.  It might not have seemed necessary at that time since they were all in operation but as most of them have ceased operation, it might be of interest to record their location.  I think No. 1 was at the center of the town; number two was probably on the Plains or Cabot village.  I know that number three was at the lower village.  Then there was one on South West Hill (Burnap) District; West Hill Pond, North West Hill, South Walden Road, Walden Heights Road, (Walbridge District), top of Danville Hill and turn left (Reed District), East Cabot, South Cabot (Hookerville), Peterville, near where the power dam now stands.  Perhaps this was called South Cabot, and one on Whittier Hill.  I shall speak more particularly of the school at the lower village since it was here I attended until I was seventeen with the exception of two years I lived away from home at which time I attended North West Hill and West Hill Pond.  Jennie Gould Bruce, tells me the first teacher in town was one of her ancestors, Joseph Smith.

  My first recollection puts me in the lap of a seeming very tall man by the name of Fred Strong, who was teaching at Lower Cabot.  As I remember it, he came from Burlington.  He was attempting to get me to focus my attention on some words and pictures in the primary reader he held before me as I sat on his knee.  I was much more interested in looking up into his face and trying to "size him up."  Also, as I was starting for home, after school, "stopping" to admire probably the first peonies I had ever seen in bloom in the front yard of  "Aunt" Fanny Putnam, as everyone called her.  Aunt Fanny (Stone) Putnam was the daughter of the first settler in Lower Cabot and was the first girl born in Lower Cabot.  She lived alone, in a cottage on the east side of the road on the knoll just as you leave the school house.  The place has been much enlarged since then being where Mr. Bickford now lives.  Seeing my interest in the peonies she came out and talked with me very pleasantly and gave one or two to me which I carried home in great triumph.  They were a deep red.  Also, as I crossed the bridge a bit farther on, just across from what is now the Frank Phelps store, in a small old brown cottage, close to the brook, lived another very elderly lady known to all as "Aunt" Salinda Lyford.  She ran a rag carpet loom and, as we heard its thrashing, we were tempted to stop and look into the open window and watch her and this wondrous machine as she worked it with her feet and threw the shuttle back and forth with her hands.  I think this little old cottage was years later undermined and carried away by a flood.  I remember it was spoken of as one of the oldest houses in the vicinity.

  The first school house, at Lower Cabot, at least the first frame one is still standing and occupied as a residence, a Mr. Scott and wife are living there.  It stands on the south side of the turn that leads to South West Hill.  About the time I was born, 1874, after much debate and the occasion of much hard feeling on the part of some, it was voted to build a new school house which was accordingly done on the spacious lot where it has since stood.  As though to add insult to injury, a steeple and a bell were mounted on top.  The total cost was six hundred dollars.  Instead of benches, made on the spot, there were polished maple desks, mounted on cast iron foundations and window shades on rollers to be pulled up and down by a cord on the end of which was a beautiful wine colored tassel as big as one's fist.

  Soon after it was completed, the bell and its iron standards came up missing!  I suppose some of the opposition thought that at least they would not be reminded, every time it rang, that they had been outvoted.  After a few years, Mr. James Calder, who lived in the small house still standing across the river at the lower end of the village, was working in his meadow beside the mill pond and looking down into the water saw something that attracted his attention.  Closer investigation showed that it was the long lost bell.  He succeeded in pulling it ashore together with one of the iron standards.  It was much rusted but cleaned and restored to the belfry.  A wooden standard was constructed to take the place of the lost cast iron one and for seventy years it sent its call over the countryside until now it has been silenced by the abandoning of the school in that district.  Some were of the opinion that Mr. Calder ought to be commended for the find.  When he was approached as to how he felt about the matter, he said he "lamed his back quite a bit in getting it out," and thought they might give him a bit because of that.  I think he never received anything.  He was a very droll old man.  Mr. Town's coffin and casket shop was nearby Mr. Calder's house.  Being of advanced years and thrifty as well as forehanded, he went to Mr. Town and had him make him a "coffin" from some hemlock lumber and took it home and stored it up over his shed room.  The difference between a casket and a coffin was that the latter widened at the shoulders and tapered from there to the feet where it was much narrower and also from the shoulders to the head likewise.

  In those days, each family had to purchase such books as were used by their children.  An attempt was made at uniformity in those that were used but quite often whatever one might have in their home, perhaps some of those that had served their fathers and mothers, were made a substitute and the very poor sometimes had few or none at all.  When the state passed the law that did away with the individual districts and required the towns to provide books for all pupils, it seemed a great step forward, as indeed it was, About this time, the state law also required three grades of physiologies, primary, intermediate and advanced.  The state law specified that these books should give special attention to the setting forth the deleterious effects )f alcoholic drinks and of tobacco on the human system.  This was, of course, in addition to teaching and illustrating the human anatomy and things pertaining to health in general.  One thing I recall just now, was the deadly effect of nicotine as contained in tobacco.  "Three (or was it five) drops of pure nicotine placed on the tongue of a dog would kill him in five minutes."  At this time, a state law provided that no person who used tobacco should be employed as a teacher in the public schools.  I know of one who used it and was employed for winter terms in Cabot, a very good teacher at that.

  One store in town, about this time, dared risk its reputation by offering cigarettes for sale.  Any young man who was known to smoke them was classed with the outcasts.  Some stretch from there to the present when a country merchant told me that he sold more of them to the women than to men.  Within a week, I have seen a bunch of boys coming out of a grade school and several of them lighting up cigarettes, boys about thirteen.  The books mentioned, contained numerous illustrations, some of them in colors, which was a rare thing in printing at that date, showing the different organs of the body, bones of the skeleton, etc.  One was not considered proficient if he or she could not name all the bones of the body, two hundred and eight and with the teeth, two hundred and forty and give the Latin name of the same.  Also to take a drop of blood, beginning as it leaves the heart and tracing its course through the body and back to its original position in the heart.  Remember this was an ungraded country school.  Try that stunt today on any high school graduate, or any in the colleges, unless it might be some that are specializing in biology or training for the medical profession.

  With the eradication of the local district system and the privilege of attending whatever school best suited ones convenience, the drift, aside from the east part of the town, was to the schools in the upper and lower villages.  I recall that about 1885 the lower village school sometimes reached an enrollment of over fifty.  Sometimes a second teacher was employed for the afternoon and some classes were heard in the room upstairs.  This teacher was usually some housewife living nearby, but sometimes one of the older girls in school.  I think the first school to be discontinued was the one on Danville Hill (Reed Dist.).  Gradually, largely by reason of decrease of population in the rural districts, as we'll as by the maintaining of better highways, especially in the winter, and a tendency toward centralization.  Even the lower village school has now been given up and a bus that makes a circuit of the town passes the only remaining rural school, the one at South Cabot.

  The establishment of a High School at Cabot village was more or less a natural development.  In the early eighteen hundred and nineties, a room was partitioned off in the upstairs Town Hall and in the winter a third division of the school was established there.  This cared for the intermediate pupils and usually a man teacher was secured, more often than not from Dartmouth College.  For several winters, men from there taught at both the upper and lower village. Lester Warren Burbank for more than half a century an honored Cabot doctor, taught in both of these places.  The last term I attended at Lower Cabot was the winter of 1890-91.  This term was taught by Frederick P. Tuxbury, a student from Dartmouth College, whose home was in Amesbury, Mass.  He was a tall, outstanding fine fellow, whom I have heard spent most of his life as a doctor for some insurance company in Boston.  In addition to teaching all grades, my seatmate, George N. McDaniels, began the study of Latin and advanced algebra and recited to him.  Mr. McDaniels went on from there to become an honor student in the very exclusive school of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. and from there to Harvard University where he was also an outstanding student.  Most of his later years were spent as a teacher of mathematics in the schools of Los Angeles, Calif.  Here he died a few years ago leaving an estate of some $69,000 to the University of Vermont.

  The first school house in Cabot village, at least I think the first one, is the building now standing in the rear of the Congregational Church and owned and used by Robert Brimblecomb as a plumbing shop.  The next one was probably constructed in the eighteen hundred fifties or sixties on about the same site as the present new building now stands.  It was nearly square two story plain structure, the upstairs being used for many years as a Town Hall and for many of the public events of the town.  As I have already recorded, the hall was later divided and in the winter a third teacher was employed to teach the intermediate grades.  I came out from my studies in Montpelier Seminary and taught in that room in the winter of 1804-5.  Mr. Burbank taught the upper grades and Miss Lillian Wells, daughter of Hiram Wells, the merchant, taught the lower grades.
Before I leave the subject of schools I will speak of a long time town Supt. of Schools, the town lawyer, Joseph P. Lamson.  His visits to the schools were looked forward to with considerable expectancy by both teacher and pupils.  He would walk in unannounced, ask for the school register, and sit and peruse the same with studied interest and sometimes break in to question a reciting pupil and even discipline some boy who might be "cutting up."  Before leaving the school, he arose and addressed the school with about the same speech, year after year, until the pupils, or at least some of them, could repeat many of his phrases in very exact imitation of the original, As he observed the tardy marks, he would comment on them and remark, "I observe that many of you are inclined to be tardy.  I want you to be more punctual, punctual means prompt."  A few years ago, after my brother, Dean, and I had returned to Cabot in retirement, one of the features of Old Home Week was a reunion of a large number of former pupils at Lower Cabot.  Mrs. Gertrude Wells, who as a young woman was Gertrude Wiswell, only child of Dr. and Mrs. Wiswell, had been a teacher there in the eighties and had a picture of the school as it then was, she wearing a certain hand embroidered apron with handmade lace.  After about sixty years, several of her old pupils and she had their pictures taken together, she wearing the same lace trimmed apron.  We had a session of school presided over by her and Dean came in on us as Supt. Lamson and gave us quite a verbatim of such speech as he was wont to make.

  It will also be of interest to record for posterity another incident in the life of Gertrude L. Wiswell.  As a young lady she had graduated in the spring from St. Johnsbury Academy.  She made application for the school at West Hill Pond and was engaged for the coming fall.  It was in the days of "boarding around" and such a prospect to one nurtured as she had been in the finest home in Cabot was perhaps not a very pleasing prospect.  Her parents insisted that she should play no favorites but eat and sleep in all the homes of the district.  Now it happened that there was one home far up the brook road that leads to South Woodbury and almost to the Woodbury border where lived a family named Fernando Keniston, his wife and one son, Maurice.  They lived in a log hut, perhaps the last one remaining in town.  A family by the name of McCarty now live there and the house is a two story.  I well remember Mr. and Mrs. Keniston and the boy, Maurice, afterwards went to school at Lower Cabot.  Mr. Keniston was a short, dark complexioned man, perhaps, as might be indicated from his first name, of Spanish origin.  He wore large dangling earrings.  As may well be judged, it was quite a poser for Miss Wiswell, but her father insisted that she should spend at least one night there, and she did.

  It would be but natural that I should feel somewhat partial to old District No. 3 at Lower Cabot, but it certainly sent out into the world at least its full quota of those who made some mark of distinction for themselves.  To name a few, Burnham Coburn who led a business life in New York City and left an estate of nearly a quarter of a million.

  Walter Smith, who graduated from Dartmouth College and practiced law in Minn.  His brother, Selden, my neighbor and playmate, likewise graduated from Dartmouth and became a wealthy and prominent citizen of Oakland and San Francisco, Cal., and one of the partners in the firm of Ginn & Co., a large publishing house.  A sister, M. Pansy Smith, now retired, has held a responsible position with that firm.  Then there was Prof. George N. McDaniel, whom I have already mentioned, who graduated from Harvard with highest honors.  Also Prof. Wilfred E. Davison, who was Dean of English at Middlebury College when he died at the early age of 42.  He is buried in the upper village cemetery.  Another was Prof. Archie W, Stone, who was Principal of Derby Academy, and from then until his death, was Supt. of schools in Essex Co., Vt.  He was a poet of considerable ability and a volume of his poems has been published.  He also had ability as an artist.  He is buried at Lower Cabot.  Dr. Carl W. Fisher, a graduate Veterinarian was, the major part of his professional life, a professor in the University of California at Berkley.  He and his brother, Dean, who is a high salaried officer and director in the General Ice Cream Co., often attended at Lower Cabot, living with their grandparents, Dr, and Mrs. M. P. Wallace;  Dr. Carl Harvey is an eminent surgeon in Middletown, Conn.; Prof. Abbie Smith, now Mrs. Babitt, graduated from Boston University, had her Ph.D. from Columbia and holds a responsible professorship in a high school in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. Pres. Royce Pitkin of Goddard College and his brothers, some of whom I believe are in educational work, were pupils in the Lower Cabot school for some time as their family moved from Marshfield to a farm in Cabot.  Drs. Carleton and Gerald Haines, sons of Mr. and Mrs. Leon Haines, who still own the old Haines homestead in Lower Cabot, were born there and began their school life there.  They are both just completing post graduate work in surgery.  Rev. and later Prof. Wesley Atkins was born in the Lower Cabot district and his three sisters, all teachers, attended there most of their district school days, but I do not know whether Wesley began there or at Cabot village.  If he did not, then I guess the writer is the sole representative for the clergy, though I think the Rev. James Stone, who was a long time minister in several Congregational churches in Vermont, was probably a student there at a period much earlier than that of which I am writing.  Several other ladies, who never married, have spent their lives in the teaching profession in the towns and cities of Vermont and New England.  If there is another school district of equal size in Vermont that can make an equal showing, we would like to know its location.

  Having said so much about Lower Cabot it might not be amiss to now record something about the upper village, though there are, or at least were those who were better qualified to do this by reason of having lived thereabout all their lives, I think it may be truthfully said that it was, and still is, something above the quality and character of most communities of its size.  I recall that some years ago the editor and proprietor of the Hardwick Gazette wrote an editorial to this effect, as he had occasion to come there and take a look about.  Also within a very few years, I have heard a present citizen of some prominence, coming there to reside from a neighboring town, remark as follows, "They may say what they will, I know that Cabot is different," meaning better than some others he knew. 

  Of course, its citizens are not, nor ever were ALL saints, but speaking in general terms, it has always upheld a good degree of moral and intellectual qualities.  In the old days it had its PROMENADES in which nearly all young and old mingled, but dancing was taboo and thought to be a thing of the Devil.  I have at hand a large book of my stepmother, Lelia Haines Blodgett, pasted full of things of her day and generation which I shall attempt to have preserved along with these notations which I am writing.  On pages 111 and 123 in that book are two articles cut from some current papers which quite accurately describe about what most of the GOOD people of Cabot thought about those things, dancing and card playing.  The first is quoted from a statement by the Chief of Police of New York City, the other, a conversation of a conductor with a young lady riding on his train.  The Chief of Police declared that three fourths of the fallen girls in the city began their downward course in the dance hall.  In those days, Cabot would never sponsor a dance, but a nearby town had no qualms in that direction.  I recall in those days, that a certain musical organization in that town said they were going to hire a hall in Cabot and go there and break the ice for those Puritans.  They went and took some from that town along with them.  They went home eleven dollars and thirty cents out of pocket and that was the end of their trying to crack the ice in Cabot.

  I will now relate some of my memories of the physical characteristics of that village, leaving the social and religious to a later narration.  Considerable change has taken place, as might be expected, in the past seventy or more years.  The records show that the village was incorporated in 1886.  The incorporation extends about one half mile in all directions.  The dividing line between the villages is the river at the so-called Perkins Bridge.  I think this bridge was named from the owner of the farm, nearby.  About this time, the Cabot Carriage and Sleigh Company was built on the meadow down over the bank and across the brook from the present creamery.  There is a good picture of these buildings preserved in the book loaned me by Mrs. Bertha Pike Wheeler, as well as many others from about that time to near the present.  I think she plans to present this book to the town library which is in Willey Memorial.  I know that building has been on fire, so it is quite evident that some fireproof safe or vault would be the only guarantee of such things being preserved for future generations.  My hope is that many of these records and pictures may soon be gathered together and such a fireproof safe provided for them.  In fact, I plan to do something in this direction, if I am spared to carry out my intentions.  There must be quite a number of families that have pictures and souvenirs that should be so preserved.
The Cabot Carriage Co., manufactured a strong buggy wagon and single seated sleighs with a wonderful curve in the dash board.  Whether there was any variation, aside from painting, I do not recall.  They may have made some traverse sleds and so called "express" wagons, but I cannot recall any such.  The manager in the early eighties was a Mr. Buccanan, who resided in a house where the creamery now stands.  Well I remember the Sunday that house burned.  It was about the year 1880.  I was about six years of age.  I had started walking home after Sunday school was out at the Methodist Church, following the morning service.  As I approached the house, smoke was rolling up from the roof and people were gathering and began carrying out the furniture.  Young as I was, I rushed into the burning house and grabbed a side piece of a wooden bed and proudly carried it out.  That was my first fire.

  At its height, I would say there were not more than ten or a dozen men employed by the Carriage Company.  The big carriage companies in the larger places, especially in the middle west, began to offer such competition that the business soon became unprofitable and, as I recall it, passed into the hands of Mr. John A. Farrington, a long time Cabot merchant and business man.  One of the treats of my early boyhood was to be able to get into what then seemed that great maze of buildings and wander about the work shops and especially into the painting department where the skilled hands of the painters put the lines of decoration and bouquets of flowers onto the dash and sides of those wonderful sleighs and then go on into the storage rooms where such surplus, as might be on hand, was stored.  Since then I have been privileged to wander through the maze of exhibits in three World Fairs, but none of them could ever give me the thrill I experienced in the Cabot Carriage Shop.  Those two painters were the ones who, about that time, painted the stage curtain in Willey Memorial Hall, depicting the emigrants going west.  Until recent years, I never knew that scene, done by Clark and Heath, (I think were their names) was copied from quite a famous painting which I never saw but once in any publication.  I cut it out and now have in my scrap book.  It is known as "Along the Oregon Trail," by Culver.  It was published in News Week of Dec. 1, 1947, in a book review of the Journal Of Francis Parkman, the famous explorer.  These painters went to Barre when the granite boom came on there in the eighties.  A son and grandson of Mr. Heath now follow the profession of painters and decorators in that city.  Charles Utley came from Walden and manufactured farm wagons and sleds there for a few years.  Later the buildings were gradually demolished and one of them taken over by Bert Ainsworth and Frank Paquin as a wood working shop.  A second picture in Mrs. Bertha Wheeler's book would indicate that the last building there had been recently constructed.  If there was a fire, I have no record of the same.  I think Ernest Peck was the last owner and did woodworking there.

  Another building in the village that was burned in the early eighties was the Perry Bros. store, mostly hardware, I think, which stood where the Paul Hopkins store is now located.  It was burned on a winter night.  I recall that as we gathered for school at Lower Cabot, our teacher, Miss Helen Baker from Cabot Village did not show up until sometime after the hour of nine o'clock.  She then related to us how she had been at the fire, as probably most of the rest of the people were.  I recall an interesting story that used to be told in relation to the same.  It seems that a couple of commercial men were stopping at the Winooski Hotel and were rooming together.  It would appear that they had been out late and were a bit intoxicated, As the fire broke out the church bells began to ring.  One said to the other, "Wake up there must be a fire."  The sleeper did not seem to get interested and the other continued to try to arouse him.  After a bit he got the sleeper wakened enough to get this reply from him.  "O lay still.  It's nothing but this new Woman's Christian Temperance Union that has just been organized, celebrating."

  It was only by hard work that the nearby house on one side, and the Sprague and Wells store on the other, were saved.  It must have been a matter of some twenty years before the empty cellar hole was purchased by James Drew, a young man who had come from out of town and learned the tin smith' 5 trade in the old tin shop, since made over into the two story block known as the Lance block, bought the lot and erected the building now standing there.

  The Winooski Hotel was quite an imposing building for its time and for a small country village.  There are several very good pictures of it in the book I have mentioned loaned me by Mrs. Bertha Wheeler, one of them as it was nearly burned down.  I haven't discovered the date at which it was erected, but probably about the time of the Civil War, when Cabot was somewhat on the boom.  It was burned in 1914.  There was quite a large barn and livery stable connected with it.  A man by the name of Cade was its proprietor when I first remember it.  The legal sale of liquor has never been voted in my day in Cabot, but some who used to run this hotel had the name of "selling on the sly."  The law in those days allowed a town to vote to have a Liquor Agent, where one might purchase it for medicinal purposes on the prescription of a physician.  The only place I recall of it so being sold was at the home of Mr. Martin Seabury, a rigid Methodist, who lived at Lower Cabot.  One may be sure he never abused the confidence of that office.  Later, this was voted out and Cabot people had to go to Marshfield to get the same service.  I remember of going there with a prescription given my father for my mother who was ill.  Dr. J. Q. A. Packer was the agent.  He lived on the last small farm on the right just before getting to the village.  Later the law provided it might be sold on prescription at drug stores and I think the supply for Cabot was thus mostly obtained locally.

  The next fire, I recall, was quite a large white house where the Masonic Hall now stands.  This hall was built following the destruction of Cabot's most imposing block whose legal name was the Union Block, but more often spoken of by the name of those who conducted the store there.  This building was owned by a stock company and was built in 1869.  I think the first firm to occupy the store was, Sprague & Putnam.  Hiram Wells, a young man who came to Cabot from Woodbury or Calais, began clerking there and Mr. Putnam sold out his interest and went into business in Montpelier and the firm name became Sprague & Wells and so remained for quite a long period.

  Bowman G. Rogers, a native son of Cabot, known to Cabot people all his life as "Bome" began clerking in this store as a young man in his teens in the seventies.  With the exception of about a year when he went to Hardwick in its boom days in the nineties, he spent his entire adult life in this store.  On the death of Mr. Sprague, Mr. Rogers became a member of the firm and for some time the firm name was WELLS & ROGERS.  With advancing years, Mr. Hiram Wells turned his active interests over to his son, Merton D. Wells, and when Mr. Rogers decided to go to Hardwick, he sold his interests to George Boyles, another Cabot boy, who had been clerking there for some time.  The following year, Mr. Rogers desired to return to Cabot and purchased an interest in the firm and it became WELLS, BOYLES AND ROGERS.  Later, Mr. Boyles sold out his interests and went into business in Montpelier and I think the firm again became WELLS & ROGERS.  Mr. Wells died quite suddenly in 1909 and soon after Mr. Rogers took his son Earl into partnership with him.  A share in the store about this time was sold to George Currier and for a time the firm name was Rogers & Currier.  Mr. Earl Rogers, who had graduated from Dartmouth College, gradually assumed more and more of the responsibility and became the Post Master in Cabot, and with the employment of clerks, Mr. B. G. Rogers devoted much of his time to town and business affairs, having been elected Town Clerk, which position he continued to hold until the time of his death in 1939.  For some years and until the time of his death he was president of the Caledonia National Bank in Danville.

  In March 1935, this large block was burned to the ground.  But little was salvaged from the building and the Masonic Lodge which occupied the third floor, lost all their effects.  The residence and barber shop of Mr. G. J. Hawes, just to the north, was also burned.  Before the year was over the present commodious one story structure was completed and the firm resumed business together with the Post Office and office of Town Clerk.  Soon after the death of Mr. B. G. Rogers, his son Earl became the sole owner and the sign over the entrance reads E. J. ROGERS.  For many years, and perhaps still, is the boast of this firm that they carry the largest stock in trade of any store between Montpelier and St. Johnsbury.

  I now mention, more briefly, the other mercantile establishments in town.  Across the street from the Rogers store, where the cement garage now stands, there was another large block.  I judge it was fully as old as the Union Block and was always known as the Farrington Block.  Mr. John A. Farrington ran a store there during the seventies, eighties and nineties.  He was a rather quiet, pleasant man of quite a striking personality.  Rather tall and with silver white hair, even in his younger years.  I have mentioned him as being associated with the Cabot Carriage Co.  About the beginning of the present century, the store was sold to several of the Morse Bros., boys who had been born and reared on a farm in Cabot, but Mr. Farrington remained the owner of the building.  These boys did not make a success of the venture and I think Mr. Farrington took it over and perhaps, ran it some, but think it did not do much business and in later years, it was made into a garage.  There was a small separate room on the north side that was known there as the "Jim" Knight Jewelry Store.  Mr. Knight was a rather tall, well dressed man, who, as I remember him, always wore prince nez glasses attached to a long black cord.  His principal business was the repairing of watches and clocks, and he also did some work as a gunsmith.  His home was at the top of Bond Hill where Mr. Perry now lives.  His family consisted of himself and one daughter, who, as she grew to maturity, was considered as one of the Belles of the town.  For some years she played the pipe organ in the Methodist Church and also sang very well.

  The second floor of the Farrington Block was made into apartments, and the third floor was a large hall with ante rooms and was occupied at various times by the Odd Fellows and Good Templars Lodge and, I think later.  The Grange was organized in Cabot and The Modern Woodmen of America, and they may have occupied it in their short existence in Cabot.

  When the Winooski Hotel burned, it was with great difficulty that this block was saved.  Later it was torn down to make way for the present cement garage that stands there.

  In the eighties, Mr. S. C. Voodry and his mother, from Woodbury, bought the house where the Wesley Talbert store now stands.  Mr. Voodry was a very dapper fellow about thirty and unmarried.  He first built a small store as an addition to the house in the rear to the north, quite a bit back from the street.  Here he carried quite an assortment of groceries and general merchandise, but specialized as a drug store and filled prescriptions, as did also the Wells and Rogers store.  Mr. Voodry was a Democrat, and when Grover Cleveland was elected president, was appointed Post Master.  He extended the store to the street, something as it now is and had the post office in the front of the store.  He married Myrtle Walbridge, daughter of Levi Walbridge, a long time leading farmer and feed dealer, on the road to Walden Depot.  About twenty-five years ago, he did sell the store and he and his wife and the family of Walter Ford of Lower Cabot, migrated to California.  After a little, the store was closed until Mr. Talbert took it over a few years ago and has done a successful business there.

  I have spoken of the hardware store where Mr. Paul Hopkins is now in business, built by Mr. James T. Drew.  He sold it, I think, to Mr. George Crane, and moved to Massachusetts or New Hampshire, and think Mr. Crane sold to Mr. Hopkins.

  At Lower Cabot, in the old days, there were two, and, perhaps I might say, three stores.  The largest of these stood facing the turn that leads toward West Hill Pond.  It was run by a Mrs. M. W. McDaniels, whose son I have mentioned as graduating from Harvard and who was one of my chums and school friends.  In the early nineties, she sold it to Edgar and Ernest Peck, two brothers who were brought up near West Hill Pond.  They married Cabot girls and lived about there for many years, but for some time have lived in Massachusetts.  They did not operate the store many years and it was finally torn down.  Another store was one that is now operated by Frank Phelps beside the bridge and brook.  When I first remember, it was a small, one story rather dilapidated looking building, the room being the same size as now occupied by the front part, of the store.  It was run by a Mr. George Atkins, who, as I recall, was more given to drink than business.  I think he died and it was sold to Seth Adams, a young man of not much enterprise, who lived with his parents in the house nearby which I think is owned by the Silvers.  One or two others dabbled away at business there and them it was sold to Mr. Cordova Hatch, who I think came from Hardwick.  Mr. Hatch moved the old store back and built the front as it now stands.  He bought the house on the knoll where Mr. and Mrs. B. L. Bruce now reside.  They first lived there, but think they later moved to an apartment over the store.  Mr. Hatch died suddenly some years later and when he died, his son Charles took over.  Several tried their hand at merchandising there with more or less of success, until some years ago it was sold to the present owner, Frank Phelps, who has carried a very complete line of groceries and provisions and is doing a very prosperous business.  Previous to Mr. Phelps taking over his present store, he did quite a business in the grocery line in the front rooms of his residence, near the north end of the lower village.

  Directly across the brook from the Phelps store and somewhat back from the highway, there used to be quite an imposing array of buildings the north end of which had a store beneath and an apartment above.  In the early eighties, Mr. and Mrs. George Burnham carried a small line of goods there and, as I recall, he used to also go out on the road with a peddle cart.  They later moved to Hardwick where they spent the remainder of their lives.  The buildings gradually went into decay, and finally were torn down.

  I think there was something of a store, years ago, in South Cabot, but I have no knowledge concerning this.

  While I was on the subject of the Cabot Carriage Manufacturing Co., logically, I should have followed with any other business of manufacturing.  In Cabot village on the brook in the rear of what is now the parsonage of the United Church, there stood a building known as John Brown's shop.  A small dam here furnished power for running some woodworking machines.  He did a general wood repairing business, particularly of wagons, sleds and sleighs.  On the second floor there was a hall and ante rooms.  Here, the Grand Army of the Republic and Sons of Veterans and Woman's Relief Corps had their meetings.  Often very good amateur plays were presented, as there was quite a commodious stage at the north end of the hall.  I believe the building was finally condemned as unsafe and some years ago it was torn down.

  At the last falls below the meadow in Lower Cabot, there was a large three story shop in my early days, known as True Town's shop.  It derived its power from the same dam as the saw mill located just above it.  I think it did a general wood repair business, but its main business was the sawing of hard wood chair stock from lumber that was produced in the saw mill.  This shop was later owned by Walter Ford who sold to B. L. Bruce who owned it when it burned in August, 1936.