Category: People

150 years ago, on Jan 28, 1861, one of Hartland’s most famous sons, Daniel Willard was born in North Hartland. His ancestors were here at the very birth of this town.

He went to the church still standing in No. Hartland and attended school in a building on the green. At fifteen he taught in a one room school where he met Mrs. Samuel Taylor, who was to influence his entire life. She taught him to love books and he was ever after an ardent reader. Daniel attended a term and a half at Windsor High School and wanted terribly to attend Dartmouth College, but couldn’t afford it. He did attend Mass. State Agriculture College In Amherst for a time but had to give it up because of poor eyesight.

Running through the family farm were the tracks of the Vermont Central Railroad, and young Dan’s imagination was fired by the idea of piloting one of those shiny, wood-burning engines, especially the old Governor Smith which he never ceased to love.

At eighteen, Daniel got his first job on the railroad on a section gang at 90 cents a day, for 10 hours, on the Vermont Central. He soon went to the Connecticut and Passumpsic where he was a fireman. He weighed only 125 lbs but managed to feed the old engine the 10 to 12 cords of wood she consumed in a long day. At nineteen, he was an engineer on the line, respected by the men he worked with for his burning ambition and keen mind. He always had a good book in his pocket.

Soon after this he was lured to the level track and higher pay of a western road, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway. This proved temporary and he went to the Minneapolis and Sault St. Marie which was being built. Here he became trainmaster and in fourteen years was superintendent. From here he went to the Baltimore and Ohio, then to Erie, then operating V.P. of the Burlington and Quincy then back to the B&O as President, a job he kept from then on.
Willard understood the problems of workers and fought for their interests. Against the desires of many another President he helped to get an 8 hour day. He remembered only too well the times he had fallen asleep and bumped a train in front of him when he had been forced to operate beyond the limit of human endurance.
Besides President of the B&O, he became Chairman of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense in WW1. It was made of distinguished men such as Bernard Baruch and others and the War Industries Board.

Daniel fought off a serious strike and organized the RR Presidents to try to fight off government ownerships which worked for a while. President Wilson did take over while Willard continued his war job.
At the end of the war, the B&O had to be built up again from near bankruptcy and later fought the great depression. He was no longer a young man, but took on such jobs as member of the board of Johns Hopkins University and this self educated man finally became president of the board.

In 1937, the B&O held the “Fair of the Iron Horse”, a great entertainment and show of railroading past and present. That kept Willard from speaking at the Hartland celebration of the sesquicentennial of Vermont but he had not forgotten Hartland. In his last years he visited his old home and asked to see the old steep back stairs he had remembered from early boyhood.

Taken from unknown source… Maybe a speech. C.Y.M.

Reprinted from the Vermont Standard, 2012, “Historically Speaking” by Carol Mowry.

A few years ago, Connie Tessier and I were going through some papers at the Hartland Historical Society when we came upon a packet of letters to “My Dear Lass”, signed with the above initials. Eventually we discovered that the initials belonged to one of the most outstanding women of the 19th (and 20th) century. Katherine Isabel Hay or Hayes lived in Hartland from infancy to the age of 12. She first married William Wilberforce Chapin, a missionary in India. They sailed with a cargo of ice in Jan. 1864 to Bombay. He died in India in March of 1865 and in Sept. she set sail alone for home. She then married Congressman Rev. Samuel Barrows.

There is a biography “So much in a Lifetime” by Madeline Stern and a section for her in the book, “We the Women; Career Firsts of the 19th Century America”. Isabel was the first woman to attend the University of Vienna Medical School (she had to learn the language, as well);the first to perform eye surgery in the U.S.; the first woman ophthalmologist and the first woman to work as a stenographer on Capitol Hill – for William Seward. She was a lecturer at Howard University and a pioneer penologist.

Isabel collaborated in writing “The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution with Alice Stone Blackwell and wrote a biography, “A Sunny Life”,of her husband. Samuel June Barrows was a pastor in Dorchester, Mass.- and edited “The Christian Register, a Unitarian weekly. In 1895 he was appointed by President Cleveland to represent the U.S. on the International Prison Commission.

Isabel’s father, Dr. Henry Hay was convinced to come to Hartland from Irasburg to set up a medical practice. The family lived in Hartland from 1847 to 1858. Because there were no boys for boys work, and because there were two older girls to help their mother, Isabel became the boy of the family. She did the boys chores and accompanied her father on his medical rounds. She was home schooled. She remembers her first day here, under a plum tree.

Tolstoy said to me this summer when we were visiting him in Russia (she learned Russian also). Whether I shall know myself for myself after death I know not. Nor do I, but I know the exact moment I knew myself for myself in this life. It was in the Fall of 1847, out under the plum tree in the garden. Our new home on the hill was our very own. We lived in it as long as we remained in Hartland and it was disposed of after my father’s death. It stood on a plateau that broke a beautiful hill which was crowned with a grove of beautiful pines. The view from the hill was exquisite. Mt. Ascutney was only 10 miles away and the valley of the Connecticut swept down toward the east. Beyond it lay the hills of New Hampshire, that ungodly state (I don’t make this stuff up. C.Y.M.) as it seemed to me as a child because they allowed liquor to be sold there and the vote was democratic. From that time the two things have seemed to me to go together.

One day while playing in the yard Isabel remembers, “A big man leaning on the fence broke into our fun by saying, ‘What game is that you are playing?’ I explained it to him and he said it was a very nice way to play for he had been watching us, though we had not seen him and, ‘Are you Mrs. Hay’s little children?’ he asked. ‘Run and tell your mother that Henry Ward Beecher would like to see her’. Mr Beecher had lectured the night before in Woodstock and stopped to call on my mother, with whom he had had a correspondence and who had heard him lecture the night before.”

Reprinted from the Vermont Standard, 2012, “Historically Speaking” by Carol Mowry.   Picture added by Brad Hadley from HHS archives.

As promised, I am giving you the second installment of a letter from Lucia Webster to her husband Dan after his death in 1943.

With all you cared for music it was astonishing that the radio didn’t seem good to you but I could never interest you in having one of our own and you often hated to go out to Sally’s to listen to theirs. It was a long time before I could find out what was wrong with it but finally I discovered you hated to hear all the strange (but to me most fascinating) sounds when one was hunting for the right station.

While the Ford Hour was to be heard on Sunday evenings we used to sit up for it and the two of us enjoyed it after the Comstocks had gone to bed. I could not always be sure whether you were enjoying the concert or enjoying my enjoyment but there was no question when Marion Anderson or Richard Crooks sang or there was band music. Then it surely seemed as good to you as to me.

I wonder how many times we had a neighborhood sing, sometimes at our house, once in awhile at John’s but more often at Sanford Shepard’s. Whenever Mr. Perkins came to visit at our house or Sanford’s (and even sometimes when he was not there at all) the Shepards and Websters gathered for a grand evening. We sang everything from rounds to hymns, sometimes as solos, sometimes as duets, often as a grand chorus. Sanford had paper-covered song books he had bought just for those sings and Mr. Perkins brought some of his, so we had a large number of songs from which to choose – and we sang until we were really tired out. But do you remember “The Little Bronze Button”? Mr Perkins always asked either Cora or me to sing it to the tune of “The Old Wooden Bucket” in memory of his brother.

If I could remember all you told me about the singing schools and the “singing conventions” you used to enjoy in your boyhood I’d be glad indeed. I think you told about Mr. Perkins or his brother going from one place to another to hold “conventions”, gathering together all who were interested in music, having a school for several nights, perhaps two or three weeks, then finishing with a big concert where the pupils showed what they had learned and some distinguished musician from outside had the leading part.

It was before John Randolph was born (1907) that Henry Ketchum had his choral – some things I remember to this day. The rehearsals, just like the singing school of older time, lasted some weeks and as a grand finale we gave a concert in the Methodist church with the Claremont band to assist. And before we were married Helen Dudley had a real singing school that we attended when she tried to teach us to “pulsate” and all you got out of it, or I either for that matter, was good wholesome fun.

Do you remember how you always loved to hear me sing “I am sitting on the style, Mary where we stay side by side”? You would stop everything to listen and I heard you telling the children once that it was the most beautiful song ever written. You did love simple happy music – bits from “Robin Hood”, Henry Lauder’s songs, “The Owl and the Pussycat”, and “Lassie O’ Mine”, for instance and music was a force in your life.

Then that afternoon in April when we took your casket to the church for the last service Della Merritt and Rebecca (Merritt) played on the piano and violin for you while friends were entering and again when they were leaving. Did you hear them play “Crossing the Bar”? Nothing could have been lovelier and nothing could have pleased you more.”

Reprinted from the Vermont Standard, 2012, “Historically Speaking” by Carol Mowry.

Here is another of the wonderful letters from Lucia Webster to her husband Dan, written after his death in 1943.

Dear Dan, Here in this south room where I sit evenings by the open fire, Dora and Irving were married at two o’clock this afternoon and now they are gone and all the guests have left. We had a happy day with only family here besides Marion, Emiline and the minister, Mr. Paige whom you liked when he called here last spring. All of us except Jack went to the first part of the church service to see Mary Margaret baptized so it really was Sunday to us, and the day was lovelier for that. The bride and groom went off together in Irving’s car after the boys had played some pranks on them and, according to what they told us, they did not know where they were bound or how long they would be away.

It was thirty seven years ago last May we started from my home and we knew just where we were going and even what train we would take back to Hartland. But we had not decided what we would do while we were in Boston. It seemed as tho we would better go to some entertainment Monday and we looked for a list of concerts, operas and shows. I did want to attend an opera but there was not any you cared for and Creator’s Band was to give a concert that afternoon. It looked interesting to us both and we found it as fine as we had expected.

Band music was one of your pleasures. How you would have enjoyed hearing the Grammar School Band here in Hartland play on the evening of Old Home Sunday and again when the town gave a surprise reception to James Miller and his wife on their Golden Wedding day.

Do you remember how in 1912 we went to Windsor and saw Sousa conduct his band an a whole afternoon’s concert at Kennedy’s arena. It was a treat that would never have come to as small a place as Windsor if John Philip Sousa and Mr. Kennedy had not been good friends. The band was going thru to an engagement that evening to some larger place, Hanover I think, and Mr. Kennedy persuaded his friend to stop over. They played to a large and very enthusiastic audience. When we bought our phonograph the first records we got were marches, one of them Sousa’s.

But you liked music of many sorts and came naturally by the liking, for Father Webster used to play the bass viol in the choir. There is a horn and a violin that either he or some other person in the house used. We have all three in a closet under the eaves. Among your play things I found an accordion and a harmonica and you used to tell of playing a Jews harp when you were a boy.

It is because you sang bass in the church choir that I first knew you. Mrs. Stuart found I could sing so she insisted on my joining the choir which Mr. Ed Jenkins led. There were half a dozen others always at practice. Julia Chase and Jennie Paige among them. Do you remember the day Jennie didn’t come to rehearsal and Mr. Perkins spoke his mind about the young man he had met in the store with her that afternoon?” He didn’t look very intelligent. He had a cigarette in his mouth.” Well, practice was all right – the choir could meet at the house where I was staying but church attendance was another matter and again Mrs. Stuart stepped in and asked you to see that I was transported. Although the walk was very short it was more than I could accomplish with a lame knee so you used to drive up to the door on your way and take me with you.”

Reprinted from the Vermont Standard, February 2, 2012, “Historically Speaking” by Carol Mowry.