In my last article, I decided to share some fun news clippings. Well, I enjoyed that so much that I decided to do it again. C.Y.M.
May 5, 1888
Stuck in the mud! Two gentlemen from Windsor and the same number of ladies came to this village Tuesday evening thinking as they said, ‘There used to be a dance here.’ Finding no dance here they started for home about 10 o’clock, and on reaching the clay ground through which the road passes near the house of S.W.
Davis (I don’t know where this is. C.Y.M. ); the horses, carriage and occupants went suddenly down into the clay porridge. The horses floundered and finally fell. The ladies stepped from the carriage into the mud and made for the uplands. S.W. Davis was called on for help. He was unable to do much. However, by the stimulus of a five dollar bill offered in case the carriage was extricated, but help was in vain. The horses were taken from the carriage and attached to another at H.S. Brittons hospitable roof. The weary, mud covered pilgrims resumed the march to Windsor. At this writing, Wednesday forenoon, the carriage, a double one, remains in the road where it went down. Last night only the body part and cover being visible.’ I don’t think I will ever complain about roads again.
Windsor County Hartland News 1897
Not withstanding all the precautions taken by George D. Wood of the American Poultry Farm on Hendrick Hill (on Rice Rd ) and the military preparations heretofore made for defending it against midnight invaders, as announced in the Journal not long since, the unprincipled and venturesome thief still prowls around the premises. On a recent night while ‘Jim’ Harwood, with two revolvers and a pig sticker in his belt, was watching out from the top of a tall tamarack tree that overlooks the poultry yards, and while proprietor Wood stood at the west attic window of the Henrick house with a loaded rifle and shotgun, a sudden commotion among the feathered tribes revealed the fact that someone was within the enclosure and laying unlawful hands upon them. ‘Jim’ stood on too insecure foundations in the tamarack tree to make it safe for him to use his weapons, but George, from the attic window emptied the contents of his firearms into the poultry yards without effect, so far as can be learned except to endanger the lives of some of his choice Buff Cochins. It is now proposed as we learn, to increase the armament of the hill by planting in the dark entry, so called, a sort of Kyler pass just above the poultry yard, a rapid firing Gatling gun that will sweep the road from that point to Lambs woods eastward.
Reprinted from the Vermont Standard, January 12, 2012, “Historically Speaking” by Carol Mowry.
