Boxing day. Very sleepy rainy/sleety day.. Aside form a good walk this morning with Diane and the dogs, I didn’t go outside … didn’t even go upstairs more than twice.. I sat on the couch and hung out with my folks who are up visiting.. Even fell asleep there.. I think my brain is trying to catch up from the last couple of weeks..
One thing I did do was thumb through a book on our town that I’d gotten Diane for Christmas. It’s called “Richmond, Vermont: A History of More than 200 Years” by Harriet Riggs, a woman we know from here. Harriet had talked about writing this book for all 25 years that we’ve known her, and she finally did it.. She did an excellent jb capturing the history of our small town.. It’s full of pictures, maps and stories about folks from the earliest days until the present. It’s great looking back at through this and seeing the grandparents and great grandparents of our friends .
Our little neighborhood… Jonesville, and our house are mentioned several times.. Here’s a picture Hariet found of our house from 1904… You can see several differences compared to today:
– the weather vane is different
– the tower has shutters rather than windows
– you can see the old staircase.which which has since been removed through the right front downstairs window
– the windows over the door are staggered and different than they appear today.
– the front door is different…
To the right you can see the place that the old covered bridge was before this flood. The story goes that THE bridge washed out and was swept own the Winooski where it crashed into the Richmond covered bridge and took it out too.
The stories in the book are pretty amazing. I just learned something new about our little town of Jonesville (pop 400 ?) According to the book on the 1st of July in 1846 a group of 200 to 300 Irish railway worker started a riot here because they had not been paid by the railway. They dug trenches across the main street (now Us Route 2) to block all travel between Waterbury and Burlington.. That was a big deal because that road was the only path through the gap that the Winooski cuts through the Green Mountains. When pay was still not forthcoming. They took one of the railway bosses, Henry Barker, hostage and held him in the Jones Hotel (which burned in 1980) while his partner, S.R. Haight, went to Montpelier to see if he could find some money to pay the rioters and ransom his friend. On July 2nd, Deputy Gleason from Richmond and the local priests tried to tlak the men out of the building/ When that didn’t work, the sheriff called in reinforcements. On July 3rd, the Light Infantry from Burlington came and disperesed the mob by force.. Many of the men ran up into the hils in Bolton.. Finally on july 4th they managed to free Barker. The rioters were rounded up and put on trial. In the end all but one were released.. The story doesn’t say what happened to that last man. Seems like you need to fight for your right to party !
A record of the event said that the total cost to put down the “Irish Insurrection” in Jonesville was $370.11 including 1.5 barrels of crackers ($5.25) and 27 loaves of bread ($2.16)
That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in Jonesville !
OK.. insurrection is over, time for bed
Night folks… night Sam !
-me