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    Pownal
    Pownal
    Pownal
    Ebook192 pages56 minutes

    Pownal

    By Pownal Historical Society

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    About this ebook

    In the 1700s, the fertile valley lands and wooded hills of Pownal attracted Dutch tenant farmers and English settlers. French Canadians soon arrived in the villages of Pownal to work in the mills, as both adults and children. Later painters and magazines captured the beauty of the land, while hill farmers struggled to make the thin soil produce. Following World War II, a United Nations magazine featured Pownal on its cover as a symbol of the peace so many sought. The photographs in Pownal illustrate the beauty, as well as hardships, associated with rural life. Vintage images of barefooted school students, farmers working their horses, and proud owners of the first automobiles capture the hardworking people of this Vermont community living amid a beauty that tourists seek.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439638514
    Pownal
    Author

    Pownal Historical Society

    Pownal Historical Society members Charlotte Comar, Wendy Hopkins, and Ray Rodrigues have come together to author Pownal. Rodrigues has been a university professor, administrator, and author. Hopkins served as director of alumni relations for Williams College. Comar is a lifelong Pownal resident, serving her community and church in numerous ways.

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      Book preview

      Pownal - Pownal Historical Society

      Publishing.

      INTRODUCTION

      Pawnal ye first town, poor land—very unpleasant—very uneven—miserable set of inhabitants—no religion, Rhode Island haters of religion—Baptists, quakers, & some Presbyterians—no meeting house. So wrote the Reverend Nathan Perkins in 1796 as he began his tour of Vermont in Pownal. Of course, Perkins’s opinion of Pownal was much like his opinion of the rest of Vermont.

      If only Perkins had been able to carry a camera with him and had taken more time to learn what Pownal was like, he would have seen farms along the Hoosic River in Pownal that had been built in the 1720s by tenant farmers on the manor of Renssylaerwyck, establishing them as settlers long before any other Europeans settled western Vermont. He might have seen evidence of the Mahicans who farmed the valley and hunted the hills of Pownal centuries before the Europeans arrived.

      Had he stayed for a while, he would have realized that Pownal was not without its conflicts, even in its early days, and others might have benefited from his insights. The governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth, contributed to the disputes when he chartered Pownal on January 8, 1760, making Pownal one of the first chartered towns in Vermont. Newly arrived English settlers tried to evict earlier settlers. Though generally called Dutch, the first settlers included Huguenots, Walloons, and Pallatines. Samuel Robinson came down from Bennington to arrest some earlier settlers and was himself detained. During the Revolution, loyalties divided Pownal citizens, and Patriots imprisoned a number of Tories, or Loyalists. Men from Pownal joined the Green Mountain Boys. Tories and Patriots from Pownal fought each other at the Battle of Bennington or Walloomscoick and participated in other battles of the war. After the war, families like the DeVoets, Bucks, Andersons, and Walkers, their property confiscated, fled to Canada. Some Green Mountain Boys, like Samuel Poppleton, went west.

      Early photographs begin with some rare daguerreotypes from the 1840s and then move rapidly past the Civil War. Far more gravestones than photographs commemorate the men who fought in that war, unfortunately. As in much of Vermont, many soldiers returned home to their hill farms, realized how depleted the soil had become, and left for more fertile lands they had seen during the war. One, Merritt Barber, went on to a successful military career. Those soldiers who remained often used their experience with cavalry horses or knowledge acquired near battlefields to help them survive on their farms or in support services for the mills and the quarries established in the towns. Families who stayed struggled to make their hill farms produce, experimenting with Merino sheep, cattle, pigs, and poultry when the hill soils could not produce enough to eat, often logging the remaining trees to feed the mills or to construct new homes. In the river bottoms and in the sugar bush, agricultural efforts flourished. Sons and daughters went off to further education in nearby towns such as Bennington, Williamstown, and North Adams, Massachusetts, returning to teach, start businesses, and continue their families’ work or leaving to establish new lives.

      Following the Civil War, photographs of early Pownal begin to proliferate, as the early woolen mills, cotton mills, and limestone quarries brought new workers and more money to Pownal’s people. Two future U.S. presidents, Chester Allen Arthur and James Garfield, taught in North Pownal. Jim Fisk, born here, went on to become an early financial baron. George Westinghouse visited his grandfather’s farm. Emigrants from French Canada and elsewhere sweated to survive in the woolen mills first and then the cotton mills. Photographer Lewis Hine captured young mill workers in North Pownal as he traveled the country documenting child labor practices and abuses. His photograph taken of one girl, Addie Card, was used on a U.S. postage stamp commemorating the passage of the first child labor laws. Grace Greylock Niles became the first historian of Pownal, publishing The Hoosac Valley and Bog Trotting for Orchids. An art colony existed here from the 1920s through the 1950s and included the modernist Teng Chiu.

      Beginning in the late 1880s and especially after World War I, more affordable cameras produced photographs of Pownal folks going about their daily lives: a family reads in its parlor, children line up for school, a young husband helps his wife hang clothing, a man poses in his new horseless carriage and later in front of his automobile business, Catholic children dress for their First Communion, owners of general stores stand on their porches with customers and friends, a Civil War veteran stands proudly next to his horse, a young woman visiting friends on a local farm drinks from a horse trough, a boy rides in a goat wagon, young girls and boys hike out along a mountain ridge, and a woman measures hides in the tannery.

      If one theme emerges from these images of Pownal’s past, it is that the people of Pownal—early settlers, more recent immigrants, and those here today—have worked very hard over the years. Images of young workers in bare feet, just entering their teens, and students without shoes remind us that life in Pownal has not been easy. Resting farmers standing in the field with their potato crop reflect their pride in work well done. The driver of a milk wagon, the driver of a mail wagon, and the farmer standing by a lumber truck illustrate the daily efforts that enabled others to enjoy their lives. And those who went off to World War II and never returned are memorialized on the cover of a town meeting annual report.

      Not only daily struggles, but also celebrations appear in the photographs: a large crowd gathers with flags on Memorial Day,

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