Articles

Olive Frost

by

By Laurel Ellis, August 23, 2006

In our busy here and now it’s hard to imagine how different everything will be at some unknown time in the future. Today’s minor hardships could even be remembered with a touch of nostalgia for the related memories of simpler and otherwise happy times. Sometimes it’s someone else’s memory that enriches our sense of everyday life at a time and place we could never experience first hand. Like a good novel but much more real. Such was the feeling enjoyed when talking with Olive Frost in August, 2006.

Read more

Pierce’s Hall

by

According to three documents written around 1953 for the first Putney town history, the beautiful brick building known as Pierce’s Hall was erected in 1831, “for a Methodist meeting house.”  It has a foundation of long, beam-shaped granite slabs hauled from West Dummerston, and the brick came from Timothy Underwood’s brickyard on River Road.  When the second meeting house was built in 1842, the Hall was sold to Leroy Pierce, “who used it for storage of corn, and kept sheep underneath the building.”  There are some records of dances held in the building earlier than 1873, and in 1880 Norman and Mary (Carr) Cobb celebrated their wedding at the Hall.  “It is stated that their six sons…drew their parents down in a sleigh from their home to the gala event.”  Around 1881, the building was refurbished for use as a meeting house.

Read more

Ellie Lascore: Waitress, Putney Diner

by

Interview and transcription by Paul Levasseur, April 2007

This is the best job in the world for anybody like me.

I had a very tough childhood, but as I grew older it got better, through my work. That’s what made me happy, I found out.

This is the best job in the world for anybody like me. You know, you can meet nice people, you have a good time, and you get paid for having a good time! I mean I just met so many wonderful people, and it’s never been a job for me. It’s been a good time, all the time. My kids can’t get over that, or anyone that knows me can’t get over that.

Read more

Obsidian in Vermont: Analysis of an Arrowhead in the Gerald Coane Collection

by

by Matthew T. Boulanger, Archaeometry Laboratory, University of Missouri Research Reactor and Thomas R. Jamison, Hartgen Archeological Associates, Inc., Putney, Vermont

Introduction

Archaeologists are particularly interested in identifying evidence of prehistoric long-distance trade and exchange, and artifacts made from stone are some of the best records of such exchange because they can be traced back to specific geological outcrops. Archaeologists often develop an intuitive knowledge about the types of stone and their potential sources that were used prehistorically. In Vermont for example, most archaeologists recognize quartzite from the Cheshire formation or chert from the Champlain Valley. But, when archaeologists encounter an artifact made from stone not found in their region of inquiry, they use the term “exotic” to describe it.

Occurrences of so-called exotic artifacts are not uncommon in Vermont.

Read more

The Society of St. Edmund/Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church

by

Catholicism in what is now Putney was first heralded among the Sokoki Abenaki (indigenous in this immediate area) and other Algonquin people by Jesuit French missionaries and trappers who lived and traveled on this land through much of the 1600s. Well before the French and native Americans raided Nehemiah Howe’s frontier settlement on the Great Meadow in the 1740s and the Putney Fort in the 1750s, operating out of Montreal and St. Francis/Odanak (Calloway, 1990), Catholicism was firmly established as a predominant religion and heirarchical means of settling disputes, “paving the way toward peace among the Wabanaki Confederacy and the Catholic Iroquois of Montreal” (Baker, 1976, p. 20).

Read more

Putney Federated Church/United Church of Putney

by

In 1919 a ‘union of good faith and economy’ created the Putney Federated Church, now the United Church of Putney, bringing the Methodists (established in Putney in 1832) and the Baptists (dating to 1787) together with and in the Congregational Church, which had been established in Putney in 1772. The groups maintained denominational ties and kept separate membership lists, but formed a Women’s Association, joining women from the different denominations.

The church building dates from 1841, on land sold to the Congregational Church Corp. by John Black, owner of the Putney Tavern, on March 10, 1841, with an additional 1/8 acre purchased from Stearns A. Houghton on March 24 (PLRv.8p.496; v.9p.194).

Read more

Overview of Religious Organizations in Putney

by

Religion and Spirituality In Putney, Vermont
By Stuart Strothman, 2002, with funding from the Vermont Humanities Council
On Sunday mornings, Saturdays, and holy days, people of Putney and the surrounding communities have attended meetings for worship, and for spiritual growth.  With motor vehicles in common use, many people attend services outside Putney, at St. Michael’s Episcopal, St. Michael’s Catholic, All Souls Unitarian Universalist, the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, the Windham Community Chapel in Dummerston, the Westminster West or Dummerston Congregational Churches, the Guilford Community United Church of Christ, or elsewhere. In this section of our website, we have descriptions from all the Putney churches, based on interviews of experienced members.

Read more