Windsor County Court March 26

Zachary Bostock, DOB 1/4/89 pled not guilty to his first DUI in Bridgewater on March 9

Michael Drury pled not guilty to a charge of attempting to elude an officer and driving with reckless or gross negligence in Bethel on February 26.

Mechelle Kneideinger, DOB 6/14/89 pled guilty a charge of her first DUI, in Hartford on March 17

Bruce Wayne Lambert, DOB 1/21/56, pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI, and driving with reckless or gross negligence in Ludlow on March 20

Leon Desmarais, DOB 4/2/85 pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI in Springfield on March 16

Natasha Bruso, DOB 10/04/91, pled not guilty to unlawful mischief, and disorderly conduct/fight in Windsor on February 13.

Philip Carvalho, DOB 2/20/66, pled guilty to minor/alcohol enabling in Windsor on September 22

Karl LaFlam, DOB 2/20/66 pled not guilty to simple assault on December 17 in Hartford

Rural General Stores in the 1800's

In the preface to “The History of Canaan, New Hampshire”, James Wallace, William Allen Wallace's son, explains that his father died before he was able to finish his book. James actually finished the book after his father's death, and had it published. James states that most of the events in the book took place before 1860, because, “the strenuous life of this town happened before that date. Since the Rebellion, the life of the people has run smoothly. History is not made in that way.”

I definitely have found this to be the case throughout the Upper Valley. Almost every town has a fascinating, well-written town history that ends with the Civil War. One possible explanation for this is the opposite of what James Wallace says. The Civil War and the changes that followed it were so cataclysmic that people longed to remember a simpler, gentler time; a time when heroes were really heroes. They could look back at the town founders and civic leaders, like Oliver Farnsworth, Simeon Ide and Nathaniel Currier, and find men to venerate and look up to as stalwart individuals who were honest and brave, men who stood up for what was right, men who fought the odds and remained true to their beliefs, standards of the past life when it seemed like currently, things were running amuck.

Nathaniel Currier had two sons who became merchants. William Wallace tells us that Horace was employed in his father's store, and partnered with James Wallace until James died in 1853. Horace was married and had six children. He died in 1866 at age 48. Horace's brother Franklin, was also a merchant.

Frank was five years younger than Horace. He was born in 1823 and didn't get married until he was 51, and then to a woman 25 years younger than he was. Her name was Ella Minton, and she and Frank got married in 1874. They had two children, Ella and John. Ella was born the same year they were married, and John was born six years later, in 1880.

Horace and Frank followed their father's footsteps, becoming storekeepers in an era of rapid change. General stores had always been the center of life in a rural village. In areas with no general store, farm families had to either produce absolutely everything they ate, used or wore, or they had to travel long distances to purchase items they couldn't make or grow. General stores made it possible for farm families to specialize in making certain items, and buying or bartering for other necessities. Before the Civil War, necessities were all anyone could afford. After the war was over, the American economy grew so quickly that even farm families from rural New Hampshire could afford a few luxuries.

General stores often had large windows on either side of the front door. One window showed women's items and the other showed men's items. Sometimes store owners wanted their store to look bigger than it was, so they put a false front onto their store to make it look taller and more impressive. I don't think this was common in the Upper Valley, though. One building that does have a false front is the Good Buy Store in Wilder. Come to think of it, that building has the two big windows on either side of the door as well. Anyway, when you hear people talk about someone who “puts up a front”, this is where that saying comes from. Back in the day, it meant to put a fake front on a store to make it look higher, and now it means to act like things are better than they are.

 

                    19th century Michigan General store        Good Buy Store - 2013  

In the early 1800's, storekeepers did a lot of their trading by barter, because there wasn't much money in circulation. The store owner would sell items, and take other items in trade. Often merchandise wasn't marked with the price like it is now. The storekeepers would use a code to mark both the cost of the item and the price of the item on every piece of merchandise in the store. They would use a ten letter word or phrase, and assign each letter a digit from 0 – 9, then they would mark the merchandise with tags in code. Thus FAT COW MILK would stand for 123 456 7890. A lantern that cost the merchant $2.00, that the merchant would like to trade for another item worth $2.50, would have a tag that read AKK on the top and A OK on the bottom.

After the Civil War, more people had money, and general stores began to mark their merchandise with prices. Rather than barter, storeowners paid people money for food and merchandise, and the people who sold them the items could use the money to buy what they wanted. This is about the time cash registers first came into use.

A saloon keeper in Dayton Ohio, James Ritty, patented the cash register in 1879. He invented the cash register to stop his employees from pocketing money when they sold drinks. Cash registers

made it impossible to access cash until a sale was made. Then, the employee had to punch the keys to record the sale, and at the end of the transaction the cash drawer opened. At the same time the drawer opened, a bell went off, signaling to the owner of the store or saloon that a sale had been made. There is a theory that this is what started odd sales prices, because a store employee would have to open the cash register to give a penny's worth of change to someone buying an item for $1.99, thereby making a record of the sale and keeping the employee honest. This debunks the myth of everyone being so honest and trustworthy in the “good old days”.

General stores usually carried produce, groceries, dry goods, housewares and hardware. Produce was fruits and vegetables. Groceries was all of your other cooking supplies, especially baking ingredients, spices, coffee, tea and sugar. Dry goods was paper, cloth, and the sundry items associated with them, like pins, needles, thread, ink and fountain pens. Housewares were what the women needed to do their jobs, like flour sifters, cutlery, irons, washtubs, and other items needed to run a household. Hardware was what it is today, mostly nails, screws, and hand tools. Many of these items could have been made by a blacksmith, who sold them to the storekeeper.

There were no paper bags or boxes (and certainly no plastic). Housewives brought their own cloth bags, baskets or crockery to carry goods home in. They carried coffee, flour and sugar in their own cloth bags. They used crockery to carry liquid, like molasses, vinegar, honey, or in the Upper Valley, maple sugar. Storeowners would sell dry goods in bags, but they charged extra for the bags. Small purchases were wrapped in paper. Some small goods, like seeds or candy, were sold in a poke. The person selling the goods would rip a length of brown paper from a roll, shape it into a cone, and pour the dry goods into it. This was called a poke.

People who lived a way from town would only come in to buy from the store every month or so. I'm sure the Curriers had many customers for whom a trip to the store was a real occasion. In this day, eight or ten miles out of town was a real journey, and many families came into town one Saturday a month, or even one Saturday a season. For others who may have been poorer, a trip to town happened once or twice a year. These store customers bought in bulk, and brought their purchases home in huge cloth sacks and wooden barrels, in the back of their farm wagons.

Customers could walk through the store and look at merchandise and pick out what they wanted from the dry goods section, housewares and hardware. When it came to groceries, they would go to the counter with an order and the grocer would fill their order. There weren't name brands like there are today. Most of the groceries were locally grown or milled. Coffee, tea, molasses and sugar were imported by the grocer and everyone's order was taken from the same barrel.

There is a story that the word “counter” came from a medieval method of tallying up purchases. Our Arabic numerical system had not been adopted by Europeans in the Middle Ages, so storekeeper in very early medieval towns had no way to tally amounts of purchases. They developed a flat board that had grooves in it. They would place discs in the grooves, with each disc standing for a certain amount or number of goods the customer was buying. Then the customer would be charged, almost certainly in trade, for the amount of goods he bought. Eventually, the “counter” became a fixed part of the very early store, and transactions took place over the “counter”. There is evidence of this type of counter being used at Jamestowne in very early Virginia.

Of course, we really don't know what Currier's store was like. We do know that they sold rum. Every general store sold some types of groceries, dry goods, housewares, and hardware. I'm pretty sure they did not have a fake front – don't ask me why, but I just doubt they did. They may or may not have used a code to price their merchandise. No matter what, it's fun to speculate about what they sold, and what the inside of the stores looked like.

Windsor County Court March 19

Brian Fernandes, DOB 6/7/68 pled guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Ludlow on March 17

Jeffrey Blais, DOB 1/3/65 pled not guilty to a charge of possession of marijuana in Weathersfield on July 29

James Picard, DOB 11/9/67, pled guilty to a charge of petit larceny of $900 or less in Springfield on January 19

Daniel Degasta, DOB 3/20/78 pled guilty to a charge of possession of heroin. A state trooper stopped Degasta on Route 91 in Hartland and found heroin in his car.

Keith Lynde, DOB 10/16/83 pled guilty to a charge of operating a vehicle with a suspended license in Norwich on January 26

Warren Rokes, DOB 5/26/66 pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct/fight in Springfield on January 19

Seth Monfette, DOB 12/8/72 pled guilty to a charge of operating a vehicle with a suspended license in Hartland on January 23

Jerry Davis, DOB 11/17/58 pled guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Springfield on March 16

Casey Maville, DOB 12/18/87, pled not guilty to a charges of operating a vehicle to elude a police officer, and operating a vehicle with a suspended license in Bethel on January 28

Justin Bell, DOB 4/28/84, pled not guilty to charges of burglary and grand larceny. Bell allegedly stole tools to sell to get money to buy heroin.

Corey Bickford, DOB 9/20/77, pled not guilty to a charge of his second DUI, in Ludlow on March 16

Eugenia Emerson DOB 1/10/81 pled not guilty to a charge of operating with a suspended license in Springfield on January 23

Matthew Salvato, DOB 6/25/84, pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI in Ludlow on March 16

Grant Willard, DOB 6/25/84 pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI in Andover on March 17

Charles Osgood, DOB 8/2/40 pled not guilty to a charge of operating a vehicle with a suspended license in Springfield on January 24

Peter Hanson, DOB 4/17/70 pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI in Hartford on March 10

The End of Noyes Academy

On August 10, 1835, the committee of Canaan residents eliminated a public nuisance from their town. With help from residents of nearby Enfield, Hanover and Dorchester, they ripped Noyes Academy right off its foundation, eliminating once and for all the specter of interracial education in Canaan, New Hampshire.

On the morning of August 10, all roads led to Canaan. When the sun rose, a few men began appearing on Canaan Street. By the middle of the morning, a steady stream of rowdy men with axes and iron bars became a mob gathered in the center of town. A contingent from Enfield had brought a string of 50 oxen, which added to the noise and confusion. That first day, they were not able to pull the Academy Building down because the chains they had brought kept breaking. The next day they were more successful. They hitched the team of oxen to the building and pulled the building off the foundation. Although it was a slow, difficult process, the crowd pulled the building down the street, stopping at Currier and Wallace's store, where they demanded the store owners give them rum. On August 10^th and 11^th, the crew that was attacking Noyes Academy was fed with beef paid for out of the town treasury.

 

 

The weather that week was scorching hot. William Wallace, in “The History of Canaan” says the temperature got up to 116 degrees. When the crew pulling the Academy building made it to Parson Fuller's house, they stopped to get some water from his well. The parson's wife ran out and cut the rope to the bucket so they couldn't use it. Mrs. Wallace also came out of her house and started yelling at them.

Once they had succeeded in dragging the building to the corner of the town square, many in the mob didn't go home. Drunk on rum, they ran around the village shouting obscenities and threatening to attack the houses where the black students were staying.

Wallace quotes from a letter written by one of the town's people during that time. Unfortunately he doesn't tell us who wrote the letter. In the letter, the writer comments that “Mr Kimball was absent during all this storm”, which is not surprising. It is a little surprising that Wallace picks this quote to share. The writer of the letter goes on to say that the whole thing was a feud between the Masons (Jacob Trussell and Elijah Blaisdell) and the anti-Masons (George Kimball, Nat Currier and Hubbard Harris).

The Academy building was left on a corner of the town square, where it blocked the road. Muster day was always held in September, and on September 10, Canaan combined muster day and relocation of the Academy building. Everyone who had been involved the month before, including the team of oxen, returned to Canaan and moved the school building to the Baptist Parsonage Field. After that was accomplished, they took the town cannon, dragged it through the streets of Canaan and fired at every house owned by a Noyes Academy supporter, breaking glass and causing damage at each home.

The Academy building sat in the field by the Baptist Parsonage for four years. Finally, when the town got sick enough of having to look at an eyesore, someone burned it down in early March of 1839.

What was at the root of all the trouble in Canaan over Noyes Academy? Was it a feud between two competing lawyers? Was it a feud between the Masons and the Anti-Masons, like Wallace's letter writer suggests? It's too bad Canaan's older students couldn't have had a way to complete their education. The original idea behind Noyes Academy was to provide a way for Canaan's students to prepare for college. Then George Kimball comes up with the idea that the new school should admit black students. This was admirable, but common sense would have to tell you this was not going to fly in this small town in New Hampshire, especially the way it was presented to the people of the town. If they had focused on their original intent, and invited a few black students to join the school, rather than focusing on the interracial aspect of the school, they might have been able to pull it off. If things had gone well, they could have had more black students join in later years. It's annoying that two of the biggest troublemakers had no commitment to Canaan and no children to educate. Although Elijah Blaisdell had grown up in Canaan, he lived in Lebanon at the time, and spent the rest of his life in Lebanon. George Kimball left Canaan very soon after the destruction of the Academy. He went west to start a business. Nathaniel Currier gave him $6,000 as start-up capital. Kimball's business failed, and he ended up finally returning to Bermuda. Kimball was always one to get really involved in causes, having been very involved in church and religious issues, and also quite involved in the temperance movement. Nathaniel Currier stayed in Canaan, ran his store, and stayed involved in the attempt to provide the older children of Canaan an opportunity to get an education.

Don't Forget to Turn Your Clocks Ahead, Upper Valley!

I'm so glad it's almost Daylight Savings Time.  Love those longer days!

Thanks for reading my blog - I get more readers every month and it's very exciting.  I would love to hear from you with comments or suggestions.  I would especially love to have some more contributors.  Would someone be willing to write recipe posts every week?  Restaurant, book, movie or music reviews?  Reviews of stores, businesses or services in the Upper Valley?  Would someone like to write for the court reports?  I have a fulltime job and cannot cover actual court proceedings - but if someone wanted to do that, it would make the blog more meaningful.  I can only cover the arraignments.  It would be interesting to be able to follow a couple of the cases through to completion. 

I try to post a history and a court report every Sunday.  Sometimes (like this week), I'm really busy and don't get to post until later in the week.  I look forward to posting on Sundays so that I can see how my readership has grown from the week before.  Things have been hard the last couple of weeks and this blog is a bright spot in my life.

It would be even better to see some comments.  And really, post or email me at uppervalleyanonymous@gmail.com  if you would be willing to contribute to the blog.  Everyone in the Upper Valley has something to contribute.  It's not about the ideas, it's about the time. 

I have been spending a lot of time in Manchester, New Hampshire, helping someone out who has been recently released from prison.  The more time I spend down there, the more I realize that the Upper Valley has amazing services for the people among us who are having problems.  The Listen Centers are really helpful.  I've been shopping at Listen for 20 years, and totally take it for granted that we have amazing thrift stores here.  Not only the two Listen Centers, but the Good Buy Store and the Salvation Army.  Other places don't have this, and people with less resources are forced to stick to Wal-Mart and K-Mart, where you spend a lot more money for a lot less quality.

It is so amazing that we can ride around the three towns on Advance Transit for free.  I have also used Advance Transit in the past, and it is a fun and free way to get around.  When I was riding the bus a lot I made friends with the other riders and with the drivers.  Another thing we take for granted.
And our libraries.  I have been a library hound for years and always feel welcome every time I go to a library.  Now I have high speed internet, but when I didn't, I used the internet in the West Leb library- what a beautiful place that is -, the Lebanon library, the Hartford library, and the library I actually belong to, the Norwich library.  I have always felt comfortable and valued in all of our libraries.  In Manchester, you have to have a library card to use the facility, and in order to get a library card, you have to have a state-issued picture ID, and there are signs up everywhere stating this.  There are two places to plug in your computer in the entire place.  Both the Norwich and Hartford libraries have way more plug ins than that, and they are small libraries.

Oh, and I almost forgot  to mention the free community dinners in the Upper Valley.  The Listen Center hosts a community dinner in Hartford every week and a community dinner in Lebanon every week.  The Baptist Church at the top of the green in Lebanon hosts a weekly free dinner as well.  At the Listen Centers there are always  boxes of free bread and rolls. 

Thanks for reading,  everyone.  Enjoy the longer days and I hope to hear from you soon!  The Upper Valley Rocks!

Windsor County Court February 27

Windsor County Court February 27

Corey Betit, DOB 2/27/90 pled not guilty to a charge of giving false information to an officer to implicate another and violating conditions of release, in Chester on February 5. He also pled not guilty to charges of burglary, petit larceny of $900 or less, and a charge of buying, selling, possessing or concealing stolen property of $900 or less on May 30 in Springfield. He pled not guilty to a charge of giving false information to an officer to implicate another on July 5, in Windsor. In October, he was charged yet again with giving false information to a police officer.

Eric Marks, DOB 11/26/86 pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Woodstock on February 23.

David Williams, DOB 1/7/83, pled not guilty to a charge of his second DUI, and to a charge of simple assault of a police officer in Hartford on December 28.

David Durkee, DOB 10/19/86 was charged with violating conditions of release on December 3

Madison Concrief DOB 7/8/85 pled not guilty to a charge of giving false information to a police officer to implicate another

Samantha Crescotti, DOB 6/26/91 pled not guilty to a charge of her first DUI in Ludlow on February 23

Nicholas Slover, DOB 8/25/81, pled not guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Ludlow on February 21

Matthew Brown, DOB 10/6/92, pled not guilty to a charge of driving with a suspended license in Bethel on January 23

Robert Callow, DOB 9/23/77, pled guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Hartford on February 17

Nicole Polczynski, DOB 3/26/86, pled guilty to a charge of careless or negligent operation of a motor vehicle in Springfield on February 23.

Richard Rockwell, DOB 10/15/87, pled guilty to a charge of his first DUI, in Ludlow on February 20.

Sonya Ryan, DOB 3/25/73, pled not guilty to driving with a suspended license and violating conditions of release, on January 10 in Bridgewater.

Stephanie Dumas, DOB 2/7/91 was charged with a second DUI, in Windsor on February 25

Jessica Reason, DOB 6/5/81, was charged with theft of services when she didn't return a car she had rented from Thrifty Car Rental, in Hartford on September 14

Felicia Stefani, DOB 11/26/92, was charged with domestic assault in Norwich on February 5

Who were the enemies of Noyes Academy?

Who were the people who were the enemies of Noyes Academy? The leaders of the group that was so rabidly against Negro students in Canaan were Dr Thomas Flanders, Elijah Blaisdell and Jacob Trussell. Thomas Flanders was born in Antrim New Hampshire in 1792. He married Susanna Follansbee in 1815 in Canaan. She died 7 years later, having had several stillborn children, a son who lived to the age of 4, and John Gilbert Flanders, who was born in Colebrook in 1818. Thomas remarried Ann Hilliard who came from Cambridge, Massachusetts and they had a son, Abraham and a daughter, Sarah. Thomas Flanders started his adult life in Colebrook and moved to Canaan in the late 1820's or early 30's. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1832. He lived in Canaan in 1830, and the census shows him having 2 young children and a teenager in his house with himself and his wife. By 1840, he was living in Durham, New Hampshire, where he lived until he died at age 75. His son John stayed in the Upper Valley, spending his whole adult life living in Enfield, New Hampshire. Abraham Flanders became a doctor, and moved to New York City.

The Noyes Academy situation wasn't the only controversy Doctor Flanders was involved in when he lived in Canaan. Benjamin Spencer was a blacksmith who came to Canaan in 1825. He started a blacksmithing business and was busy at his job for about six months when he disappeared. After he went missing, a sheriff showed up in town with a warrant for Spencer's arrest. Apparently he had taken out a loan from the Grafton Bank, in Haverhill, but the cosigner's note was a forgery. It was obvious that Spencer had to have had help with this, because he was illiterate. Dr Flanders had some enemies in town, and they started a rumor that it was him who had forged the note. After all, Dr. Flanders and Benjamin Spencer had both come from Colebrook, and they both arrived in Canaan at the same time.

Law authorities chased Benjamin Spencer all the way to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested. He was brought back to New Hampshire and charged with the crime of forgery. He served two years in prison, but never did say who helped him forge the cosigner's signature. He gave an impassioned statement swearing that Dr. Flanders did not have anything at all to do with the crime. William Allen Wallace tells us in his “History of Canaan”, that “The doctor was not popular. His impulsive temper often broke out without reference to propriety, and often gave offense. But he was regarded as a man of integrity and incapable of committing an act of dishonor.” Wallace claims that the reason Dr. Flanders left Canaan for Durham is that these accusations bothered him so much.

Elijah Blaisdell was born in Canaan in 1782. His wife's name was Mary Fogg. They had nine children. His son Daniel also became a lawyer and lived and had a law practice in Hanover, New Hampshire. Daniel was an incorporator of the Dartmouth Savings Bank, the bank that gave us the mortgage for our house. His son James graduated from Dartmouth and a Bible college. He was the superintendent of schools for Lebanon before moving West.

Elijah lived in a house on Canaan Street. He became a side judge for the court of common pleas in Grafton County. Elijah was a selectman in Canaan for 10 years, from 1822-1832. Then he moved to Lebanon “drive the niggers out of our beautiful town”. He went back to accomplish a task, but he did not move back to Canaan. When I read the accounts of the Canaan town meeting of August, 1835, I was surprised to find that Elijah Blaisdell's name wasn't mentioned. This is why. He didn't live in Canaan. He was a native of Canaan, and I believe that he loved Canaan and got involved with the Noyes Academy altercation because he really hated the idea of black students being educated in his hometown. I would be willing to bet that he left Canaan because of George Kimball, and I believe that his hatred of Kimball partially fueled his anger toward Noyes Academy. In the “History of Canaan”, Wallace tells us that Blaisdell was “overbearing, arbitrary, impatient of restraint, and not scrupulous of the rights and feelings of others.” I love the way Wallace wrote, and his History of Canaan is the best town history I've read so far, in part because he doesn't hesitate to include the juicy stories and give his opinion about the various people in the town. On the other hand, I think Wallace held a grudge against the enemies of Noyes Academy, and some of these people may not have been as bad as he portrayed them.

Jacob Trussell was born in 1779. He was a sawmill owner and a leading citizen of Canaan. He was a prominent Mason and was very active in the Congregational Church. When the Noyes Academy episode was finally over, the Congregational Church excommunicated Jacob for his leadership of the mob that destroyed the school. You have to wonder where these people were when the whole thing happened, and why they didn't stop it rather than condemn the main players after the fact. Jacob and his wife Persis moved to Franklin, New Hampshire. Persis is listed among the members of the Congregational Church there, but Jacob isn't. He wouldn't have been allowed to join another Congregational Church after having been kicked out of the church in Canaan.

The anonymous footnoter that added the comments to the list of participants in the town meeting wrote that Chamberlain Packard was “killed by God”. Chamberlain Packard was killed by a train, in Canaan, but he was 62 when it happened. The same person wrote that Bartlett Hoyt was “killed by God after have stolen money sent to him to keep his wife's father from starving and going on the town”. Here's the story. Bartlett Hoyt's wife was named Prudence Wilson. Prudence's mother died and her father, Robert, married another woman, Sally Dole. Sally was an invalid for a long time, and Robert hired Phoebe Pattee to be his housekeeper and help take care of Sally. He ended up having several children by Phoebe, while Sally was still alive and living in his house. Sally finally recovered and left Robert, going to live with her brother, who she lived with until she died. Robert married Phoebe even before Sally died and kept on having children by her. He lived to be 77. The town gave Bartlett Hoyt the money to bury his father-in-law. Eventually, Bartlett and Prudence moved to Genessee, New York, maybe to get away from her family.

Most of the major players that founded Noyes Academy didn't stay in Canaan, and neither did many of the Academy's enemies. Nathaniel Currier stayed in Canaan. The Patees stayed in Canaan, and many of the less prominent families on the committee list stayed in Canaan, as did many of their children.

As I did the research about these families, I found that people either had no children, one or two children,or 8, 9, or 10 children. I found no families with three or four children, but quite a few childless couples. It seems like if you were fertile and your babies were strong enough to live, you would have a large family. Some families might have been lucky enough to have a child or two survive, in a long list of stillbirths, miscarriages and infant deaths.