ROCKINGHAM — Rockingham Old Home Days follows a popular tradition in New England rooted in it's earliest European settlements, with “pilgrimages” calling former residents home to where their families settled and they were raised.
That tradition continues with a few twists.
According to Frances and Leverett Lovell's History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont: Including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957, the first “return of the natives” of former Rockingham residents took place atop Meeting House hill in 1907, ostensibly to celebrate the newly renovated Rockingham Meetinghouse.
The town claims the Meetinghouse, built in 1787, as the oldest public building in Vermont still in its original state. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2002.
Formerly known as the Old North Meetinghouse (as opposed to the Old South meetinghouse in Saxtons River), the building was hardly used for its first 52 years, the Lovells said.
Erected as a place of worship, they wrote, it stood “alone and deserted on the hill above the village where the town was first settled.” This was, in part, because there were not enough settlers and parishioners to keep it viable.
In 1839, enough residents and parishioners had settled around it. Religious services started up again.
In 1869, town meetings began to be held there, and the building became a community meeting place.
But winters are harsh in Vermont, and that's when the building would see the most use. Heating the building was an issue, and summers were busy “making hay while the sun shined,” as New England farmers' needs must. So the meetinghouse again fell into disuse and disrepair.
Over the years, vandals and collectors stripped the building of its wooden spindles lining the pews, its door hinges, even its hand-whittled wooden nails, according to the Lovells.
Finally, in 1906, citizens rallied around a preservation move, and a special town meeting voted in a $500 budget to restore the building to its original condition, “providing it could be matched with private subscriptions.”
A beautiful, cursive document on a north wall of the meetinghouse lists the names of those donors, who raised approximately $1,200.
With work finished that autumn, a rededication ceremony was held the following Aug. 17 - and the first Old Home Day and Pilgrimage to the Meetinghouse was held.
People arrived in just about every conveyance then available: horse and buggy, train, and even car, by rugged road. The Hon. Kittredge Haskins of Brattleboro delivered the address of welcome. Other speakers included a descendent of the first pastor of the meetinghouse, the editor of the Bellows Falls Times, and several other prominent residents and historians.
With pride in the Meetinghouse and all it meant to the community, a poem was written in 1912 for the Rockingham Meetinghouse Association (RMA): “The Candle in the Choir.” This was read by its author, Percy McKaye, at that year's pilgrimage.
Noting the structure's original intent, and what many understand as the underlying reason for its 50-year abandonment, the poem begins:
In Rockingham upon the hill
The meeting-house shines lone and still:
A bare, star-cleaving gable-peak,
Broad roof beamed, snow-ribbed, stark and bleak,
As long ago their needs sufficed
Who came from cottage fires to Christ,
Sharing with frosty breath
Their foot-stoves and their faith.
Each year since 1907 the program has included some aspect of Rockingham history, a liturgical address, and a song or two. A picnic follows.
Today, a play
Today the building stands much as it did in 1787: unheated, with wavy, many-paned windows, and filled with empty California redwood pews. It's available for weddings, baptisms and other “appropriate events.” The Selectboard meets there annually in August, and it has been used for Roots on the River and various other concerts.
On the first Sunday following Old Home Day celebrations in Bellows Falls, the Meetinghouse echoes with a recitation of “Voices From the Past: A Rockingham Anthology,” a 2002 play by Rockingham residents Catherine Bergmann, Richard Ewald, Christopher Lillie, William Lockwood, Louise Luring, Raymond Massucco, and Dorothy Read.
The reading, directed this year by Sam Maskell and featuring RMA President Dr. John Leppman and 10 to 15 other residents, starts at 1 p.m., lasts about an hour, and is hosted by the RMA.
Readers portray famous and not-so-famous “dead” residents, including Hetty Green; local farmer Osgood Clark; a child who died of consumption; local artist Phineas Wilder; and a 20th century teenager. Short, sometimes fanciful monologues describe their lives.
With the readers dressed in black - and not necessarily appearing in chronological order - Civil War doctors speak of first love, and defiant loggers from Canada who married local girls address us (as do men of few words) with snippets of Rockingham's known (and unknown, and unverified) history.
Making no claim at historical accuracy, the play - read annually since its creation - offers us a Hetty Green who “may” have had a red dress in her closet no one saw.
In the performance, recently deceased Kay Hennessey admonishes the current Selectboard and library for “fighting”; and George Vilas rails against New Hampshire for forsaking its responsibility for the Vilas Bridge, his gift of friendship to the residents of North Walpole and Bellows Falls.
Expansion
The annual pilgrimage has expanded to its present incarnation held in the Square. It is held the day before the traditional gathering, on a Saturday in downtown Bellows Falls. This year, Old Home Days celebrates 108 years.
A full day of events in the Square and at the Waypoint Center include solo and group musicians; a clown; eating contests; a climbing wall; a dunk tank; booths from the Montshire Museum of Science, the Nature Museum at Grafton, and the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum (with live birds and other animals); and businesses offering exhibits and in-store attractions.
A quilt sewn by the Grafton Village Quilters will be raffled off. Tickets, from Village Square Booksellers, are $5. According to Chamber President Roger Riccio, the quilt, valued at more than $600, is called Lady Liberty and is made especially for Old Home Days.
A barbeque, a wine and cheese tasting, baked goods, Thai food, and Walpole Creamery ice cream can be sampled at booths around town. Plenty of activities for the whole family will be available to explore, with the Square closed to motor vehicles for the day.
Fireworks after 9 p.m. punctuate the day's activities. Almost any downtown location will afford a good vantage point, as the fireworks will be set off from behind the train station.
Riccio said parking can be found along the side streets and in municipal parking lots off Westminster Street at TD Bank, the Elks lot on Bridge Street, and the Centennial lot.