BRATTLEBORO — There is, practically speaking, an infinite number of interesting stories buried in the pages of our region's old newspapers. There is a myth, repeated in the book Life Along the Connecticut River (published in Brattleboro in 1939), that when the first Europeans came to the river, the water was so thick with shad that a person could walk across the water on the fish's backs.
The feeling of great abundance is akin to how I feel when I am reading the words of newspaper reporters from Brattleboro of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Some of the stories are tragic, some are joyous, some are about injustices impossible to undo, but it's the sheer number of half hidden stories that amazes me.
This column is an invitation to learn about some of the stories that I pull up from the depths, but I hope to make it more fun than that. I want to invite you to find some of southern Vermont's lost history yourself.
It is about as easy and fun as jumping into a pool of deep water. Give it a try - check out chroniclingamerica.org, a free site from the Library of Congress which allows you to search on any topic from many of Vermont's newspapers that have been digitized.
You can also go to the Brooks Memorial Library and check out the newspaper databases. (I have spent days digitizing some of the pages of old newspapers from Brattleboro that are not yet available on any website, and I will also be making these available to the public for free.)
Some of the most interesting stories that I have found were ones I stumbled on while researching other topics. For example, there was a gun battle over a still on a barge near one of the bridges that spans the Connecticut. I found that story when I was searching for information about a conman who came to town.
But one story - a story more appropriate for spring - I stumbled across while researching Brattleboro's first newspaper. It concerns peas.
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Peas are native to the Mediterranean and were brought to the Americas by English colonists. According to local historian Rich Holschuh, pease (sic) were a common trade item between early British sailors/explorers and Native people.
“It must have been quite a novelty - and also one of the few dried, stored commodities in hand,” he said.
Peas remained a popular food staple and a source of protein for many years. An advertisement in the April 14, 1804 edition of the Brattleboro Reporter reads: “A large assortment of English and American GARDEN SEEDS of last year's growth and of the most perfect kinds. Spanish Moratto Pease [sic], Tall Marrowfat [ditto]. Early Charlton [ditto]. Early Frame [ditto].”
For people in Brattleboro in the early 19th century, growing a large portion one's food locally was both common and essential. Some people, including folks at Brattleboro's Food Connects, will tell you that that time never went away.
The idea of growing heirloom varieties that once were part of life here got me excited.
I wrote to the Seed Saver's Exchange, an Iowa nonprofit for preserving heirloom seeds, to learn if any of these old varieties still exist. Sadly, according to the exchange's experts, Spanish Moratto and Early Charlton are believed to be lost.
However, the exchange located two growers who had Tall Marrowfat seeds, which grow to 6 feet in length and are prodigious producers.
The heavy harvests of a locally grown protein might not be a bad thing to be fostering. Did I get some of these seeds? Had to!, as my friend Jason Alden would say.
Marrowfat peas did not receive rave reviews from editors of the 19th century, at least not for their flavor, but they were acknowledged to be so prolific that they were considered good “for profits.” Early Frame are likewise less sweet and more starchy than many of today's popular varieties, but they mature earlier.
I was a bit saddened to learn that these peas were not the sweat edible pea pods that modern cooks enjoy throwing in stir-fry. So why bother resurrecting starchy relics from the past?
They are delicious.
At least they are at Nando's, a South African restaurant in Washington D.C., where modern commercial varieties of marrowfat peas are made into Macho Peas, cooked with mint and other spices.
In fact, at the supermarket the other day, I was reading the side of a large bag of wasabi peas, and I saw that this delicious snack is also made with this variety. It turns out that the largeness and starchiness of these peas means they absorb flavors well. They also withstand boiling better than smaller sweeter peas.
Also, when they are shot out of a pea shooter, they hold together just well enough in their flight to make a terrific splat on impact. I intend to make use of this property of the marrowfat pea this summer.
Emily Zervas, the librarian at the Putney Public Library, will again join me in running Field Day at the Crowell Lot, on Sunday, July 14. This celebration of goofy athletic fun for children and adults involves games with names like “Steal the Crocheted Bacon,” “The Mad Egg Relay” and, new this year, “The Marrowfat Pea Shoot.”
(In past years, my wife Cynthia and I created clay figurines as targets for pea shooting events at the Neighborhood Schoolhouse. My favorite one was Cynthia's clay Cthulhu. If you are not familiar with Cthulhu, imagine a tentacled sea evil god of the sea. This nightmarish being was created by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, who once came to this area and wrote “The Whisperer in the Darkness,” a story set in Townshend and in Brattleboro. We had a T-shirt made for the pea-shooting event that said, “Kill a Clay Cthulhu for the Kids!” Had to.)
Historically, Crowell Park is a good place for kids and adults to play together. It is named for George Crowell, who earned his wealth from The Household, a magazine he published in Brattleboro from 1868 to 1903.
Crowell used that money for good. As a philanthropist, he hosted orphans and other needy children from the city in Brattleboro as “fresh air” children. Many decades later, his mansion was torn down, and the land it was on was renamed Crowell Park, in his honor. Part of his land on Green Street was also used to create the Green Street School.
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This year will see the return of marrowfat peas to Brattleboro, in another way. Tara Gordon, the garden coordinator at Green Street School, and Lisa Holderness at Brook Meadow Farm and Farm Camp in Brattleboro, will be growing some of the peas with students this spring.
And Starr Latronica, the librarian at Brattleboro's Brooks Memorial Library, will receive some of the seeds we harvest, (the ones we don't boil and splatter on targets on Field Day) and make them available for patrons who want them for next year's planting season.
It makes me happy to imagine people in Brattleboro enjoying getting together every July, eating macho peas, and playing Field Games in the Crowell Lot.
But that is just one vision of reconnecting Brattleboro with its past. My real hope is that other people will find other stories and things to bring forward - not just as tales and forgotten history, but as reasons to celebrate, get together, and enjoy this place while we live here.
The success of an event is not how many years it happens, but how much fun can be created during the years that the event takes place.
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I think I might be one of the luckiest people to have ever lived in Brattleboro. I love this town, and I have enjoyed creating many alcohol-free events and parties over the years that celebrate its past.
My personal favorite was launching fake “U-fauxs” from the parking garage.
With some middle-school students from the Greenwood School in Putney, we attached some blinking LEDs to black helium balloons with filament line on a fishing pole. We let the balloons ascend to an impossible height, then reeled them in as erratically as we could.
It worked. People walking down Flat Street stopped, and came up to the parking garage to get a better look at the UFOs.
My friends and I were doing this before I knew about the boy in Brattleboro who, in 1810, launched a black kite into the sky with a paper lantern attached. This prankster set some black powder in the bottom of the lantern, and when the candle wick burned down, boom! The town of Brattleboro had its very own “celestial omen.”
When I learned from Dan Axtell of Westminster about the newspaper story from the 19th century which documented this prank, I was delighted that there was such a great history to mix into our hijinks. I felt incredibly lucky to be living in a town with such a colorful past to play with. (Caveat: We stopped launching UFOs when we learned how hard it was to avoid electric lines.)
If you look at the old Sanborn Insurance maps, you can see that the current location of the parking garage overlaps nicely with the headquarters of the Carpenter Organ Factory, a building that was also owned by Crowell.
Wouldn't it be cool if organ music from a Carpenter organ occasionally greeted you as you got out of your car? At least on Halloween? Maybe?
As I say, the stories - and opportunities to use them to make Brattleboro a more fun - and, therefore, a better - place, are infinite. I hope you might join me in finding them and making good use of them.