Rutland Daily Herald from Rutland, Vermont • 7

Thursday Estra RUTLAND DAILY HERALD, THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 5, 1984 Celebrates Its Bicentennial 1784 Stories by 1984 Ed Bama The Brandon Follies, a comedy revue by the Brandon Players at the Lower Barn of the Brandon Inn, 8 p.m. Buggy rides from Central Park with the Rev. Olsen Clarks team, all day. JULY 7 Brunch at the Brandon Inn with guests Gov. Richard A.

Snelling, Sen. Robert T. Stafford, Rep. James M. Jeffords, and gubernatorial candidates.

The cost is $6.50 for a breakfast buffet. Vermonts largest July 4th parade with seven bands, 12 fire departments and much more, beginning at 12:30 p.m. Between July 3 and July 7, Brandon will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of its formation as a town. Back in 1784, Vermont was not part of the United States. By its own constitution it was the independent Republic of Vermont.

It was a place where people came who wanted to be free of the settled ways and Puritan customs of the seaboard communities and of the aristocratic ways of the New York landlords. In 1784, a year after the Revolutionary War, cash was scarce. There were uprisings in Rutland against foreclosures, and the Legislature at last from Central Park with the Rev. Olsen Clarks team. A street dance with J.B.

the Varieties, a square and round dance band, sponsored by the Neshobe Sportsmens Club at the park in front of the Brandon Inn. JULY 6 Farmers market and arts and crafts sale in Central Park, 10a.m. to 3p.m. Flower show at the Brandon Inn from 2 to 8 p.m., sponsored by the Brandon Garden Club, open to all amateurs. passed a law saying animals and grain could be used to pay debts.

Thus Vermont became a place where ordinary people could own land and homes, and make a start. Freedom and heritage are the themes of the Brandon bicentennial celebration. Scheduled events include: JULY 5 An open house at the Brandon Training School with tours leaving every half hour from the' administration building, 11 a.m.to4p.m. Buggy rides all day Neshobe Became Brandon There was a time when Bran don took its turn at the edge of the American frontier, back when it was a Revolutionary War outpost with the name Neshobe. Starting in 1772, a few hardy settlers from Massachusetts and Connecticut made openings and pitched" behind what is now Otter Valley Union High School, near what is now called Hawk Hill.

Partly they chose the highland location to avoid the malaria (bad air) that swamps were supposed to cause and the mosquitoes that the region continues to breed. But more importantly, it was defensible high ground within rifle shot of Fort Vengeance, a stockade near the present site of the Hubbardton Battle Monument on Route 7. Until the end of Americas struggle for independence in 1783, when the British had clearly stopped organizing Indian guerrilla raids from their Canadian territories, Neshobe marked the northernmost line of white settlement. Nearby in Sudbury, the Crown Point Military Road led into no-mans-land. It was dangerous to start a farm too near it.

In 1779, three houses and a sawmill on the west side of the town-to-be were burned by Indians, who took the family of Joseph Barker captive. They left Martha and her 14-month-old son when it became clear that she was about to have her second child. Joseph feigned illness and was released in the Middlebury area. Meanwhile, Martha tried to get to a friends house but didnt make it. Joseph found her the next day with her newborn child in the deserted cabin of the Robbins brothers, who had been killed by Indians in 1777 along what is now Wheeler Road.

(See Page 14: Neshobe) Shirley Farrs Legacy She was a home-dwelling spinster lady, short and plain, whose deafness later in life increasingly shut her out from the world. Or: she was the towns leading citizen, a highly educated and cultured person who held state and national offices, and whose estate was the largest ever to go through Rutland Probate Court. Shirley Farr encompassed all these contradictions and more. Her lifespan (1881-1955) and lifes work bridged Brandons transition from the 19th to the 20th century. Her father, Albert Farr (1851-1913), was born and educated in Brandon, but his family moved to Ohio to seek its fortune.

Albert Farr found his in Chicago, where he became first a lawyer, then finally chairman of the board of the Harris Trust and Savings Bank. But he never forgot Brandon. It was his summer home in 1910 he built The Arches, a large residence on Park Street now used as a home for the elderly. According to Catherine Ashburner, Shirley Farrs personal secretary from 1937 on, both Shirley and her cousins were brought up to believe Vermont was the most heavenly place there was. In 1920, when a constitutional amendment gave women the vote, she made Brandon her legal residence and began staying at The Arches through November.

In 1942 she moved all her belongings from Chicago. Earlier in her life she had been an instructor in history and French at Ripon College in Wisconsin, had worked with the Red Cross in France in the year after World War had been a national president of the Women's Overseas Service League and had been an assistant editor of the American Historical Review. When she came to Brandon to stay, it was not to rest. She pro- A Walk Through Town A visitor to Brandon in the early 1800s might begin his walk through town at the stage coach stop, a tavern built by Jacob Simonds about 1786. Called Birchars Tavern (and some day to be the Brandon Inn), it includes a store and an ashery.

Potash lye made from wood ashes is in great demand to wash wool for Englands mills, so it is a major cash crop often used in barter at the store. To the east is Park Street, a broad thoroughfare designed so the militia can drill there. A few houses have begun to occupy what were until 1810 the Rossiter family's fields. Corn and potatoes grew there, and hay was cut, after the workers had pushed aside the chunks of iron ore that littered the ground. Just beyond Park Street, on the north side of what will be Park Extension, is the farmhouse where Mrs.

Carey fought her battle with the bear. All afternoon it kept trying to get her pig, and all afternoon she kept beating it back with the fireplace tongs. The last community bear drive will not be held until 1836. Out the road that will become Route 73 are the Upper Furnaces, better known now as Forest Dale. Where the Methodist Church will some day be is hatter Seth Keelers house, whose second floor is the Masonic Hall.

One time when two candidates for initiation were waiting downstairs, Mrs. Keeler heated her gridiron a metal grille for broiling meat then called upstairs that the candidates had arrived and the gridiron was ready. The two men fled, never to return. The Rossiter house and barn stand where the Ayrshire Breeders Association will one day be. Here soldiers in the War (See Page 14: Walk) Fossil Frog Croaks Believers in Champ, the Lake Champlain monster, take heart: there is a 19th century precedent for the sighting of a creature from the dinosaur era.

Among the many unusual geological features of Brandon, there was and is a unique deposit of a brown coal-like material called lignite. Hundreds of types of fossil nuts, leaves, and fruit have been found there, remains from the days when this part of the world was a tropical forest. Many species have never been duplicated elsewhere. In 1865, this lignite bed was being mined for fuel by Brandon industries such as the Brandon Iron and Car Wheel Company. A new shaft had been sunk to the depth of 114 feet.

According to an E.S. Marsh report in the Brandon Union, the workmen then hit a pocket of mud. Digging through it, they discovered a giant bullfrog, perfectly preserved. It measured 14 inches from the tip of its nose to the end of its spine. The workmen put it aside and went back to work.

But after a few hours it began to twitch and jump. Some of the townspeople came out to witness the amazing phenomenon, then the frog was put in a nearby pond. For many years its bellowing could be heard miles away. Elsewhere in the 19th century the theory of evolution was hotly debated. But around Brandon, as one newspaper put it, the generally accepted theory is that, beginning with the Cenozoic era, we find the origins and development of reptiles, and that for ages after, these reptiles were monstrous in size.

The frog probably never attained the vast proportions found in the dinosaur, the giant lizard, a cousin of the frog; but no doubt frogs were much larger than they are now." The story of Brandons giant frog can be found in the hardback edition of the town history. Chronology 1761: King George III charters Neshobe 1772: First person to spend a winter 1784: First town meeting; town renamed Brandon 1796: John Conant arrives; he and his sons will dominate the towns industrial life for half a century 1813: Stephen A. Douglas bom; will become a senator, debate Abraham Lincoln 1828: First newspaper, the Vermont Telegraph 1834: Thomas Davenport invents electric motor 1849: First trains run to Rutland and Burlington 1857: Howe Scale Company begins operations 1861: The Allen Greys militia leaves for Civil War 1862: Brandon Library Association (130 volumes) 1875: Ayrshire Breeders Association formed 1876: Fire District formed 1878: First telephone; water piped from Fern Lake 1887: 1,130 pounds of trout caught for Masonic banquet, 480 pounds by one fisherman 1890: First two electric streetlights 1893: Town clock purchased for $500 1900: First concrete sidewalk 1903: Rural Free Delivery begun 1915: Brandon Training School opens 1947: First Recreation Council 1959: Town manager government instituted 1961: Waster water treatment plant finished 1962: First class graduates from Otter Valley Union High School. mptly became embroiled in public controversy by starting a colony of World War II refugees on Park Street. As national vice president of the American Association of University Women, she had become involved in its immigration committee and decided to use her overseas connections to help victims of Hitlers persecutions.

The flap over that action, which Ashburner said gave rise to all sorts of rumors about the foreigners, apparently didnt hurt her reputation too much, for she was elected to the state Legislature in 1945 and 1947. You could agree or disagree with Shirley Farr, but not ignore her. For instance, she was very critical of the way (the DAR) was handling the renovation of the Stephen Douglas house in Brandon, Ashburner said. Someone told her, If you really wanted to do it, youd join the DAR and fix it up yourself." She did, eventually becoming regent of the Vermont DAR. To an extraordinary degree, her resolute past actions continue to define issues that still face the town of Brandon.

The argument over whether Park Street should be a Design Control District is the same as when Shirley Farr proposed the towns first zoning ordinance to keep 'a gas station from locating on Park Street. Zoning was brand new then, Ashburner recalled, and it looked like it was looking down on people, a kind of snobbery. It was a very unpleasant long meeting. She got terribly insulted at it. So she simply bought up any properties where business activities could interfere with residential life.

However it is not true, Ashburner said, that Shirley Farr was against industrial development for Bran-don. Indeed, for years she helped finance the Newton-Thompson Co. because that was one place people worked and it was very important to keep it running." (See Page 14: Farr).