The search for an African American community in rural Vermont

The first field guide to all of Vermont's natural communities

For many Americans, Vermont still seems what the United States at least in myth once was--a bucolic landscape of wooded hills, neat farms, and handsome villages--before modern forces transformed our agrarian nation into an urban-industrial giant. Vermonters have long been respected as sturdy Americans who prize hard work, honest dealing, town-meeting government, and dry humor. Their way of life, along with the beauty of their Green Mountains and quiet valleys, remains immensely attractive to natives and newcomers who seek beauty and the satisfaction of self-sufficiency in a natural environment where rocky soil and a varied climate have always compelled respect.

Author Vincent Feeney, longtime adjunct professor of history at the University of Vermont, has written the first book that peels back the Yankee mythos and examines the surprisingly rich, true story of the Irish in Vermont, from the first steady trickle of colonial pioneers to the flood of famine refugees and onward. From Fort Ticonderoga to Civil War battlefields and up until the years after World War II, discover how the Irish arrived, survived, fought, labored, organized, worshipped, played, and managed to prosper. This is a surprisingly behind-the-scenes American success story that has never been fully told until now.

Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in nineteenth century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age twenty. She spent the next decade of her life traveling throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends, and becoming the subject of gossip wherever she lived. At age twenty-nine, still defiantly single, Charity visited friends in Weybridge, Vermont. There she met a pious and studious young woman named Sylvia Drake. The two soon became so inseparable that Charity decided to rent rooms in Weybridge. In 1809, they moved into their own home together, and over the years, came to be recognized, essentially, as a married couple. Revered by their community, Charity and Sylvia operated a tailor shop employing many local women, served as guiding lights within their church, and participated in raising their many nieces and nephews. Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of their extraordinary forty-four year union. Drawing on an array of original documents including diaries, letters, and poetry, Cleves traces their lives in sharp detail. Providing an illuminating glimpse into a relationship that turns conventional notions of same-sex marriage on their head, and reveals early America to be a place both more diverse and more accommodating than modern society might imagine, Charity and Sylvia is a significant contribution to our limited knowledge of LGBT history in early America.

The definitive sourcebook for Vermont facts, figures, people, events, and history

Rolling green hills, cozy villages, covered bridges, maple trees—these are the images that have made Vermont. Residents and visitors alike appreciate Vermont for its old-time values that have steered clear of the modern world. Yet this image of Vermont has not come easily. Vermont’s old-time values have been challenged, tested, adapted—and even consciously sculptured. Vermonters have shown great creativity and adaptability in preserving the past while admitting the new. Integral to Vermont’s story of creativity are people like Ara Griggs, a one-man patrol who enforced state laws on 15,000 miles of roads. Or Gilbert Hastings, who put a toy whistle in every loaf to move bread off his grocery shelves. Or Philomene Daniels, who earned her steamboat pilot’s license to help keep the family business afloat—and was the first woman to do so. Historic Photos of Vermont tells the story of the nation’s 14th state in nearly 200 striking black-and-white photographs. Take this journey into the past and discover why Vermonters cherish the land they call home.