Twelfth in a series on Brandon’s historic buildings
By JAMES PECK
The two-story colonial brick house at 5 West Seminary Street in Brandon sits back on a hill above a long sloping lawn and doesn’t catch the eye of most passersby. In fact, the house couldn’t be more historical, having been the residence of probably the most impactful abolitionist in Brandon’s history: a man named Orson Smith Murray.
Orson Murray
Brandon’s abolitionist history goes back to the early 1800s, and there were many Brandon men and women who took a strong stance against slavery before the Civil War. Orson Smith Murray was the most ardent and vociferous of them all.
Born in Shoreham in 1806, the son of devout Baptists, he grew up on the family farm, attending Shoreham Academy and Castleton Seminary. He took up the cause of temperance at 17 and never drank alcohol the rest of his life. In 1831, he published his first newspaper article and chose William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, as his mentor.
He helped Garrison found the New England Anti-Slavery Society and became their agent as a rousing lecturer throughout Vermont and many other states. In 1832, Murray began writing letters to the Vermont Telegraph, the mouthpiece of the Baptist Church in Vermont, whose printing office was located in Brandon.
In 1835, he moved his family to Brandon, where he bought the Telegraph and became its publisher with the financial assistance of Brandon’s leading abolitionist, the rich and powerful merchant and financier John Conant. Conant even gave the Murray family lodging in the Baptist Parsonage on Champlain Street (now #13, still the parsonage today).
Murray’s office was now located on the second floor of Conant’s brick store on Center Street (now the Brandon Town Offices). In 1838, Conant and others helped Murray buy 32 acres for $2,100 on Seminary Hill just above his office. He purchased the land from the Brandon Seminary Association that had built the Seminary building there in 1832 (later the Brandon Graded School). Just below the Seminary building, Conant and his sons built Murray a brick colonial house which was very similar in style to Conant’s houses in Conant Square.
In late 1838, Murray moved in with his wife Catherine and five young children, ages one to seven.
Murray’s House
The new house sitting on the hill overlooking the Neshobe River and Center Street was later described in the National Historic Register as “2 ½ stories, brick, gable-roofed, Federal style house with later Victorian doorway. Two interior end chimneys, circa 1830.” The fan light in the south façade matched those in Conant’s houses.
Murray could now walk to work in a couple of minutes and, in fact, spent most of his time in the office when he wasn’t attending meetings of the Brandon Anti-Slavery Society at the Baptist Church. At first, he devoted the front page of the Telegraph to religious issues but reserved the last three mostly for ant-slavery articles. Gradually, the paper became predominantly abolitionist and the premier anti-slavery paper in Vermont.
Murray also espoused temperance, women’s rights, anti-war sentiments, and vegetarianism in the Telegraph. He was truly one of Vermont’s first progressive thinkers, though he was thought at the time to be radical.
Underground Railroad
Long before the Civil War, Murray and others in town assisted escaped slaves as they sought freedom on the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses on the route to freedom in Canada.
In 1842, he wrote about one such encounter: “My present dwelling place is situated on one of the slave’s by-paths to freedom. Three noble looking young men, on their flight, called on me and took supper. I felt no alarm during the night. When they were ready to part, I gave them some bread and cheese. They gave me a hearty shake of the hand and invoked God’s blessing upon us.” Murray was not alone in Brandon, as other abolitionists in town including Jedediah Holcomb at 28 Park Street and Rodney Marsh at 11 Pearl Street also supported the Underground Railroad.
Two Tragedies
On a sultry August day in 1839, Murray was at his office folding newspapers with his son Marsena. His wife Catherine had gone to Pittsford with son Carlos, while a babysitter watched the youngest three kids: 6-year-old Harriet, 4-year-old Catherine, and the baby, Charles. When Orson went home, the babysitter was frantic and said Harriet had wandered off toward the so-called “millpond” at the foot of the upper falls.
Her body was then discovered there by a pole with a hook that caught hold of her dress.
Harriet’s death, and that of her sister Catherine of croup six months later, had a profound effect on Orson Murray, but did not cause him to waver from his work. However, he became increasingly disillusioned with religious zealotry and began attacking hypocritical Baptist and Congregational ministers, essentially “biting the hands that fed him,” and he was eventually forced to sell the Telegraph and move from Brandon in 1843.
According to the Brandon Union, “Brandon’s first newspaper had fallen low in the opinion of churchmen. Its editor, Orson S. Murray, devoted a column and a half editorial to explain why he considered it ‘monstrously unnatural and vastly hurtful’ to shave the face or cut the hair. In the same issue, that of October 4, 1843, he announced the end of the Telegraph and denounced the churches as ‘relics of ignorance.’”
Murray moved on to Ohio, where he continued his prominence as a fiery anti-slavery publisher and lecturer, never shaving or cutting his hair, forsaking alcohol and tobacco, not eating meat and renouncing all religion until his death at 78 in 1885.
The Wool Merchant
A few years after Orson Murray left town, a rich wool merchant, named Chester Kingsley bought the house, which was just above his brick woolen mill on the Neshobe. Kingsley would live there until 1873, when he sold the mill to Howe Scale and the house to Carlos Gipson from Salisbury.
Gipson Lumber
Carlos Jonathan Gipson was 54 and a successful merchant in Brandon when he bought the house. Three years after they bought it, his wife Laura died and then he died in 1880, leaving the house to his only son Henry, 32, who already lived there with his wife Nellie and two small children. Henry was then clerking for J. F. Knapp’s lumber yard on Center Street not far away on the north side of the stone bridge.
In 1884, Henry Gipson bought out Knapp and started Gipson Lumber in the same spot (now where the brick building is at 4 Conant Square). Under Gipson’s management and thanks to the economic boom in Brandon, the business took off. Then, in November of 1906, a devastating fire destroyed the lumber yard and the three adjacent buildings of the grist mill property along the lower falls. The Gipson lumber yard was destroyed and only partially covered by insurance.
Gipson quickly rebuilt his lumber yard, this time on the north side of the river just below his house (now 3 West Seminary Street). He bought the land there from the town in 1907 and erected a 3-story, 24-by-80-foot building to be used for his office and lumber warehouse. In 1906, Gipson also bought the former brick woolen mill building there to use as a tenement building.
In 1912, more lumber sheds went up along with a 43-foot addition to the rear of the warehouse building. In 1913, another 2-story lumber-milling shop was built to the far east by the river.
Gipson Sons
Henry and Nellie’s two sons, Arthur and Carlos, worked at the lumber yard from their teens on. In 1907, Henry gave 23-year-old Arthur the lot at what is now 7 West Seminary where he built the house that is still there today (now owned by Dr. Kevin Thornton).
Henry Gipson was very prominent in town affairs, serving as town representative and as a selectman and was also the superintendent of the Rutland County Fair for many years.
In 1917, Henry Gipson passed away at age 68 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Arthur and Carlos took over the reins of the business, renaming it Gipson Brothers Lumber. Carlos inherited the old brick Murray house from his father and his mother Nellie continued living there with Carlos’s family until her death at 86 in 1934.
The Gipson brothers ran the business into the 1950s. They were both prominent in Brandon’s church, civic and political activities. Carlos was a selectman.
Younger brother Carlos died first, of a heart condition in 1951 at only 65, while at work in the Gipson Brothers office. Arthur passed away two years later, at 78, in 1953.
Brandon Lumber
In 1954, Gipson Lumber and Carlos’ Gipson’s brick house at 5 West Seminary were sold to Edward Gerow who renamed the business Brandon Lumber & Millwork. The Gerows only lived in the house a few years. He ran the business until 1967, when he sold it to John Read along with the house.
John Read
John Read was born in 1920 in New Jersey, became a talented mechanical engineer, then served as a captain in WWII redesigning planes to fly injured soldiers back home from Europe. He married Patricia Langley in 1949.
John was 47 when he bought Brandon Lumber and moved into the old brick Murray House next door with his wife and three young children: Carolyn, Bob, and Marjorie. He would run Brandon Lumber for the next 25 years.
John was an important founding member of both the Brandon Area Rescue Squad and the Brandon Historical Society. He loved the history of the town and helped publicize it many years. Pat Read was very active in the Brandon Garden Club, Brandon Thrift Shop, and Friends of the Library.
In 1986, John Read deeded all the business and residence lands and buildings to his son Bob Read, who was then living in Rochester, Vt. John and Pat built a house at Mount Pleasant Acres and moved there in 1987. Bob Read rented the house to locals over the next few years. In 1989, Bob moved Brandon Lumber to 11 Grove Street where it still is today. Bob sold the business in 2008 and it’s now a part of Ace Hardware.
Today, Bob Read lives in the 187-year-old brick Murray House and rents out most of the old warehouse building (the front has been a funky shop called Sister Wicked since 2019), but he retains the lumber-milling shop where he does periodic jobs.
The lumber used to build many of the houses in Brandon came from Gipson and Brandon Lumber for over 100 years. Just as importantly, the impact of Orson Murray’s first Brandon newspaper and his progressive views still ring true in Brandon almost 200 years later.
