Second in a series on Brandon’s historic buildings
By JAMES PECK
In 1976, when the Brandon Village Historic District was officially added to the National Historic Register (NHR), the Rodney Marsh House was cited as “one of the finest examples of Greek Revival domestic architecture in all of Vermont.” This beautiful mansion is located at 11 Pearl Street, the largest of 25 historic houses on Pearl Street, most built in the mid-1800s, in the NHR.
Built in 1852-3 by Brandon attorney Rodney V. Marsh, the house features four “elaborately carved fluted Ionic columns under a portico modeled after the Erechtheum of Athens.” There are 21 rooms, 7 staircases, 6 bathrooms, and 21 closets today (there were 50 closets when first built).
Mr. Marsh was an avid abolitionist and championed that cause from the 1840s up until his death in 1872. As Brandon’s town representative to the Vermont Legislature in 1857-1859, he ensured passage of bills protecting the freedom of former slaves, including the famous “Personal Liberty Bill” that “sought to secure freedom to all persons within this State” in 1858, four years before Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation.
Marsh’s wife, Eliza Sprague Marsh, was also an abolitionist and wrote a personal memento filled with the autographs and statements of prominent abolitionists. She died in 1898 and, due to her poor investments, the court ordered the house be given to her New York brokerage firm of Post and Flagg in 1901. Her son, Edward, continued to live there, then, in 1911, the house was sold back to Edward’s wife, Isobel Marsh. After her death, Edward lived there until his death in 1939, then it was sold out of the Marsh family to two young women: Margaret McKinlay and Alice Hall.
For a while, the new owners advertised for overnight guests, and you could stay in an “historic, century-old house with a quiet, homelike atmosphere”.
In 1956, the 14-acre property was sold to Redfield Proctor, a former Vermont governor and head of the Proctor Marble Company. He bought it for his son Robert and his family. Robert and his wife, Sara, and their four sons and two daughters would live there only until 1963, when they moved back to Proctor. Some in town may still remember the Proctor children: Anne, Redfield, Sara, Robert, Jr., George, and Fletcher. Believe it or not, the Proctors sold the house and 14.5 acres for only $44,450 (about $380,000 today).
The next owners, the Tracy family, lived there only until 1967, when they sold the property to Ginny and Tom Russell. The Russells were very active in the community and would live at 11 Pearl Street for 34 years. The seven Russell children—George, Sara, Edward, Dau, Charles, Michael and Kenneth—lived there for parts of their childhood. Five of them still live in Vermont and visit Brandon often.
In 2001, Ginny Russell subdivided the property and sold the house and 2.7 acres on Pearl Street to Hoyt and Christy Gahagan, who still own it. Ginny Russell passed away in 2018, a great loss to the Brandon community.
Did you ever visit this magnificent old house? Did you know the Proctors or the Russells?
Do you believe the town lore that the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad back in the years leading up to the Civil War? Hidden closets, stairways, and underground passageways in the basement? Depends on who you talk to. The current owners are skeptical, as are local historians who looked into it, including Kevin Thornton and Blaine Cliver.
But, others, including some of the Russells and the Proctors, believe it must be true. They remember seeing the passageway in the basement and discovering the hidden staircases and closets.
Back in 1995–7, the house was even part of a Chamber of Commerce tour of seven houses in Brandon purported to be part of the Underground Railroad. The tour was conducted by longtime resident Joan Thomas, who said she saw the tunnel when she babysat for Proctor family. In a 2017 VPR piece on the Underground Railroad, Joan was quoted as follows:
“Down cellar, there was a big hole,” Joan recalls. She says that one day, “the oldest boy was coming home from school, and going down there with his friends, and playing. Well, I went down one day because it was pretty quiet down there, and they had gone through this hole and they were in this tunnel. And that tunnel went down to the railroad tracks.”
Christy Gahagan has confirmed there were hidden staircases and closets, but she doubts there was a passageway. Hoyt Gahagan says they haven’t found the tunnel. Some of the Russells remember hidden stairways and even the basement passageway.
Historians Thornton and Cliver are doubters about the passageway, as is Ted Russell. Ted says: “Why would a tunnel be needed? An escaped slave could simply walk in the dark from the house to the railroad tracks. Brandon, Vermont is pretty far from the South, so there wouldn’t have been bounty hunters all over the place.”
Blaine Cliver adds “You’d have to dig a pretty good tunnel, and it’d be easier just to run across the street.”
Whatever you believe, there’s no doubt this beautiful old mansion and the families that have lived here over its 170 years are an iconic part of Brandon’s history. It would be a great AirBnB rental!
