Returning to previous strolls through St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon brings me to three photos of gravestones whose stories needed to be retrieved. In all three instances, the subjects’ first and last names had changed from records of their baptisms or marriages in Québec.
Tag: Vermont History
Names lost in Vermont, Part 37: Brooks and Disorda
Unfinished business from our last installment, Brooks had been included in the previous title along with Wideawake.
Bird Cage Mansion moved over Seminary Hill
“The design and ornamentation of this elaborate house is highly individual and ranks among the most unusual examples of High Victorian eclectic architecture in the state.”
Names lost in Vermont, Part 36: Wideawake, Morris, Brooks, and Smart
Over twenty-five years ago, after reading one of Christian Wideawake’s by-lines from the Rutland Herald, I commented to George Valley, “I wonder if Wideawake is a Native American surname?” George, raised in a Francophone family, did not speak English until he went to school. He said, “I bet it was Leveillé.”
Names lost in Vermont, Part 35: Shackett, Shambo, and Swenor
On town or school rosters, the names Shackett and Shambo might have followed each other on an alphabetical list, but as you have come to expect in this column, neither of their original names started with the letter S.
The Marsh House on Pearl Street: Mansion of Prominent Brandon Abolitionist
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.”
Names Lost in Vermont, Part 34: Mayhew, Nicklaw, and Shoro
Our last installment of Lost Names [Bush, Bullio, and Anoe, #33] connected us to three more families whose names were transformed in Vermont.
Brandon’s Otterside Animal Hospital was once the Thayer mansion
n 1976, the Brandon Village Historic District was officially added to the National Historic Register (NHR). 245 of the town’s “architecturally and historically significant buildings,” mostly residences, “representative of the growth and prosperity of the village” from the late 1700s to the early 1900s then became nationally recognized.
Lost Names in Vermont, Part 33: Bush, Bullio, and Anoe
Faded and slightly sunken stones of Peter Bush and his wife Lucy in Brandon’s St. Mary’s Cemetery beckoned me to delve deeper into their identities.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 32: Crone and Devino
Unpacking a family photo from 1920 takes us into the history of two entwined and transformed names. Once a common practice in small towns, pairs of siblings married siblings from a neighboring family, as with this case of two Forest Dale families.