When Something Old Is New Again Celebrating Antiques

By Cookie Steponaitis

photo by Photo Provided Stopping by the FitzGerald’s antique shop on Route Seven in Vergennes is a way to experience how something old became something new again! Come and see the history of our country come alive, one item and one story at a time.

photo by Photo Provided Selling antiques there since 1969, Barbara FitzGerald has a love of antiques and even more a love of meeting people and sharing stories that are waiting to be told, by the antiques!

Barbara Fitz Gerald has been selling antiques out of her Waltham, Vermont home since 1969 when she and husband Gerald arrived in the area. While the times have changed and the FitzGerald family now boasts two children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, the family passion for antiques has not waned and the qualities that made Addison County so attractive over forty years ago still hold true.
    “This house was built in 1877 by H. E. Ingham,” remarked Mrs. FitzGerald, “and since we moved here my family has only altered the original structure by adding a bathroom to the second floor. Descendants of the family who lived here for many generations have come to see it and remember each room as virtually unchanged.” Browsing through the house and barn the antiques span all eras of American history and some of Europe as well. Walking to different items, Barbara Fitz Gerald stops to share a story and a recollection pertaining to a specific piece or its connection to life in the area over time. Fitz Gerald has a personal fondness for wooden tools and blacksmithing equipment and has witnessed not only changes in local technology over time but in practices of daily life as well.
    Open now by appointment or by chance, the antiques in the shop beckon the curious passerby to engage in conversation about America of yesteryear and the patterns of life that change but hold fast to ideas and customs in many ways. “This is very much still a country village kind of life,” shared FitzGerald, “and a place I love living.”
    As Vergennes Day once again brings in people from across the region and focuses attention on the unique and diversified heritage of the people who settled here, places like FitzGerald’s antique shop on Route Seven just outside the Little City, bring to light items from our past that are not only wondrous ways to reach into history learning about those who came before, but interesting house pieces or most certainly talking points to bring together generations, traditions and to prove once and for all something old is definitely something new again.