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Piecing Together The Special Story Of Growing Up In Addison County

Tuesday January 19, 2016

By Cookie Steponaitis

While Americans may differ about the benefits and detriments of the social media revolution not one will dispute the way it has linked generations and spanned gaps of distance and time. A new way to study history has come into focus in Addison County joined together by Facebook and other communication tools.         
   The Facebook site Growing Up in Addison County has 2600 members and is a gathering point for conversations spanning topics from holidays, farming, crops, storms, serving the nation, community outreach and what it means to grow up in Addison County. And with historic figures like John Deere and his revolution of agriculture with the steel plow mentioned, it seems to be the remembrances of generations that are the focal point of communication. Someone will post a photo, an old journal entry, a drawing of the Champlain Bridge or an Indian arrowhead and the discussion begins. People love to share stories, recall stories of generations past and piece together parts of Addison County history with clues gathered from many different sources.
    Recent postings and sharing of a commercial honoring Addison County Field Days tradition has resulted in discussions about what makes it more than a fair. The site offers a novice or curious a place to begin pondering what makes life in Addison County so unique and special and includes references to local schools and ‘from farm to table’ movements, discussion of laws and bills regulating farms and getting standards for future business people.
Libraries also serve as conduits of information, preservation of collections and unique books and archives written by local people over time.  The collection is housed at the Center for Digital Initiatives and includes some 788 images of the Little City and surrounding countryside over time. The collection is broken down by topics and includes everything from an 1866 Civil War parade to photographs of business, industries, farms, people and scenery and over one hundred twenty-two years of history. Starting with a simple photograph leads to conversation, questions and inquiry such as, When did the train come into town and actually cross the falls to the Panton Road side? What goods were moved by the Adams Ferry across Lake Champlain? When did the first bandstand appear in the park and what else happened during these Sunday socials?  What was life like on the Bushey farm in Ferrisburgh and does the homestead still stand? At University Of Vermont Digital Archives Bixby Collection.
    Perhaps the greatest source of information exists today in the minds and memories of our most elderly. Getting their stories on paper or recorded for all time offers a window into Growing Up in Addison County at a time when Yankee ingenuity and Vermont work ethics were defined for all time. For the earlier settlers, journals, diaries and hand drawings offer us starting points for a dialogue now bursting at the seams due to social media.  And let us not forget the outstanding museums, forts and collections that lay waiting for us to visit such as The Sheldon Museum, Rokeby Museum, The Vermont FolkLife Center, Fort Ticonderoga, The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and the private collections of local people who all have a piece of the story of what it means to grow up in Addison County past, present and future.
    The page posted from the NG Delano Diary from Christmas 1898 reported a huge storm with a lot of snow. Perhaps some of you can add to the memories of the Ice Storm of 1998 or the record winter of 1977. What you will find is more memories, information and reflection on a place special to all of us and unique as the people who settled it. Addison County is Vermont’s third largest county with eight hundred eight square miles, 766 square miles of land and forty-one square miles of water and a place that generations hold dear as home.

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