And Oh if my grandmother was alive -- how she would love this post! As the former Snow Queen of Suicide Six, she regaled us with stories about the first rope tow. I will ask mom if she can find any old pictures or recount the stories!
What relevant color you have brought to the Woodstock Green! My first Woodstock office was in the Inn -- up on the second floor with Janine Williamson, Mary Ellen McCue and Jon Weber. What fun it would have been to share the stories of the active abolitionists as I handed out endless Holiday cookies and balanced vats of sloppy cider and syrupy eggnog up and down the stairs and through the gallery for Wassail weekend....
What really piques my interest is the possibility that it was a station on the Underground Railroad. While the legend of the tunnel running from the basement to Kedron Brook may have been debunked, there's no doubt that Hutchinson and his family were active in smuggling enslaved people from the southern states into Canada. Imagine fleeing to Canada with a stop on the Green and running this effort in such an exposed location -- talk about courage and determination!
Oh if the walls and Titus could talk! I will never pass by it again without remembering its rich history and that the fight for equality is ongoing, and we must continue to challenge systemic oppression wherever we see it.
Vermont had actually abolished slavery in 1777 and probably wasn't very supportive of southerners trying to reclaim their "property" under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Of course there might have been other reasons for a tunnel, but the Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court seems an improbable smuggler.
And Oh if my grandmother was alive -- how she would love this post! As the former Snow Queen of Suicide Six, she regaled us with stories about the first rope tow. I will ask mom if she can find any old pictures or recount the stories!
What relevant color you have brought to the Woodstock Green! My first Woodstock office was in the Inn -- up on the second floor with Janine Williamson, Mary Ellen McCue and Jon Weber. What fun it would have been to share the stories of the active abolitionists as I handed out endless Holiday cookies and balanced vats of sloppy cider and syrupy eggnog up and down the stairs and through the gallery for Wassail weekend....
What really piques my interest is the possibility that it was a station on the Underground Railroad. While the legend of the tunnel running from the basement to Kedron Brook may have been debunked, there's no doubt that Hutchinson and his family were active in smuggling enslaved people from the southern states into Canada. Imagine fleeing to Canada with a stop on the Green and running this effort in such an exposed location -- talk about courage and determination!
Oh if the walls and Titus could talk! I will never pass by it again without remembering its rich history and that the fight for equality is ongoing, and we must continue to challenge systemic oppression wherever we see it.
Vermont had actually abolished slavery in 1777 and probably wasn't very supportive of southerners trying to reclaim their "property" under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Of course there might have been other reasons for a tunnel, but the Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court seems an improbable smuggler.