Westminster had the northernmost tobacco farms in the Connecticut River Valley. The 1941 Town History doesn’t mention tobacco at all. Like the current tobacco farms in the Amherst, Massachusetts area, the leaves were high quality and used only for cigar wrappers and binders.
The 1884 Child’s Windham County Gazetteer lists only 4 tobacco farms in the county, all in Vernon, although tobacco was likely grown as a sideline on other farms. The summer 1955 Vermont Life had an article, “Cigar Valley Outpost,” that described the last tobacco farm in the county, the Charles Holton farm run with sons William and James in the village. They were down to 4-6 acres from a high of 30-40. George Aiken recalled, “Vernon and Putney were the largest producing towns until around 1920 when Westminster came into the picture with larger fields, including shade grown.”
A newspaper article on the 1927 flood noted that the C.J. Decker Co. had about 75 acres in tobacco at that time. Much earlier, the Aug. 16, 1873 Boston Evening Transcript reported 80 acres of tobacco in Westminster.
Highlights of the Vermont Life article:
- Train #54, now the northbound weekend Vermonter, was called the Cigar Valley.
- In the early 1900′s, Vermont ranked #1 among states in tobacco yield per acre.
- At its peak, Vermont had about 500 acres in tobacco, almost all in Windham County.
- With luck, lots of work, and lots of spraying, tobacco could bring in $2000 an acre on a $500 investment.
Decker also had two or more huge cucumber vats or silos on the east side of the railroad that held the cukes until they were picked up by tanker cars and sent south to be made into pickles. Some oldtimers in Westminster say the vats contained brine and the cukes were pickled here before being loaded into the railroad cars. I have tried to find primary info on this and have not succeeded. Becky Atwood told me they were on their land. That is the farm that was eventually sold to Bob Goodell, where he and Pat lived.
We have photos of the Baxter canning factory at the museum. That was in Westminster Station just north of the Blue Seal Feed Store. Another interesting story that needs research. I don’t know if Jessie has tackled that or not.
Bill Holton showed me a large photo of tobacco fields on the land where our house now stands…3192 US Hwy 5, Westminster Village. He said it hangs in his barn. This land also had the first overhead sprinkler system for onions planted here by a Mr. Wright….David Wright’s grandfather, I believe. I believe that tobacco was also grown in Putney. A gentleman from Putney gave some needles to our society that were used by his father in Putney. Bill Holton also told me that the tobacco grown along the Connecticut River in Westminster was the best for rolling cigars. It was used as the outside cover because it didn’t crack or crumble. He thought it might have been the fog we get in the late summer and fall while the leaves are drying.
Thanks for all the research and help you have been to Jessie. She has told me about the time you are spending on it. We are grateful to you.
Gary says “hello”.
Alice
Alice, thanks for diving in and demonstrating how easy it is to add comments!
It took 10 minutes for your comment to appear because I had left the “Hold comments from new users for approval” option turned on. I’ve turned that off now, so all comments will appear immediately. It’s a good feature, but hardly needed at this point.
If you want to change any of your comments, you can log in as “editor” at http://www.westminsterhistory.net/wp-admin and click on “Posts” in the upper left. There’s an “Edit” choice that will let you edit any comment. For instance, I added extra lines between paragraphs on your post for easier reading. I use this feature mostly for fixing my own typos.
And hello to Gary. This free greeting reminds me–I want to document when phone calls from Westminster West to the East Parish stopped being long distance. I know it was just before I moved here in 1985 (when I needed only 4 digits to call Westminster West, but still needed 11 digits to call Westminster Village even though it was charged as a local call).
Gary doesn’t remember when the phone service changed, but he did give me a layman’s explanation of why the differences occurred. He worked out of Brattleboro, mainly in the West River Valley area. Just before he retired in 1994 he was working in Bellows Falls.
Westminster West was (is?) served by the Putney Central Office, which was a “Stepper Office”. It only had the ’387″ or earlier “name” exchange working in it, therefore if you were calling a 387 number, you only needed to dial or the last four digits. There was no duplication of the last four digits in Putney and Westminster West.
Westminster “east” is servied by the Central Office in Walpole, which was not a “Stepper Office”. It was probably a Number 5 or Number 1 “Cross-bar Office”, which routed calls in a different manner. (Without getting technical). These calls were sent to Keene and are maintained by the Keene offices. If you needed repair service, the men worked out of Keene.
North Westminster was (is) served by the Bellows Falls Central Office, which was also a “Stepper Office” and served only “463″ numbers.
So, in order to call “out of the stepper office” you had to dial the entire seven digit number. Maybe, because the “722″ exchange was in the New Hampshire office, you had to dial the area code, too.
The Putney and Bellows Falls repair and installation offices were in Brattleboro.
Do you know Tom Abare? He worked for the phone company and has lived here a long time. He may be able to give you a date when the offices converged and how it eas accomplished.
Just as a point of interest, the 387 was “Evergreen.” And I may be wrong here, but think that the 4 digits were the number at first and then the 387 or “Evergreen” was added to it, which could be dialed or not.
I can remember (vaguely) the service prior to that. You picked up the phone, no dial, but a crank to ring the operator, and then asked her for the number you wanted. And I can’t remember that though for some odd reason I have thought of it lately and just can’t come up with it. My grandmother’s had a 3 in it – something like – “ring 3 …” I might not even be close. That was probably late 40′s early 50′s.
Re: Tobacco Growing
I have a short blurb on my Windham County site:
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/vt/county/windham/tobacco.html
This is a link to a terrific site of old photos.
http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/
Go here and type in the search – Putney tobacco – and a photo of Julius Washburn’s tobacco farm will come up. This farm is on the Westminster West Road and is owned by his great grandson Clayton Goodell.
Type in – Westminster tobacco – and a photo comes up of a tobacco farm in Westminster damaged by insects.
Try just the name of the towns and see all the great photos that come up.
I remember the old operator days. You picked up and told the operator your number: Evergreen 7 and then the last four digits.
Does anyone know anything about Westminster West having its own telephone company? I don’t know when; it must have been early in the 1900s. All we have in the museum if one piece of stationary, which a farmer has used to write up his accounts.
Cool tidbit of the day; Justin Morgan’s son Revenge stood at stud in Westminster West in 1823. He had a busy schedule, in a different town every day of the week. If your mare happened to be in heat on a Tuesday you could breed to him, or you could chase him down to Putney or Chesterfield if she didn’t happen to be on a convenient cycle.
This is fun!