ERH ROUNDTABLE: SITES OF INTEREST

THE NORWICH POOL

2006-06-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Just up Beaver Meadow Road from our house is the Norwich Pool. As the "pool" is a dammed-up section of the brook that runs past our house, it is usually frigid from the time the dam is closed in mid-June until the bacteria count gets too high and the dam is re-opened, usually in mid- to late- August. However, it is extremely convenient for cooling off quickly, and the "cooling off" sticks with you for some time. There used to be a diving board, but since there are now more lawyers than cows in Norwich, that went the way of the dodo. [A note of historical interest: my mother claims to have been the first life-guard hired at the Pool. -rh]

You just walk up Beaver Meadow Road from the barn, turning left into the unmarked drive past the gray house with the stone wall on the right [number 330], and just before the bridge marked "B-13". A short walk brings you to the parking lot, and from there it is a hop, skip, and a jump over a lot of small tree roots to the Pool.

There is a painting of the Norwich Pool by Paul Sample in the basement of the town hall, across from the Town Clerk's desk. [Tracy Hall is open from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm weekdays, if you want to look at the painting of the Pool rather than the Pool itself.]

Paul Sample attended Dartmouth from 1916-21 and earned his degree in architecture. Later he studied art at the Otis Art Institute. It was not until after Sample spent four years recovering from tuberculosis after his college graduation that he turned to art. When Sample regained his health he went to study with Jonas Lie. In 1926 he decided to move to California where he taught at the University of Southern California. He also worked as a war art correspondent for Life Magazine from 1942-45.

Sample’s career was a success from the start, beginning by illustrating ads for big business such as General Motors and Maxwell House Coffee. He also illustrated articles for many leading magazines. He was a Realist landscape and genre painter whose work reflected a richness and joy in life. Sample really developed his own style while in California rather than depict popular subjects such as the Sierra Mountains or desert florals. He served as an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College from 1938 until his retirement in 1962. Sample died at his home in Vermont in 1974.

JOSEPH SMITH's BIRTHPLACE

2006-06-19T08:55:00.003-07:00

Just up Route 14 from White River Junction is the birthplace of the founder of Mormonism. The site used to be well worth visiting, and not only for the fact that the maples in the avenue approaching the visitors' center were hung with speakers that played rousing choruses sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The visitors' center used to feature life-size transparencies showing "artist's impressions" of such "events" as the appearance of the Angel Moroni to the young Joseph Smith and Christ's appearance to the residents of the New World (neatly sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter according the Book of Mormon), the latter painting featuring a crowd of Aztecs in the process of being turned red-skinned for rejecting Him...

At some point before 1985, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints moved upscale, and the new visitors' center is remarkably tasteful. But it remains worth a visit if you have nothing better to do of an afternoon. As the Mormon website says:

Born in Sharon, Vermont, on 23 December 1805, Joseph Smith Jr. was destined for a life of greatness and hardship. As a young boy, he received a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. That event changed his life and the lives of millions of others. As a result of that experience, Joseph Smith was given other divine communications. He also received an ancient record and was commanded to translate it. The translation of that record is now called the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Joseph was called as a prophet and was instrumental in the restoration of priesthood authority and the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From the time of his first vision, Joseph was persecuted for his beliefs. At age 38, Joseph Smith gave his life for the cause he believed in.

In memory of this great prophet, a granite monument was dedicated on the 100th anniversary of his birth. The shaft was sculpted from a single granite block quarried in Barre, Vermont, and is one of the largest polished shafts in the world. It stands 38 1/2 feet tall, one foot for every year of the Prophet Joseph Smith's life. The shaft weighs 40 tons. A visitors' center is also located on the site and provides further information on the life of this exceptional man.

ENFIELD SHAKER MUSEUM

2006-06-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

One of the premiere sites in the area is the Enfield Shaker Museum. The Museum has at last decided to forego the former hope of income from leasing the Great Stone Dwelling as an inn, and move its own exhibits into it instead. The current exhibit includes photos and reminiscences by local residents of the last Shakers to live in Enfield.

Founded in 1793, this village was the ninth of 18 Shaker communities to be established in this country. At its peak in the mid-19th-century, the community was home to three "Families" of Shakers. Here, Brothers, Sisters, and children lived, worked, and worshipped, practicing equality of the sexes and races, celibacy, pacifism, and communal ownership of property. Striving to create a heaven on earth, the Enfield Shakers built more than 200 buildings (including the Great Stone Dwelling, the largest Shaker dwelling ever built), farmed over 3,000 acres of fertile land, educated children in model schools, and followed the "Shaker Way" of worship.

The Great Stone Dwelling was at the time of its construction in 1841 the tallest building north of Boston. It is a granite-block rectangle about 50' x 90', and the upper [third, fourth, and fifth] floors were built to float over the second floor: the walls that separate the outside bedrooms from the central hallway that runs the length of the building are a foot thick and contain a bridge truss that carries the floors. [You can see the trussing within the walls of the upper floors.] The second floor is built around a forty- to fifty-foot square room where communal worship with dancing was held. [Public services open to "the world" were held in a smaller external building which burned down around 1866.] While the floor of the worship space is liberally supported by walls and pillars on the ground floor below, the bridge truss construction of the upper floors kept this large, beautiful room uninterrupted by pillars, at least as long as the Shakers lived there.

In 1923, after 130 years of farming, manufacturing, and productive existence, declining membership forced the Shakers to close their community and put it up for sale. In 1927, forgoing a much more lucrative offer from a New York syndicate, the Shakers sold the site to the LaSalettes, an order of Catholic priests, ensuring the continued tradition of spiritual, communal life on the site. The LaSalettes also continued the very active agricultural use of the land as well as establishing a seminary and high school.

Desiring to install a library on the upper floors of the Great Stone Dwelling, the LaSallettes introduced the steel columns that remain, temporarily at least, in the middle of the worship space. They also built the Catholic chapel immediately adjacent to the Great Stone Dwelling and other structures now standing mixed in with the surviving Shaker buildings; the LaSallette Brotherhood still owns and operates a shrine on the hillside across the street from the Great Stone Dwelling, and the brick building that fronts the road there is the former North Family dwelling.

Upon the sale of the property to the LaSalettes, the remaining members of the Shaker community moved to Canterbury, another dwindling community that was home to the surviving Trustees of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing [as which the Shakers formally were organized]. Some of the Enfielders complained to visitors in later years that they had never really felt at home since leaving their own community.

In 1985 the Enfield property changed hands again when the remaining buildings and grounds were purchased by a group of private investors; volunteer efforts to rescue some of the village from development resulted in the formation of the first Museum board. Through the efforts and support of hundreds of volunteers, the Museum purchased the Laundry/Dairy Building in 1991, and has gone on to acquire many of the surviving Shaker buildings of the former village.

Canterbury Shaker Village, more complete and better preserved than Enfield, is only 50 miles further away. Canterbury was preserved by the fact that the last two surviving Trustees, who also officially declared membership in the Society closed, left the sum total of Shaker assets to the trust which oversees its preservation. In the 1990's, Mary Ann Haagen's Enfield Shaker Singers had the great privilege of singing Shaker songs to the last surviving member of the Canterbury Shaker community, Ethel Hudson. There is a community in Sabbath Day Lake, ME, which has continued to admit new members and to accommodate Shaker life to a new century.