Oct 10 - Castleton, Vt, locations

       The largest group of letters we have from the Horr family centers on the letters that Sarah Smith Horr, in Castleton, Vt., wrote to her married daughter S. Angelette Blakely in Pawlet.  She always conveys the news of many relatives in Vermont & Massachusetts, so I need to find out who all of these people are.  And she fills up her letters with tidbits of information about the people of Castleton & Poultney whom Angelette may remember from growing up there.  Sarah is more informative about the people of Castleton who Angelette has not met, so the letters contain many tidbits of news & gossip that are not related to our family history.  When Alice & I visited the historical society, we learned that he town records of Castleton were destroyed by a fire in the early 1860s, so these may be  the only existing records of the stories. 

             I’m figuring out the geography of the town of Castleton.  A detailed town map was published in 1869, at the same time when maps were published for many New England towns.  The research for these must have been conducted over a few years, so they may not be specific to 1869.  People were moving around a lot and new buildings were being built.  But it is great to have this resource!  Individual houses & businesses are labelled!

               On the town map is a house labelled “H Horr” on South Street.  The houses & names of neighbors are shown as well.  How easy & clear!  But I’ve also looked at the Federal Census for 1870, where the census taker walks from house to house along the street and lists every person in each residence, and the two lists do not match up.  Was the map researcher mistaken?  Did the Horrs move between the pre-1869 map research & the 1870 census?  I don’t have any other source for this kind of information.

               Outside of town is a lake which Sarah Smith Horr calls “Lake Bombasine”.  The modern name is “Bomoseen”.  Bombasine (or bombazine) is a type of cloth made from weaving silk & wool together.  Black bombazine was popular in the 19^th century for mourning wear.  How was this lake associated with black cloth?  Did it shimmer in the moonlight?  The term “Bomoseen" is supposed to be an Indian name, meaning "pleasant water".  It seems likely that the original Indian “Bomoseen” sounded strange to 19^th century Americans, but so similar to the familiar cloth that they called it that.  Then later, when bombazine cloth was no longer so popular and ancient native tribes were becoming more romanticized, perhaps around 1900, the older name was revived.

               In one letter of July 1857, Sarah Smith Horr mentions that she visited “the Seminary”.   This refers to Castleton Seminary, which went by several different names over the decades as it developed from a private academy into more of a college.  She hadn’t been there some time, and she said that it was “different from former times,” but did not give details.

               Sarah also visited Poultney, where she had raised her children, but did not go to the house.  At the Castleton Historical Society, Alice & I were told that we might be able to find out where the Horrs’ farm was in Poultney, but that line of inquiry fizzled out, with no response from the expert amateur researcher.

"the Pond" near Castleton

               In a few letters, Sarah mentions “the Pond.”  Some of the people she talks about “live near the Pond.”  In late summer of 1857, “There was a very melancholy accident happened on the Pond. … on the Sabbath five Welshmen were drowned … They were enticed to drink by a man named Colburn who privately kept [unclear] to sell … they became intoxicated and, in attempting to cross the pond were drowned … four of their bodies were soon found … there is one yet remains in his watery grave.”  On the 1869 map of Castleton is an unnamed pond, just south of town.  On the modern Google map, the same pond can be seen near Pond Hill Road, and in Earth View mode, I can see that the shoreline is steep-sided with many dusty roads near the edge.  It looks very much like a former quarry.  19^th century Welsh immigrants to Vermont often worked in quarries.  It is not the sort of pond where people built mansions for the scenic view.  It looks now like the sort of place where teenagers & ne’er-do-wells go to get drunk & act foolish.  So it is likely that it has been this kind of place for 200 years.  What about the people who “live near the Pond”?  Why would that be a detail that Sarah would mention about them?  Are they poor?  Disreputable?  Drunkards or sellers of cheap liquor?  Respectable people who are unfortunate enough to be located near all this trouble?

     This incident of drunken drowning was probably the talk of the town.  Who told Sarah about it?  Where did she get her news?  This news must have been written in a newspaper, so is there a copy available in an archive somewhere?

Castleton history & Bomoseen derivation:  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vermont/TownshipCastletonRutland.html