Apr 28 – Hattie, School, & Rutland Fires

Hattie Blakely

After Hattie left Rutland High School in November of 1867, what were her plans for the future?  How did the news of the Rutland fires of 1868 affect her?

It appears that the family’s original plan was to send Hattie to Rutland for one term of advanced melodeon lessons.  Since she qualified for only the preparatory level of high school classes, but she performed passably, she might have benefitted from continuing there.  Why not?  Was this considered to be sufficient education for her abilities & ambitions?  Was Hattie too homesick?  Was there a sudden financial hardship for the family?  We have no evidence of that.  Was her mother ill and needing her help at home?  This was often a reason for girls to discontinue their schooling.  It was, in fact, the reason that her niece Winifred H. Blakely went to several different colleges for a term or two, and then returned home because her father was ailing.  Had she gotten too friendly with a young man?  The letters do not even hint at anything like this.  Were Uncle Marshall & Aunt Mary unable or unwilling to have her living with them any longer?  In the end, it does not seem that Hattie or the family felt that there was any urgency about continuing Hattie’s schooling at this point, not even the music lessons.

Nickwackett Fire Station,
by Donna Wilkins

As interesting as Rutland city life had been for Hattie, her parents were probably relieved to have her home after the year of fires began.  The April and December fires were right in the neighborhood of the high school, the music teacher, & Uncle Marshall’s home.  The Rutland Herald was filled with harrowing details about each fire and the suspicions of arson.  In April, 3 city blocks burned down, just next to where Hattie had been.   It’s quite likely that the home of Mrs. Brown, who let Hattie practice on her melodeon, was among those destroyed.  

When the arsonists were caught in December, and it became known that they set the fires to create a distraction to help the notorious criminal escape from jail, the real evil behind those fires was revealed.  Hattie & her classmates had been on the street during the October 1867 jailhouse fire, had seen the prisoners led away from the jail, and had heard rumors about O.B. Clark’s defiance after being rescued from his “dungeon” by heroic firefighters.  Had that jailhouse fire, too, been set in order to free Clark?  This was too much danger, evil, & excitement for a young lady to endure. 

Fort Edward Collegiate Institute

After Hattie returned home, she did not write more letters, diaries, or documents that tell us more about her life.  A few years later, she was studying at Fort Edward Collegiate Institute in New York when she received a letter from a Pawlet friend, Louise, who envied Hattie’s opportunity to be there, not tied down with housework & children.  

In the spring of 1874, Emma Quick wrote a letter to Hattie in Pawlet from “Mrs. Bryan’s Seminary” in Batavia, N.Y.  in which she mentions that Hattie had been teaching school in Pawlet three years before that.  Emma Quick was herself a teacher in Pawlet, in Batavia, and later in Warsaw, New York, at Clare Place Seminary, another “boarding and day school for young ladies.”   

So, it appears that Hattie did use her schooling and continued it, and taught school for a time as well.  The rest of her life story will be included in the larger saga told in the Blakely family letters.

Fire station image:  http://www.donnawilkinsphotography.com/p254425529/h2A818659#h2a818659