Fiercely Dependent

Along State Route 23 in Weybridge, off on it’s own, away from the road, is a stone obelisk. I have driven by it for years, but never stopped to investigate. In the first place, there’s no place to park a car for miles around. There are just farms and lots of private property. Next, the monument is well away from the road with just a mowed lane for access. It is not intended for a driveway. I’m not even sure it is intended for pedestrians. There is no marking near the road to suggest what it is.

Well, finally I dug up the courage to park half off the road and walk back to the monument. If it is private property, surely the owner wouldn’t be too angry.

I found that the obelisk is a monument to two things: first, it is memorializes the founding of Weybridge. More dramatically, it documents a tiny, remote, but telling event in our revolution.

The obelisk is inscribed on three sides; I will reproduce the inscription* here:

Side 1:

Weybridge was char
tered by N. H. in 1761
& settled in 1775 by Th
omas Sandford, David
Stow, Justus Sturdevant
& Claudius Britell.

Nov. 8, 1778, a party of
British, Tories, & Indians
destroyed their houses & ef
fects & carried T.Sandford
& son Robert, D. Stow & son
Clark, C. Britell & son Cal
udius & J. Sturdevant pri
soners to Quebec.

Side2:

Their wives & children,
after occupying a cellar,
at this place 10 days, we
re taken to Pittsford by
our troops.

D. Stow died in Prison
Dec. 31, 1778, T. Sandford
escaped. The others were di
scharged in 1782.

Side 3:

Erected in 1856 by
… Milo …
… Stow,
John, & Oram Britell,
John Sturdevant,
and others.

(The ellipses above are mine. My photos were not good enough to decipher the third side completely. I will return to the monument and get the complete inscription soon.)

Far too few of us have any understanding of the Battle of Trenton, or the evacuation of Boston, or even the skirmish at Lexington and Concord. Most people who were awake in high school (a large minority, I suspect) have heard of these events, but that’s about it. I fear they have little real understanding of them, other than in a world history sort of way. Who actually ascribes humanity to the people involved? Every hamlet, every farm, every home was in grave danger from the British. For many months, the enemy had routine access to much of the countryside in New York and New England.

I recommend reading 1776 by David McCullough, or some similar material.

I visited the site a second time, this time knowing some of the story. As I stood examining the monument, I considered the women and children abandoned there by the British army. The Continental Army at least had each other for support. These folks holed up in a tater cellar, in November, in Vermont, during a very cold period of history. What kept them alive? Surely they didn’t know that an army contingent would rescue them before they died of starvation or exposure. It is a deeply affecting thought that these people had nothing; their settlement had been razed, their stores largely destroyed, and their men taken.

I intend to go back often. It is a sobering and proud place. Maybe I’ll go back on Memorial Day, after the parade in Vergennes.

The title of this article derives from the location of the Weybridge Monument. It is near the confluence of the Lemon Fair River and the Otter Creek. Lore varies about how the name “Lemon Fair” came to be. It certainly seems out of place. One notion is that any of various mishaps was known locally as a “lamentable affair”, and that eventually evolved into Lemon Fair. Another is that it is from an early settler’s name. A third seems to be a mistranslation from the French for “muddy creek.” I don’t speak French, and BableFish doesn’t seem to support this one. The “lamentable affair” versions sound a little pat, to me. No one seems to know the correct answer, but I have been wondering where the name of Lemon Fair Road came from for years.

Theories about the name “Lemon Fair” can be found in these references:

History of Addison County

The Archives of VemontCoveredBridges.com

The Green Mountain Boys: A Historical Tale of the Early Settlement of Vermont

An excellent reference should be available at Digital Collections at Middlebury College, but the collection is so poorly organized that you can’t find it. A google search sends you to an unnamed document, and the collection’s front page is junk. It is not as useful as it should be.

* Please note that I owe others for some of this transcription. The stone is somewhat worn and dirty, and difficult to read. I used my photos along with other sources to read the inscription. Primary among these is the introduction of Brave Enough by Ida Washington, of Weybridge.

Tags: American Revolution, Monument, Vermont, Weybridge

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Historical, Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.