Caching 7/14 & 15/2009

Tuesday morning we headed north to do a few cachesthat sounded interesting. Our first cache was six miles north of busy Manchester, nestled in a high valley made of marble, lies historic Dorset. Marble quarries at the edge of town are said to be the oldest in the nation. Once a major part of Dorset's economy, they are now a haven for swimmers. Marble from these quarries provided stone for the New York City Library and some of the town's sidewalks and churches. Two elements combined to make Dorset quite different from the other grants along what are now Route 7A and Route 30. Strangely both are geographical and one is geological. A rise of mountains between these two routes turned Dorset into a split town with the villages of Dorset and South Dorset along Route 30 and North and East Dorset on Route 7A. Morse Hill Road from South Dorset to East Dorset is the only direct ink between them in the town - a distance of 3.6 miles. Lying buried in this range of peaks, Mt. Aeolus, Owls Head, Netop and Dorset Mountain, was the geological phenomenon that became Dorset's claim to fame throughout the country - marble.
The country's first commercial marble quarry was opened in South Dorset by Isaac Underhill in 1785 on the land of Reuben Bloomer. Over Dorset's marble industry lifetime of some 130 years, two dozen or more quarries located on the slopes of Dorset Mountain and Mt. Aeolus provided marble for headstones, lintels, hearths and the like in the early years, followed by monumental uses and later building stone used in many notable buildings, such as the New York Public Library, the library of Brown University, and Memorial Continental Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, D.C. Several mansions on New York City's 5th Avenue were built of Dorset marble, and many bank buildings across the land were graced by interiors lined with polished Dorset marble, some of which was attractively streaked or tinted with green or bluish colors. After the clapboard church in Dorset Village burned in 1907 a new church was built in the same style using locally quarried marble.
One quarry is known as the Gettysburg because from its tunnel-like cut were taken marble blocks fashioned into 5000 or more gravestones for the cemetery on the Civil War battleground of that name. At the formidable Freedley tunnel quarry, located 1000 feet above the East Dorset valley, an inclined railway was built to transport the large marble blocks (typically 4x4x8 feet in size) to the mill located in the valley below, replacing the slow and laborious trip down the mountain in ox-drawn wagons and sleds. We couldn't find the cache as it was tough climbing all over the marble blocks and Mom and I aren't quite as young and nible as we used to be, but we gave it the old college try.
Then it was off through the booming town of East Rupert to Rupert, Vt, a town of 704, and a couple of nice caches in this historic little town. Many historians agree that a man named Benning Wentwort gave Rupert its name, naming it after Germany's Prince Rupert(1619-1682). One of Rupert's first settlers was Reuben Harmon, a metalsmith, who was given the right to mint coins, called Vermont coppers, for the Republic of Vermont. Harmon's Mint is still standing today in East Rupert on a small stream known as Hagar's Brook. One cache was at the 1872 Rupert Schoolhouse and the other was in the cemetery next door to the 1786 Rupert Church of Christ.
Then it was off through West Rupert and into New York to Salem which was settled in 1762 by settlers from New England and Scotland. We wanted to do a neat puzzle cache here that was called "Witch's Brew". Salem, New York, located north of Albany between the Hudson River and the Vermont border, is not known as the home of witches or witch trials. But a witch trial, of a sort, was indeed held there in 1777, more than eighty years after the more famous (or infamous) witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts.
If not known for witches, the New York Salem did have controversies early in its history. It was for good reason that Gallows Hill at the north village limit was so named. Public executions before crowds of picnickers were held there until 1808. Contentiousness was present even at its inception in 1764 by a patent owned by a company of New England settlers, or at least by 1765, when half of the 25,000 acres in the patent was sold to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Clark, who led a congregation of Presbyterians who were seeking a home in the new land. The lots owned by each half were mixed together, often on alternate farms. This led both to a rapid settlement of the town and to great rivalries. Residents couldn't even agree on the town's name. Salem only became the name of the town as a compromise in 1786 (so it wasn't called Salem at the time of the witchcraft accusation). Until then, members of the congregation of Presbyterians insisted on calling it New Perth; the New Englanders used the name White Creek. It is either ironic or a sign that the two sides were able finally to come together in harmony, that Salem, taken from the Hebrew word, "Shalom" (Peace), was chosen as the town's name.
An accusation that they were Tories was only one of the Tilfords' troubles in the memorable year of 1777. "It was the same year (I think) in which Burgoyne's invasion took place, that a most foolish and deplorable superstition took place," reported Salem native and eyewitness, Robert Blake, in November 5, 1847. If he remembered correctly, then it was in 1777, while the horrors of war were surrounding them, that the residents of Salem suffered their own witchcraft hysteria.
It began when Archy Livingston's cows began producing cream that couldn't be churned into butter. Archy Livingston was a neighbor of the Tilford's, both their friend and fellow church member. Like the Tilford's, Livingston was not an original member of the church. Archy, bemused by his cows, went to see a peculiar individual named Joel Dibble. Dibble also lived nearby; in fact he had moved into an abandoned house that had once been inhabited as temporary shelter by the Tilford's. Dibble had been a veteran of the old French War, but was known by most as a worthless Yankee. He was not a member of Clark's congregation. Among other nefarious activities, Dibble told people's fortunes by cutting cards. When Archy Livingston asked for his help, Dibble shuffled the cards. Archy cut them. Dibble pondered the cards and then told Archy that the milk or the cows were bewitched. And Dibble then proceeded to tell Archy who the witch was -- a short, thick, black-haired woman who had a red-haired daughter.
This description could only apply to one woman, Margaret Tilford. Archy accepted the word of the fortune-teller and announced to the community that his neighbor was a witch. As the word spread, the whole community, already terrorized by the war, was thrown into further ferment. Livingston's father-in-law supported the Tilford's and censured Archy for going to a "malevolent designing scoundrel." However, others began to shun the Tilford's. Some parents forbade their children to associate with the Tilford children. The local magistrate refused to get involved. Or perhaps he was not asked -- the Presbyterians might have thought that would have violated the separation of church and state. Because both families were members of Dr. Clark's church, they agreed that the church was the proper authority to decide the matter.
Although it was not a trial, a formal investigation was instituted by Clark. Witnesses were called. Several church members testified that Margaret Tilford was an upstanding Christian woman and her moral character was exemplary. Clark then agreed to examine Joel Dibble. He did so with some reluctance, since Dibble was not a church member. During the examination, Dibble said he had learned his art in French Canada, and had paid good money for his lessons. He defended the art of cutting of cards on the grounds that, like any other art or trade, it had rules. He said he wasn't naming any names. He just followed the rules of the cards and, through them, learned indications. With that, Clark cut off the examination, saying there was "nothing tangible here for the church to take hold of." In Robert Blake's account, he indicates simply that "the matter was still before the Church and undecided when Dr. Clark moved away."
What Blake omitted was the detail that the congregation had a vote whether or not to retain the Rev. Dr. Clark as its minister. There is no indication that the vote was at all related to the witch trial, but a new spirit of divisiveness could easily have sprung or been enhanced by the controversy. Although Clark survived the vote by a very slim majority, perhaps only a single vote, he realized his tenure in Salem was insecure, and in 1782 he requested to be released from his pastoral charge. He then visited his former congregants in South Carolina and remained there for about a year. Clark had kept in touch with his former congregants, having visting them by order of the Presbytery in 1779, and perhaps once before in 1771. Although he is listed in the church records as preaching at the congregations of Long Cane, Little Run, and Cedar Springs (formerly Cedar Creek), he was not formally called as their pastor. Sometime during the summer of 1783, he left South Carolina and began serving as a missionary for the newly established Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, largely traveling in the northern states. His peregrinations ended in 1789, when he accepted a petition of the united congregations of Little Run, Long Cane, and Cedar Creek, to return as their paster. He accepted the call, once again refusing to be formally installed most likely on the grounds that he was simply continuing an uninterrupted church ministry begun in Ireland forty years before. The Rev. Dr. Clark preached his last sermon on Christmas Day, 1791, at the Long Cane Meeting House. He died the following day.
Unfortunately, the Rev. Dr. Clark never made an official ruling or declaration in regard to Margaret Tilford, so, to use a modern phrase, the matter had no closure. After the war's end, in 1782, said Robert Blake, "the subject was prudently dropped." Perhaps there was nothing Clark or his successor could have done to improve the situation for the Tilford's. Neither superstitious notions nor hard feelings easily disappear. Even after "the excitement died away," Tilford continued to suffer from having been accused of being a witch. Many neighbors made life difficult for the family. The young Tilford folks were shunned from many parties and merry-makings. When Margaret and George's son John became engaged to Sarah Rowan, many of her friends and relatives opposed the match. Margaret and George, however, were hearty souls and endured all the offensives and humiliation, thus proving even further the depth of their faith and strength of their character. They lived to an old age in or near Salem. Although they may have moved to Hebron and Argyle, it could not have been to flee the unpleasant situation, since both are nearby, not far enough away to escape rumors and gossip. Margaret and George are buried in the "Old Cemetery" in Salem, so they must have remained members in good standing of the church that the Rev. Dr. Clark founded.”
We drove to the cemetery and found the grave sites and figured out the coords for the final cache location from the cemetery register in a mailbox at the entrance. Then we drove to that site, which was at the historic courthouse and jail, where we had stopped earlier. After finding it we drove around the town and then on back to the coach for the rest of the day.
Tuesday we headed for Bennington for some caches we still had left in that area. On the way we did find one along the Battenkill River at a popular fishing spot. We really didn't find any historical or interesting caches as they were all NRV caches today and I only took 3 pictures, a new record for a day. Caches we found were under a reflector on a guardrail, under a fence post cap at Home Depot, on a phone pole, a nano container on a sign under a nut, a bison tube in a pine cone, a bison tube hanging on a tree in the woods, a multi-cache under 2 light post skirts, hanging on a fence in some trees at Staples, in a tree in the woods near a shopping center, in a veteran's park under a bush and the last one was in the woods under a big rock along Rt 7. Then it was back to the coach for the rest of the day.
Well time to say until next time and we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad