AND SAWDUST EVERYWHERE LITTLE GIRL REMEMBRANCES
 by
Edna Earle Maranville, age 98

 THE ALDRICH JOB - 1889-1891 & 1895-1896

      The Aldrich Job was located on the top of the mountain east of South Wallingford, VT. in an extension of the White Rock range on the eastern side of the Otter Creek Valley.
      As far as statistics are concerned, I have none. These will have to be little girl remembrances.
     Evidently in the earlier part of the nineteenth century (mid-185O’s) a road was cut through the forest connecting South Wallingford and East Wallingford by way of Sugar Hill over the mountain.
     In the 1890's this road started in South Wallingford at what was known as the John Ames farm located beyond the schoolhouse. It came out on Sugar Hill at what was known as the Bulley Farm. One thing that impressed me, even as a little girl, was the sharpness of the corner where the mountain road came smack against the Sugar Hill road, leading to Senacle's Pond and farms thereabouts. This pond was later known as Spectacle Pond.
     Sugar Hill seemed to have been a well-settled active area in the early days. I can remember as a little girl feeling so sad because the schoolhouse was falling to pieces. My father told me where the church used to be and pointed out the stepping-stone at the former church entrance. He also told me about the closet that was built in the church for the bass viol which was the allowed form of church music at that time. There were active farms therein my day others had been abandoned. Whether there was a business like a cheese factory or something else, I have no idea. There just seemed to be much open country there surrounded by forests.
     The Sugar Hill road came out in East Wallingford by the old railroad crossing. Halfway up the mountain from South Wallingford was the Carpenter farm with a deserted lonely house, entirely surrounded by forest, abandoned, looking like it wished someone would stop by, open the door and walk in. Farther up, near the top, was a farm with open fields and pastures, surrounded by wilderness. This was a working farm where lived a family by the name of Baird.
     The Aldrich Job mill was established and owned by the Aldrich brothers, Edgar and Barney. Edgar lived in East Wallingford and drove back and forth while Barney lived on the job. Edgar later bought a grain business in Rutland and moved there.
    A ways down from the top, the road turned off the main road, crossed a bridge, climbed a small incline and the mill and mill yard were laid out and built here. The mill produced lumber, chair stock and lathe.
   "Aldrichville" consisted of a double tenant residence; a boarding house run by Hr & Mrs. Randeau whose family consisted of twin girls who were young women, a grandson, Zebby and grand daughter, Celina Trombly, who were my playmates; a frame single house, the horse and oxen barn; and the blacksmith shop where my father, Frank Earle, was the blacksmith. He shod the horses and oxen that worked in the woods and the mill yard. The oxen had to be strapped into a cradle-like frame that lifted them off the floor, then each foot was strapped to a side rail while he put on the ox shoes. The oxen were used in the mill yard to pile the logs coming in from the forest and roll them to the sawmill.
    The whistle blew for work at 7 a.m. and again at noon at which time the workers had an hour for dinner, then the final mill whistle was at 6 p.m. This was the working day for six days a week.
     Down the road from the mill, off the main road, was a two-tenant house occupied by the Phelps family (Mr Phelps" was the sawyer) and the Moore family.
     Barney Aldrich lived in a frame house near the tenant house across a nice little woodland brook with a bridge connecting the two properties. He had a little store in the back of his house where he sold cloth by the yard among other items. I remember my mother, DeEtte Earle, making a dress for me with a skirt gathered in the back and gored in the front from some gingham plaid she had purchased at this store.
     This was Aldrichville's Great White Way…sawdust lined, sawdust filled…a real lumber habitation.          
     French Avenue was located beyond the Baird farm and consisted of four or five log cabins where the French families of Bitourney, LaRochelle, Bushee and one or two others whose names I have forgotten, lived.
   At the fork of the road coming from the mill to French avenue was located another frame house occupied by a man named Mulligan.
    With the establishment of the lumber operation here, came the necessity for a school for the children of workers. That's where I started my early education with Eva Ames as teacher. She was one of Vermont's 19th- century poets and the mother of Ethel Roberts.
    There were only two terms of school each year, one in the fall and the other in the spring. One winter, while I lived in Aldrichville, I attended school in South Wallingford living with a dear old lady called "Garn" Edgerton. She had pretty hair, which she curled into six curls that were held back by a black velvet ribbon. I don't remember how many pupils there were at the Aldrichville School but I do remember the Randeau twins, pretty young girl.
    The schoolhouse was located beyond the log cabins. We had to walk through the mill yard and through the woods to get to school each day. My father was appointed school director for the Aldrichville school district. He was very strict about attendance and insisted that the French boys be in school rather than at the mill after reaching five years of age. So when I became five years old on January 23, 1890 he had to come to Brandon to get me where was visiting my Aunt Ada and Uncle Lewis Aldrich. Uncle Lewis later became the engineer at the job where he ran the steam engines that operated the saws.
     Boards from the mill were piled in the mill yard with crevices between each layer. We spent hours on these board piles placing the ends of the lathe (narrow rough boards later to be used for house walls as a base for plaster) between the layers of boards. This was our piano and many a composition was created even outdoing Beethoven!
    We would also insert a board in a crevice extending out making a solo teeterboard. The sad part of that is that teetering one day I overstepped the edge and went banging down onto the ground with a scrapped inner leg.
    One of my fondest memories is of the long-stemmed violets that grew on the banks 0f the little brook back of our house. They were a beautiful, deep purple. There, too, I "kept ho, on the rocks with the lovely mosses and broken dishes to furnish my kitchen. We made apron headpieces and belts from maple leaves pinning them together with their stems and we built boxes and baskets from green burdocks.
   My sister, Ina, was born in 1890 and would have been the first baby born on the Aldrich job if my mother had stayed there but she resented that possibility so decided to go to be with her mother and father-in-law in Mt. Holly which is where my sister was born.
    The first time we lived on the mountain (1889-1891) we lived in the tenant house. Uncle Lewis and Aunt Ada Aldrich later lived on the other side.
    Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Price of Dan by, who were Irish, became the operators of the boarding house following the Randeau family.
    After the cutting off of the timber, nature came back with raspberries, acre5 of them. Everyone went berrying. We'd spend the day in the berry fields. I remember one day Mother put up my lunch and gave me a berry pail and sent me off to the field, quite a walk, into the cutover area all alone. Then she came out to pick after dinner. I can remember me walking up that road. She charged me over and over, "you'll find a pile of stones on the left hand side of the road. That' s where you turn to go into the berry field."
    As far as male sports were concerned I do remember baseball talk and think they had a pick-up teams. They also played horseshoes and one day someone made an unexpected "wringer"...my ankle!
     On my occasional visits to the mountain after we moved away, when I returned home out would come the camphor bottle, newspapers and fine-toothed comb. Yes, we had them (lice) much more rampant than now.
     Sometime after 1895 the Job moved to the foot of the mountain in South Wallingford. (Note: In 1978 there was an old two-story building still standing on the east side of the RR near the Rist residence which was used as a boarding house for some of the mill workers at later saw mill site.)
     So in the last almost l00 years of living, this part of my life comes through with keen nostalgia and deep thankfulness for a happy, free-spirited childhood on the mountain "with sawdust everywhere!"
     So much of our strengths to face life can come from the mountains with which God has blessed us. May we ever be able to turn to them in reality and in memory for inspiration.