Adventure to Windham

Woke up this morning, still sick. I sent out messages to my professors explaining I wouldn't be around today. Drove to the pharmacy to pick up cold medicine. It has been beautiful any snowy all morning.

Something possessed me to drive over the mountains to Dover, a small hill town in Windham. A few weeks ago I called the town clerk there, inquiring about public records which might pertain to Vermont folk song and balladry, the subject of my senior thesis. He told me the annual town reports, stored there in a vault, may have something interesting or relevant. So I went there today and he showed me the collection, which dated to the early 19th century.

The town records mostly consisted of municipal invoices for coal, wood, and school materials. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps something related to performance venues? The clerk showed me a few photographs of bands in the early 20th century, as well as one of a blackface mistrelsy group outside the West Dover Baptist Church. Something about seeing Vermonters all made up in greasepaint strikes me as odd, regardless of the era.

The vault is a small room. Alongside the fireproof storage cabinets were posters from various town sugaring events. Maple syrup is serious business.

The clerk pulled out two more books of interest: History of Dover Vermont (1961) and Songs and Verse from the Hills of Vermont (1919, 2010). Now these are interesting. I went to Dover expecting it to possess holdings related to James Atwood, a local songster who resided there into the late 1910s. I originally learned of James Atwood through the contributions of his son -- Fred Atwood -- in the Margaret MacArthur Collection in Middlebury. The songs James and his wife knew were transcribed and arranged for publication as sheet music in 1919, in a volume called Songs from the Hills of Vermont, now long out of print. He was "discovered", as it is often said in the music industry, by a woman named Edith Sturgis. The  town clerk informed me that Sturgis's granddaughter, Edith Mas, has compiled this new edition of the volume, which I did not know existed. The other book, History of Dover Vermont, covers various aspects of livelihood and town going-abouts spanning some three hundred years.

Both books are printed, at fairly low quality, by the Dover Historical society. Now I just have to get in touch with Edith Mas.