Carving out a Sense of Place: the Making of the Marble Valley and the Marble City of Vermont
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Winter 2002 Carving out a sense of place: The making of the Marble Valley and the Marble City of Vermont Michael Louis Austin University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Austin, Michael Louis, "Carving out a sense of place: The making of the Marble Valley and the Marble City of Vermont" (2002). Doctoral Dissertations. 99. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/99 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. UMT Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CARVING OUT A SENSE OF PLACE: THE MAKING OF THE MARBLE VALLEY AND THE MARBLE CITY OF OF VERMONT BY MICHAEL L. AUSTIN B.A, MOUNT CARMEL COLLEGE, 1966 M.A, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, 1971 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University o f New Hampshire In Partial Fulfillment o f The Requirements for the Degree o f Doctor o f Philosophy in History December, 2002 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3070970 Copyright 2002 by Austin, Michaei Louis All rights reserved. UMI UMI Microform 3070970 Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Z eeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED c 2002 Michael L. Austin Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation has been examined and approved. J. William Harris, Professor of History, Director Robert M. Mennel, Professor of History Lucy E. Sfyypr, Associate Professor W. Jeffrey Bolster, I Associate Professor of History d/.X - z - c J j Charles E. Clark, Professor Emeritus of History and the Humanities O d d ' l l 3 Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.................................................................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................................. xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.................................................................................................. xv ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................. xvii PART I: CREATING THE MARBLE VALLEY AND THE MARBLE CITY CHAPTER PAGE I SETTLING A VALLEY................................................................................................ 1 H. TRANSFORMING AVALLEY INTO THE MARBLE VALLEY.................... 22 m. BECOMING KING OF THE HILL: REDFIELD PROCTOR AND THE 43 MARBLE VALLEY............................................................................................................. IV. FROM THE QUARRIES TO THE MILL: THE WORKERS AND THE 65 WORK................................................................................................................................. V. AT HOME: HOUSING AND HEALTH.................................................................... 97 PART II: THE FIGHT FOR POWER VL THE CHALLENGE OF THE WORKERS............................................................... 121 VH. THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL, 1888-1900 ............................................... 166 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PART III: THE AFTERMATH Vm. TWENTIETH CENTURY STRUGGLE AND LEGACIES.......................... 196 IX. CONCLUSION: LEGACIES.................................................................................... 228: APPENDICES 241i APPENDIX ONE: CHRONOLOGY OF THE MARBLE VALLEY....................... 243 APPENDIX TWO: CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MARBLE QUARRIES 250 APPENDIX THREE: DESCRIPTION OF MARBLE WORKERS OCCUPATIONS............................................................................................................. 254 APPENDIX FOUR: SAMPLE ETHNICITY AND OCCUPATION OF MARBLE WORKERS IN 1880 AND 1900 CENSUS ..................................................................... 257 APPENDIX FIVE: OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE VERMONT MARBLE COMPANY ABOUT THE 1904 STRIKE....................................................................... 268 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................. 271 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE The area encompassed by Vermont was one o f the last settled areas in the northeastern United States for Native Americans and Europeans. Before the Europeans, it was an uncertain buffer zone between rival Native American confederations, and later competing European powers roamed the region from their bases to the north, south, east and west. When the uncertainty o f the political situation among the European powers seemed for a time to be solved, Vermont, along with Nova Scotia, attracted speculators and settlers in the 1760s. In the case o f Vermont, it was but a temporary lull, as the cauldron o f turmoil continued to bubble into the late colonial and revolutionary periods when New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire at various times stirred the fires o f rivalry again. The earliest English settlers to Vermont and its central valley were second-and- third generation colonials, mostly from other regions o f New England. They saw their cultural, economic and religious history connected with New England rather than New York. Enforcers such as the Green Mountain Boys used intimidation to promote New Hampshire’s claims and to suppress New York’s. New York fought back politically and with its own local intimidation. In the political quagmire Vermont shifted from contended ground to republic to state, and it was the only New England state that went through such a passage. The region went through a series o f economic ventures. In the early nineteenth century traditional local agriculture was threatened and weakened by the richer agriculture o f the Midwest and the outward migration o f many o f its citizens. To v with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. compensate, New Yorkers built the Champlain Canal, before the more famous Erie Canal, to have a waterway connected to the Hudson and eventually to the large port at New York City. “Lumber and iron resources in northern New York and great marble deposits in southwestern Vermont constituted strong arguments in favor o f a canal. In 1817 the New York legislature authorized the construction ^rthe canal.”1 So dramatic was the economic impact o f the canal that it changed the d. n o f trade for the region. Trade “now turned south and even Canada made use o f this channel for both her export and import trade.”2 In Vermont’s Central Valley, when a proposed local Rutland Canal, connecting to the Champlain Canal, proved too costly to build, Vermonters looked for other means to connect to larger markets. Railroad building was the technical revolution sweeping the east in the 1830s to the 1850s and Rutland saw its economic salvation in the railroads. Workers were needed to build the railroad and a wave o f immigrants arrived to do the brunt work. Valley residents sought a distinctive commodity that would give them an economic advantage. Sheep raising for a time gave the region a competitive advantage, but other regions o f the country within a few decades surpassed the Valley. What was needed was a natural advantage that other regions o f the country could not easily reproduce. The advantage turned out to be below the surface. Marble from the Valley contributed to the building boom from just before, to well after the Civil War. 1. Julia Kellogg, Vermont’s Post Roads and Canals,” Vermont Quarterly, (October 1948), XV, No. 4,145. 2. Kellogg, Vermont’s Post Roads and Canals,” 145. vi with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vermont’s image and its own promotion o f agriculture and tourism has overshadowed the important industrial side o f Vermont. Between 1870 and 1890 lie national economy exploded into an industrial economy. Carroll D. Wright, the United States Commissioner o f Labor Statistics, observed in 1880 that “at least four-fifths” of “nearly 3 millions of people employed in the mechanical industries of this country” were in the new factory system. In the case o f Rutland, the new organizational structure meant expansion o f the quarries, marble mills, processing plants, and distribution centers along with social and political support systems. In