Westminster West Read online

  Cold seeped up from the frosty ground and into Sue’s bones. She stood and shook out her skirt and walked down the dark hill toward the lights.

  AFTERWORD

  How much of this story is true?

  Most of it. A young man named Johnny Coombs did burn several buildings in Westminster West, Vermont, during 1883 and 1884, causing a considerable stir in the community. The fires and Johnny’s arrest and trial are all documented in local newspapers. The burning of the District One schoolhouse is a rumor of long standing, but I have not found any historical account of it.

  Johnny’s father, Tolman Coombs, was a Civil War veteran and died in 1883. His mother died a week to the day after her only son’s arrest for arson. The auction of the Coombs livestock and fodder is mentioned in the Brattleboro Phoenix of the following week.

  The story of the Gorham sisters is found in Vignettes of Westminster, Vermont, an unpublished collection of anecdotes written by their contemporaries, Frank Miller and his sister, Bertha Miller Collins, and left to the Westminster Historical Society. The Gorham story is presented in Vignettes as a curiosity, and Bertha Miller Collins concludes, “No one ever knew what physical or mental aberration caused one girl to leave her bed in a calamity and the other to retire from activity on the same night.”

  There is no other documentation of Clare and Sue Gorham’s story. This is my own interpretation.

  Students of Westminster West history will notice a degree of poetic license. The Gorhams are all younger in this story than they were in 1884. Other people’s ages also have been altered to suit the needs of fiction.

  I have found no record that David C. Gorham served during the Civil War, although a flag decorates his grave.

  The road currently known as Beebe Road I have called Perry Hill Road. I have no idea what it was called at the time, but as the Perrys had lived there for many years, the name at least seems possible.

  Much information exists about Westminster West in the early 1880s. The Windham County Gazetteer and Business Directory was published in 1884. It lists each householder and business in every town in the county, telling on which roads the families lived, what their occupations were, how many acres they owned, and in some cases what breeds of livestock they raised.

  The Fortieth Anniversary Address of Reverend Alfred Stevens was delivered in 1883 and published in Abby Hemenway’s Vermont Historical Gazetteer. It gives a forty-year perspective on the town. The section on Westminster West’s history in Hemenway’s Gazetteer was also written by Stevens.

  Many of the anecdotes in this story are drawn from Vignettes of Westminster, Vermont, compiled and edited by Rachel V. Duffalo, with help from my parents, Bob and Pat Haas. It is offered for sale through the Westminster Historical Society.

  I have lived all my life in Westminster West. I grew up in the Hall house. The house next door, now owned by my sister, is the one owned in 1884 by Patrick Drislane, and beside it is the barn Drislane built to replace the one burned by Johnny Coombs. The farm on which Clare and Sue Gorham lived is less than half a mile down the road. It is now owned by David and Cindy Major and is operated as a sheep dairy, making award-winning cheese.

  Johnny Coombs pleaded guilty to setting the Gorham barns afire. After serving his sentence he was rearrested on the prison steps and charged with setting the Campbell fires. He served another sentence and was again rearrested, to be charged with the Drislane fire. Charges were dropped when he agreed to leave Vermont after serving a total of eleven years for his crimes. He departed for a Massachussetts shoe-making town, where he planned to practice the trade he had learned in prison.

  Ed Gorham went to music school in Boston. He became a singer and a singing teacher there, and also painted landscapes and portraits. After he retired, he came home to Westminster West and helped record the town’s history. His poems, photographs, and paintings enrich Elizabeth Minard Simonds’s History of Westminster.

  Henry Gorham became one of the most successful farmers in Westminster West, living all his life on the family farm.

  Clare Gorham, according to Vignettes, “never again regained the strength to be up and around the house until the very last days of her life.” She was “a lovely, quaint character … gay, chatty, and rather irresponsible” (Vignettes). After his retirement Ed urged Clare to get back on her feet and resume a nearly normal life. She did begin to attend social gatherings when he was present, and she took over much of the housework. This was probably after Sue’s death in 1921. Clare lived until 1936.

  Sue Gorham continued to live on the family farm and is mentioned in History of Westminster as having inherited a silver loving cup from Delyra Goodhue. The cup was given to Delyra by Homer before they were married, and the bequest suggests a close friendship between Sue and the older woman.

  A postcard mailed to a friend in Washington, D.C., by Clare Gorham, dated December 23, 1910, gives insight into the household at that time. Father had died in 1907, but Mother “is having a comfortable winter, works or reads all the time. Susie has had trouble all summer with her throat and in Oct. was very bad—she was not able to do anything for awhile. Can only whisper now and has to dose for it all the time. Coughs very bad at times. We expect Ed home Sunday for a weeks vacation.… We have not had many callers this winter … are alone most of the time.”

  But on a brighter note: “Sue was surprised to receive a card from you away down there for her birthday—she had 261 cards, a great surprise for her but she enjoyed it.”

  Maybe it was a surprise, but the two hundred and sixty-one birthday cards delivered to the farm at the end of the road show that Sue Gorham had a true gift for friendship.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1997 by Jessie Haas

  Cover design by Jessie Hayes

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-6256-8

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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