Journey From Burlington to Hanover in 1801

"Whenever I go to Vermont I feel that I am travelling toward my own place" . . . wrote Bernard DeVoto in the December, 1951 Harpers' Magazine. You do not have to be a Vermonter to experience this sense of returning home. The home that Vermont represents may be a dream of rural life. It may be a picture of a white church presiding over the elms on a village green. It may be the smell of woodsmoke in a farmhouse kitchen or the patches of bluets like mirages of the recent snows on rocky pastures in May. But there are few of us, no matter where we were born, who haven't felt this tingle or recognition, and the Vermonter away from Vermont is an exile indeed.

In 1801, Hiram Fay's home was in New York City. His father was a merchant and young Hiram sailed on his father's brigs to France, England, Spain and the Indies. Hiram had seen a good deal of the world and was familiar with the cosmopolitan little city of New York. But his father had fought in the battle of Bennington and was a friend of Ethan Allen. His grandfather had owned the Catamount Tavern in Bennington. Returning to New York, after a visit to his cousin John Fay in Burlington, Hiram wrote:

"After bidding you Adieu! I rode for the most part of the day through the woods--rode among the trees--the leaves rattled--the craggy tops of the waving pines sailed over our heads--the sky grew dark--the tempest roared thru the opening of the mountains and echoed along the winding of the valley. The horses startled and shivered at the blast, and even I sighed! and wished for your fireside and the sweet music of Collard. However I consoled myself with the idea that it would be fair tomorrow and then the pleasure which I should enjoy would fully compensate for the evils of today.

....On the ensuing morning the sun appeared to rise from behind the eastern mount with redoubled Splendor--and though the weather was something cold--yet compared with the former day the riding was truly delightful--I never was more pleased than journeying through this Country--the mountains rose majestic on each side of the road--and nature seemed to have formed it on purpose to delight and amuse the weary traveller. The valleys are very winding and often I would look around and find myself to appearance hemmed in by mountains--to go-forward was to ascend mountain piled upon mountain--when I would be agreeably disappointed by winding around a high rock and finding myself in a pleasing vale with here and there a little cot--The playful children around the door--the little lambs which bounded over the hillocks--the tinkling cow-bell with the gentle murmurs of the stream which bordered the road and ran curving through the valley--the heads which grazed along the banks and the inaccessible mountains which appeared on both sides produced a Melancholy yet pleasing joy in my bosom which surpasses all the pleasure that it is in the power of riches or splendor to bestow......"

-- Marguerite Hurrey Wolf

Source: Vermont History, edited by Leon W. Dean, President, Green Mountain Folklore Society, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, October 1956