 I am Stephanie Young, the Executive Director of the 251 Club of Vermont, and I want to officially call our 67th annual meeting to order. Thank you for being here with us today, and also welcome to those members who are watching the live stream of the meeting via ORCA. We are glad that so many members have an opportunity today to join us either in person or online. As we gather today, we are all getting ready for another beautiful Vermont fall. As you have traveled throughout the state these past few weeks visiting towns, you may have already seen leaves changing, turning to bright oranges, yellows, and reds. You may have checked off a town by visiting an apple orchard, picking pumpkins, getting lost in a corn maze, or finding that perfect Vermont cider donut. In Vermont, there are ample opportunities to enjoy the fall season. Be driving on one of our scenic routes, which probably includes a dirt road or two, hiking, biking, or even riding a gondola up one of our mountains. However you decide to go out and explore Vermont this fall, we hope you have a chance to discover a new town or city, or rediscover some of your favorite Vermont places. During 2022, we continued to hear from many of you about your 251 adventures. We were able to share those stories through the newsletter and on social media, and we also had a chance to meet in person this spring. In May 2022, we held our first spring to get together at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village in Brownington, Vermont. Despite the rain, and those who were there know sometimes it was a downpour, we had close to 90 members gather to share 251 stories over lunch and explore the museum. We heard from members after the event about new friendships they made, and many walked away with new recommendations of where to go in Vermont. I personally enjoyed meeting so many of you at the spring get together, hearing your stories, and learning more about your travels throughout our state. We also heard from many in attendance that day that they hope we continue to hold spring get-togethers. With that in mind, we have already started to plan our 2023 spring get-together, and I am happy to announce that this year we will be holding it at Hildeen. We hope to continue to make this a new yearly tradition, offering our members another opportunity to rediscover a Vermont location and connect with 251 Club members. We also welcomed a new city in 2022. In July, the city of Essex Junction became our 10th city in Vermont. Although we will be keeping the 251 Club name, we have updated our electronic town list and map and checklist that we send to new members. We know members will enjoy visiting the city of Essex Junction during their travels. We have also continued to provide 251 Club members of opportunities for discounts relevant to their club experience, including at the Wilmington Inn, the Old Stone House, Museum and Historic Village, and with Vermont Magazine, which also generously donated copies of their latest issue to members today. At this meeting, we also report on the club's accomplishments and important developments. In 2022, the club continued to have a strong membership base with new members joining and other members renewing. Thanks to your support through memberships and the purchase of merchandise, and at your attendance at today's event, which is our biggest fundraising event of the year, the club is in a strong financial position to continue to grow and provide value to our members. With all that being said, we would like to thank all of you again for being here with us today. I would also like to recognize and thank our board of directors who, if they don't mind standing right now, our board of directors for the 251 Club. Thank you. We'd like to thank the board and appreciate their hard work on behalf of the club. So thank you. So I think we have Congressman Peter Welch, who is going to join us to say a few words, and I don't think I see him quite yet. So we're going to change the agenda up just slightly, and we're going to jump ahead a little bit, if that's okay with everybody, to sharing 251 Club of Amant stories. So traditionally at our meeting, we ask any member who has completed their quest in 2022 or has a story to share if they would like to take the microphone and just say a few words about their 251 journey, you know, maybe a place that they want to recommend or a memory that they would like to share. So any members who would like to share a story with us today? Great, perfect. And I will bring you the mic back there so that the live stream can hear it. Actually, do you mind coming up this way if you can? I'm not sure if the mic will disconnect. Are you okay coming up here to say a few words? Oh, he was waving. I thought you wanted to say something. I know Matt, you were interested. Do you mind coming up here? Thank you so much. You were just waving. Oh, great. Thank you. Please come on up. I'm Ned Daley. This is my wife, Kitty. We did complete our 251 this year with a couple of memorable hikes into the two gores up in the Northeast Kingdom. We went to wait till the snow melted and we hiked hiked in. That was probably the crowning touch. Had a nice day up there going to Newport, have lunch and all. We kind of amped up our 251 quest during COVID. You know, I mean, there are a lot of days where there's no place to go. You can't, we're staying away and we were just, we'd pack a lunch and go and drive. And I'd have to say at this point, I really owe a lot to my co-pilot. We for a long time used to talk about backseat drivers and all, and we had developed a name for them. And instead of a navigator, they are a Nagravator. She does not fit that way, but it's a good side light. And she took us down all kinds of places that not just in the town, but all the byways and everything. And she might just give you a couple of words of how we did it. Okay, he doesn't get dinner tonight. We started in 2014. We moved permanently to Vermont in 2012. And in 2014, we started our quest. And it happened very early on. There was an art exhibit down at Middlebury College that was photographs of historic buildings in Vermont. And we loved any museum, so we headed down there. And as part of that exhibit, this book was published. And it's called Buildings of Vermont. And it has all the historic buildings in the entire state. And since we both come from an architecture and engineering background, we felt this would fit a good way to see the state. So it was really going through this book and navigating how to get to all these buildings. But again, getting to these buildings took us off of just the main road through the town. And so we saw things we never would have known existed if we had simply driven through the towns and checked them off the list. So if you are interested in architecture and buildings, pick up this book. Thank you. We have really enjoyed it. We'll probably start all over again. The book is Buildings of Vermont by Glenn Andrews and Curtis Johnson. I will, I'll send this to you and you can put it on the website. Ned and Kitty's story will actually be in the winter 2022 newsletter. So not this one that you're going to get in the mailboxes this coming week, but in the winter. And we have the name of the book because I wanted to make sure of members. But by our means to reach out to me if you want the name sooner than winter because you won't be getting that until probably February. But thank you to the both of you two for sharing your story. So I think we would just pause on stories for a second. And I saw that Congressman Peter Welch just arrived. So we are now pleased to introduce a longtime 251 Club of Vermont member, Congressman Peter Welch. Congressman Welch, he has been a member of the club since 2003, so close to 20 years. And I'm going to turn it over to you, Congressman Welch, if you would like to say a few words. Thank you for being here with us again. We all have one thing in common. We love Vermont. And we all have one other thing in common. We've seen Vermont. Oh my goodness, it's so good to be here. I mean, I know this is not political, but you know, I got in the 251 Club and it was when I was running for Congress. And I realized this was so exciting for me because I had really wanted to be doing this. And what it was about was my campaign manager just wanted me out of the office. So we went around and I have such fond memories because you know how it is. You check it off and you try to organize a trip where you can get several towns. But then on some of those special days where you can't quite figure it out and you spend a lot of time in a single town and in a way feel like you get to know it. And it's just kind of a special grounding experience is what my emotional memory was of this. The other thing that was so much fun is that I was seeking to get into the 251 Club, but I'd have one of my kids or one of my friends be with me for a day and they would be exposed to places they'd never been. West Charleston, which you know is the Metropolitan Center of Vermont for everybody who lives in West Charleston. Is it Warner's grant? Where's the one you have to walk into and sign the book? I think, isn't it? You know that one? It was up by victory and we had to walk into the woods and there was a little book there that you got to sign. So I just got to say this club, the two things. Number one, you know it's amazing to have all these Vermonters from all kinds of different places, all kinds of different points of view, all kinds of different professions, but really bound in together by this love of Vermont. When I say Vermont, it's like going to each and every local part of Vermont and getting connected to what is the essence of the rural values that I think all of us so admire and appreciate and feel are somewhat under threat and that reconnection that we each have when we go all around to make that effort to really see everywhere and experience that I think is very, very special. So I just want to say one of my proudest achievements in life was one that I never realized I'd loved so much and that is to have taken that time to go to every nook and cranny in this beautiful state and meet people across the state. And in each of these towns, this is another thing that was really powerful for me. I met people who didn't really want to go anywhere. They wanted to be where they were and they love being where they were. And there's life and intimacy and joy in being where you are and owning it and making it better. So thank you and long live the 251 Club. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman Welch. I think you captured it perfectly what we feel about with the 251 Club of Vermont and our love of Vermont and the challenge and the adventure of going out and exploring, as Congressman Welch said, the nooks and crannies of the state. I think we can all relate to that. I think we can go back to sharing some stories. There's another member who wants to come up to the mic and take it for a few moments. I think you wanted to. Thank you, Matt. How's everybody doing today? What a day to travel to Montpelier, huh? Beautiful. I don't know where everybody came from, but what a beautiful day to travel here. Thanks to everybody who put it on. I don't know if I can compete with the congressman there, but thank you for that pep talk. That was really beautiful. This story really starts back in the 60s, and I'm more familiar with the story than I am actually being a part of it, although I was. I was only probably two or three years old. But this was before the interstate came in. This was around 1967, 68 maybe. I was probably two or three years old. I have a brother that's deaf, and we lived in Burlington at the time. My mom used to take him to the Austin School for the deaf in Browderboro. He'd have to take Route 5. We got all the way down to Heartland, and our car broke down. It was right across from the general store. My mom went into the general store as you would do back in those days because we didn't have cell phones. Told the owner what was going on. He came out and took a look at it. He looked at it and said, well, there's not really much I can do, but go ahead and use the phone. You can call your husband, my husband, my mom, my dad. It happened to be a mechanic. It was going to be a couple of hours before he was going to get down there to take a look at it. In the meantime, the store owner said, well, why don't you just come across the park there and introduce you to my wife, and we'll take care of you until your husband gets here, which is really nice. We got to know this family, and we would purpose to see each other two or three times a year, and they just became friends of the family. My grandparents owned a general store in Fairfax, Parsons General Store, and the Cougar Marshes owned this one here, so we had a lot in common. We lost track of each other over time, and I don't know, there was a growing up in Vermont Facebook page. I don't know if anybody follows that, but I do, and somebody was commenting this year, actually I want to back up just a little bit, so over time my wife and I would travel down that way and we'd want to kind of look at the, you know, try to reminisce and find out where this place was and try to figure out where the Cougar Marshes lived, because it was so long ago, and we'd made some connections here and there, which is part of the joy of being on the 251 Club. You always meet new people, but anyway, we found out that through the growing up in Vermont Facebook page, somebody had made a comment about the Cougar Marshes General Store, and I just felt compelled to share that story, and little ways down the road on that thread, this woman says, I know who you are. Whoa. I did not recognize the name, and turns out to be, it was the daughter of this couple that owned the general store. Her name was Darlene, and she got married, and Darlene Levy is her name, and so that was pretty cool, and so we started corresponding and made arrangements to see each other and made arrangements for her to call my mom. Unfortunately, we had just barely missed the passing of her dad, which was kind of sad, but my mom, you know, corresponded with Darlene and everything. And interestingly enough, I went back to, I had to ask the question on the 251 Club Facebook page, and I don't even remember what it was, but this was before the whole growing up in Vermont thread developed, but it turns out that Darlene had actually answered one of my questions, so it was really, really neat that that had happened. So recently, we met up in Plymouth, and Ann and I were staying at Coolidge State Park, and made arrangements, and she came and visited us, and it was like old friends. We had never, like, we had, you know, just, you know, just, you know, those old friends that you never see for a while, and then all of a sudden you come back and it's like, you know, you never left, and we just had so much in common, and I mean, we could have spent the whole night there talking and everything, but it's just kind of interesting to me that, you know, it just really, to me, it just kind of shows what Vermonters are really like, you know, from back in the day when, you know, you didn't have a phone and your car broke down, somebody would help you out, you know, and then just the, we don't call them coincidences, we call them God incidences, but the people that come into our lives throughout our lives, and especially in the 251 Club, there are 20 people that, when we take the time to get to know them, that we have a lot in common, and it's been really fun to get to know people in that way. So I just thought I'd share that little story. It's just, I just think it's really cool that we get to travel as part of a 251 Club and meet new people, even at our table. I've met a nice couple from Chelsea and got to know a little bit about their town and a little bit about them, so it's a really cool thing, so thank you. Thank you, Matt, for sharing. You know, Matt brought up the friendships, and that's why we were so motivated after the spring get-together in the old stone, and so many members reached out, even after the annual meeting about the friendships they have made at their tables they are sitting at, and that's why we definitely want to try to keep going with the yearly tradition of a spring get-together and then this annual meeting as well, because I think those friendships are very special, so thank you, Matt, again, for sharing that. Any other members that wanted to share our story? If not, we can move on to our guest speaker. Okay, great, thank you. So, we are now pleased to introduce our keynote speaker, Brian Keefe, President of Haudenosaunee, the Lincoln family home. As many of you have read in the summer 251 Club newsletter, Haudenosaunee is located in Manchester, Vermont and is a 412-acre estate that includes Robert and Mary Lincoln's home, a restored 1903 wooden Pullman Palace railroad car, a goat dairy, and trails. My family and I, we had a chance to visit Haudenosaunee last summer and learn more about the history of the estate. Explore the beautiful gardens, which hopefully we will see in the springtime, if we time it right, the flowers blooming, and the trails, and we also visited with the goats and the farm animals. I am certain, after having been there last summer, that this would be an absolutely wonderful place for us to hold our next spring get-together. So, I'm going to turn it over to Brian, and then after Brian speaks, we're going to have, you know, some Q&A with Brian as well. So, with that, I'd like to turn it over to Brian. Thank you so much for being here with us today. All right, well, thank you, Stephanie, and thanks for having me here. I'd like to also recognize some fellow Bennington County travelers. Dave and Paula Kanell came up from Manchester where I live, and Barry Minerth is here from, you live in Pallet, right? I get Pallet and Rupert. I get Pallet and Rupert mixed up sometimes a little bit. Oh, and Sandgate, okay. Any other Bennington County people here? So, I've got my timer on for 20 minutes, and I'll try to, I'll stay within that, and then we'll have Q&As, keep it to 25 minutes or so, and maybe I'll finish a little bit earlier. But the prior speaker, Matt Parsons, is it? Yes, sir. And your grandfather's Parsons general store in Fairfax. You live just up the road from him. What's that? You live just up the road from him. Yeah, Dave must be your cousin. Yes, sir. Yes. Small world, huh? Small world. So, Matt's cousin, I grew up in Fairfax right next to this, right next to the high school and right next to your cousin, Dave. Yes. And Dave and I were best friends. We went through, we didn't, I'm old enough, we didn't have kindergarten then. So, we had from first grade to twelfth grade, and Dave and I graduated from high school together, and he's a good friend of mine. So, the Parsons store, and I remember those days when your grandfather would allow charging. I'm one of eight kids, and my dad is a school teacher. And so, they would allow charging, and my, you know, come pay day, my dad would go down and pay off the bill, and we, growing up in the little town of Fairfax, we'd go down to Parsons store and pick up groceries and stuff. I had my paper route, and I bought a lot of baseball cards there. In fact, on the way up here, I ran into Jim Cott in Rutland on his way up here, and I have some of his baseball cards for those days, that I probably bought from your grandfather. So, I want to just briefly talk about myself. There's a lot of name dropping of towns. It seems like the towns are more important than the people, but I'll use my family as an example of some of the towns that we have experienced. I'm not a member of the club yet. Then I'll talk a little bit about Manchester and what Manchester is like, and I'll try not to embarrass myself, because Dave knows more about Manchester history than probably anybody in the world. And then talk a little bit about Robert Todd Lincoln, who he was and why he came to Manchester, and then briefly about Hill Dean. So, I'll try to wrap that quickly. I actually was born in Montpelier. I was born in this city. My dad grew up in Waterbury. He grew up on a farm on Perry Hill in Waterbury. For those of you who know Waterbury, you'll know Perry Hill. My dad had a farm up there. That's where he grew up. My mom grew up in Fairfield in a little hamlet called appropriately named St. Rox. If you've ever been to Fairfield or to St. Rox, you will know that Fairfield and St. Rox is a pretty hard-scrabble community. They got married in St. Patrick's Church there in Fairfield, and then moved to Waterbury where my dad was a teacher, and that's when I was born. But when I was five, we moved to Fairfax, and that's where we grew up next to your cousin Dave. And then from there, I went to college and ended up back in Manchester after being in Washington and school in New Orleans and things like that. I'm one of eight kids, as I said, and I'm just going to briefly go around where they live. So by eldest, Fairfax, Ripton, I live in Manchester, Morrisville, Huntington, Georgia, Fairfax, and Wolcott. So we kind of are all around the place, so I get to those places. And for about almost 30 years, we vacationed as a family up at Seymour Lake up in Derby. So when the congressman talked about West Charleston, the camp that we spent every week, every year, was about five minutes from West Charleston. There's a little, for those of you from up that way, who hears from up that way? If you're from up that way, there's a little auto mechanic on the road from Seymour to West Charleston, and with all of our family and all of our kids and the grandkids, we had a lot of cars and gave that guy a lot of business over here. So yeah, and in my jobs, I've gone all around Vermont and I haven't done the checklist yet, but I'm really looking into that. For those of you who have not been to Manchester, Manchester is a beautiful town. Like I just said, I grew up in Vermont in Franklin County. I love growing up in Franklin County. I love all the towns my siblings live in, but in my mind, Manchester's the best town in Vermont. And I'm sure many of you here from your different... I know Dennis Sings Mount Holly's the best town in Vermont. And I'm sure a lot of people feel the same, but I really... We love Manchester. We've got great schools, great shops, great restaurants, great lots of things. And it's got a great history. A lot of people don't think of the history of Manchester or the geographic history, but we're at a sort of a geological, is that the right word, crossroads, where the headwaters of the Otter Creek start not in Manchester, but Dorset, close right by your house, I think. Or you're on the bat, you're the baton kill going the other way. There's a point in East Dorset where you almost can see Otter Creek going all the way up to Virgin's and the baton kill going all the way really down to New York City. And then the other way to the West is the Meadoway that goes out. Dorset, Pallet, Rupert, beautiful part of Vermont. Manchester has a lot of history. It's a crossroads, even pre-colonial days, but Revolutionary War, Civil War, there's a lot of history in Manchester. We're all quite proud of being part of that. And so with that history comes a lot of... It became a natural kind of a tourist place. And Robert Lincoln actually first visited Manchester in 1864 when his mother, Abraham Lincoln's wife was there with Robert's brother. They visited Manchester, stayed at the Equinox Hotel for a week. Robert was a student at Harvard at the time and he met them there. And the plan was for President Lincoln to come back to visit because that was those days getting out of Washington, D.C. of what people did. Additionally, President Lincoln was killed before that happened, but that was Robert's first visit and then he came back in the beginning of the 20th century because his law part, by then he had been a lawyer in Chicago. He'd been the ambassador to Great Britain. He'd been the secretary of war. He had been president of the Pullman Rail Company which was the largest manufacturing company in the world when he was president. He was chairman of the board. But he came to Manchester because his law partner, a fellow named Isham and I happen to be sitting at the table with two Ishams who are related to Robert's law partner from way back. I'm sure distant because it's been a number of years. But the Isham name just stuck out of me that we were by randomly at the table that that was Robert Lincoln's law partner. In Manchester to visit his law partner, Isham was from Bennington County but practicing in Chicago loved Manchester, loved being there and built his summer home, his summer cottage there in Manchester and as Stephanie said assembled about 412 acres which included where he built his 8,000 square foot Georgian revival house, cottage, mansion. And it sits, Robert was an amateur astronomer and land surveyor and he chose this spot, this promenary that looks south down the Baton Kill Valley toward Bennington and it's just a beautiful, beautiful spot and there he spent about the next 22 years before he passed away, his wife passed away about 10 years later their daughter inherited the property and she passed away as soon thereafter and it was Robert's granddaughter which is Abraham Lincoln's great granddaughter who lived on the property for 40 years full time and when she passed away in 1975 it was only her cousin still alive from the Lincoln family and when he passed away shortly thereafter that was the end of the direct descendants of Abraham Lincoln. There's cousins and there's all kinds of family tree stuff going on but as far as direct descendants of Robert and Mary Lincoln it pretty much ended at Hildine and one of the things that makes Hildine special in our view is that it was only the Lincoln family that ever lived in this house so a lot of times you'll go to a house museum and there'll be period furniture and furnishings and such that have been brought back into the property because over time some of that has been lost or compromised pretty much at Hildine 90 or 95% of the furnishings and chairs and shelving and a lot of the books and artifacts they are from the Lincoln family they've always been in that building it is sort of the DNA of the Lincoln family because that is where their family chose to be for 75 years until Peggy passed away and there was a little scuffle over the ownership of it and they willed it to the church on the condition that it be preserved as a memorial to the Lincoln family the church didn't want to do that didn't think they could do it and so Friends of Hildine was incorporated that's our business name and we are one of our founding principles is we want to maintain the Lincoln family memorial there at Hildine and so we do that in a variety of ways trying to see how long I've gone here but we've preserved the house and all the artifacts and we get about 40,000 35,000 people a year that come through the house including I was there yesterday we were very crowded with four tour buses and a lot of crowd through the house it's a beautiful property, beautiful gardens beautiful views I just mentioned all my family in different places we live growing up in Fairfax near Pleasant Valley is of course a beautiful beautiful view I've seen the Vermont magazine and Peachham you could see thousands of pictures of Peachham in the autumn it's just absolutely beautiful if you're in Shelburne Shelburne farms looking across the lake doesn't get much better than that but I'm telling you that view from Hildine in my mind is one of the most spectacular in Vermont we are sitting right there it feels like you're right Mount Equinox is right there in your face and being there yesterday the full age report is we're a couple we're behind you folks so when you're up here and I realize people are from all over the state but if you're from the north when you get to the point where you think the full age is little past speak come down to Bennington County right Barry, right Paula and we'll still have it for another week or 10 days depending on the weather and such but it's a spectacular property Hildine is Manchester's a great town and I hope you all will visit and what we do there when Robert bought it he also bought the farms that are down on the Dean he named it Hildine based on two old English words hill and Dean meaning valley with a river running through it so Hildine is about half of it is up on the hill where the house is and about half is down in the Dean where we have other farming operations including Randall cattle which is Vermont's heritage breed endangered species alpacas that Barry's very familiar with because he's been part of that project for years with his alpacas a lot of his equipment that he's given us or loaned us or partnered with us and we appreciate that we have rabbits and chickens and lots of things in a boardwalk over the Baton Kill River and the goat dairy as Stephanie said is separate it's up on the top where we milk goats and make cheese a lot of it is we do a lot of educating to reconnect children but not just children teenagers 20's people of all ages to things that are somewhat in the past but very much front of mind present these days you know where does your food come from how do you grow crops we grew a lot of vegetables we have partnerships with the high school and with the local food providing groups we spend a lot of time providing food to a lot of different organizations in Bennington County with other partners we do a lot of education programs summer camps school groups we have a lot of beautiful trails and I'll close I'll stop and if we only have one microphone right so anyone who wants to ask a question I would actually just be thinking now and when I pause you can make a rush up here or maybe everybody maybe no one wants to ask a question but we have a restored Pullman railcar which is there partly because Robert was chairman as I mentioned a minute ago chairman of the Pullman rail company when this car 1905 model came off the lot it's a beautiful, beautiful thing so we have the car there for that but one of our within our mission of values into actions we have key action items and some of them relate to agriculture some of them relate to sustainable living some of them relate to preservation some of them also relate to civil civic discourse and the Pullman railcar is there to it's a beautiful artifact but it also we use it to tell the story of the Pullman rail company the gilded age the people that ride that would have ridden on this railcar which really was kind of the private lear jet of its day but also the Pullman porters and the black Americans who George Pullman recruited out of the military post enslavement these porters became part of the Pullman brand really in some ways they were the brand providing just excellent service for this sort of elite traveling class on these private cars a lot of people traveled by railcar in more typical means but this palace railcar is really for the Vanderbilts and the Carnegie's and these Pullman porters their legacy that we tell the 100 year story from the 1860s and the end of slavery to the 1960s and the civil rights movement and the role that the Pullman porters played in that excuse me sorry at first during the 19th century working their butts off providing this service for the elite passengers but then forming the first black labor union in the 1920s negotiating the first black labor contracts shortly thereafter and then continuing that involvement in civil rights by sponsoring the march on Washington in 1863 where Luther King had his poignant remarks of course a Philip Randolph who was the organizer of the union the first one to speak at that march on Washington so we talk about we use that Pullman railcar as a way to talk about civics and civic engagement and we we're right now going through Long Drive from Manchester this morning for those of you who are, it was one minute shy of two hours from my garage to the back parking lot today we tell that story and we are in right now in the midst of a capital campaign to build a new year round facility at Hildine that's going to be tremendous, it'll be a tremendous building and it'll give us a better venue to tell these stories and to get more engaged in civil civic discourse which is one of our principles of our mission so there's a lot going on at Hildine I hope you all get a chance to visit just real quickly how many people have been to Hildine in Manchester so that's quite a few, thank you for visiting so with that I'm going to stop my remarks I'll take some questions I hope I'm still on schedule, I lost track of my clock, my daughter is not here so I don't know how to work the phone so the question is what about the special extra long bed that presumably was made for President Lincoln for a visit that is very much part of the Manchester folklore and Dave you can correct me if I got it wrong but as I said earlier Mary Lincoln had come into Hildine, to Manchester, not to Hildine of course it wasn't there, but to the Equinox Hotel in Manchester in 1864 they planned to come back the next year and presumably there was a special bed that would have been built for President Lincoln during that time he never made that visit and so for decades or maybe a century there was this rumor that there was this bed and it's never been found I don't know whether it's true or not it's never been found but that is a local legend whether it's true or not it's an interesting story that I've heard many times I also wanted my wife is from Rutland and I want to give a shout out to her cousin and her aunt Cheryl and Linda are here somewhere back there so in addition to all those towns that I noted mainly in northern Vermont my wife being from Rutland we have a lot of Rutland connections as well so other questions about Hildine or Manchester or okay I'll wrap it up by just saying that in addition to being in a town of course a big part of visiting a town is how do you get there and everybody here knows where Manchester is on the map of course I listed some of the geography but the drive down Route 22A and then into the Meadoway Valley is one of the best drives in Vermont I think from here going down the Mad River valley down Route 100 and all the way down through Plymouth and those lakes south of Ludlow beautiful beautiful drive coming down that way there's a lot of beautiful ways to get to Manchester as there are for a lot of towns and so it sounds like a lot of people like to take those back road roots in there's a lot of nice quieter ways to get into town rather than up and down Route 7 nothing against Route 7 but there's a lot of ways to come in and out so with that I just want to thank you for having me here today we look forward to seeing you next year at Hildine and thanks for inviting me to speak I've really enjoyed the day thank you thank you Brian the view that you spoke of I know exactly where you're talking about from our visit last summer that we spent a lot of time just gazing out and looking at that view and it put me right back to that moment so thank you so much and like I said I think Hildine is a great place for us for our spring to get together and I'm excited for those who have gone there before to go there again and those who haven't discovered it yet to have a chance in 2023 to come down and see Hildine so thank you again Brian okay so now we are going to move on to the raffle winners so I want to thank all of the businesses and there were also 251 club members who donated to our raffle this year and there is a list of those businesses and members that you will have in your fall 2022 newsletter that should hit your mailboxes next week but thank you to everybody who donated members and businesses and also thank you to everybody who bought tickets I don't know what the final count was I know before I came here today just online sales of tickets we were close to 150 and I know members have been supporting us for buying additional tickets so thank you so much to all of you for supporting the club and buying the raffle tickets so with that we will start pulling some names so we ask that if you are here that you can go ahead and collect your prize so it makes it easier with mailing it we also had some live stream participants who purchased tickets as well so the first one is the Explorer Southern Vermont do you want to go ahead and pick it you want me to so Bernadette Rose and I don't I think she is doing the live stream so Bernadette if you are watching us right now you have one package one which is the Explorer Southern Vermont number two the Explorer Chittenden County I'm not looking Brian Keefe and that was not planned so Brian you won the Explorer Chittenden County so great so this is package number three which is the brewery distillery and restaurant package again I'm not looking okay Alfred Andrea did I say that correctly Alfred yes you are the winner of package three so this is the skiing at Jay Peak and we are actually going to have two winners and we are probably for this one do two separate winners for the skiing too so the first winner is John Letty and I do not believe he is here tonight I think he is today he is watching it live stream so John Letty and then Ali Mahar did I say that correctly yes Ali you won yes the skiing so number five is the adventure package for kids and Megan Gilbert who I know is also watching on live stream so Megan congratulations the next one is the coffee state house tour and lunch in Montpelier which I know Brenda helps set up the state house tour I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly but I also think he is on live stream so it's Ken number seven is books coffee and local food in Montpelier the last name wrong sorry I apologize Giangrande thank you next one is a Vermont country store gift basket and you had to be present to win this one so it will be somebody in the room to win this one I'll just take a name Heidi Giangrande great okay the next one is the cheese olive oil honey and essential oils that was for the JP skiing Jean Eisenhart oh perfect okay there's two more packages number ten is outdoor time Sarah Capron did I say that correctly Capron thank you and then the last one is a family membership to Hildine Tina and Lori last name okay great perfect great thank you so much and thank you Shauna for helping with that great so if you like I said if you are here and if you don't mind going back to the raffle table to collect your packages so we don't have to send them to you that would be great I also just want to remind everybody to validate your parking ticket which is right behind where Orca is there's a table there and then I think that wraps up our 67th annual meeting so please continue to share your stories you know I say this a lot with members that's my favorite part of the job is hearing all of your stories and what you've discovered and then we look forward to seeing everybody either at Hildine or their next annual meeting next year so thank you again everybody