 I'm just right. Hi, my name is George Edson. I'm Chairman of the Monthly Historical Society. And just a few opening remarks about why we're here. About a year ago, I looked at my computer this morning and found that just about a year ago, almost to the week, several of us got together, thinking that the Monthly Historical Society might want to get revitalized. We knew that it existed. It had been dormant for a decade. And Catherine Goyer, and Mike Doyle, and Bev Hill, and myself met a few public meetings followed. Nomination of the board of directors followed. And an election of that board and then officers. And a penalty for stirring the pot meant that I was elected chairman. And our vice chairman is Jennifer Boyer, somewhere. And Jennifer comes to the table with a great deal of history, research, and writing from central Vermont and Montpelier. Jennifer knows every antique map there is. And if you want to know any about maps, you see Jennifer. Bev Hill is our secretary. And Bev, it knows everybody, and everybody knows Bev. And I think she's held most of the elective or non-elective offices in the county and the city. And Catherine Goyer is our treasurer. Catherine was a part of the previous society. And I think she wanted to be treasurer to make sure we didn't blow a little bit of money that we inherited. And I think we've done OK on that. Catherine is the daughter of the late Paul Goyer. Paul was real instrumental in historical activities here in Montpelier. And Catherine is carrying on that legacy. For directors, we have Paul Carnahan, amazingly lucky to have Paul on our board. You all know Paul is a librarian at the Leahy Library at the Vermont Historical Society in Barry. Danny Cohn, I could say everybody in Montpelier knows Danny, but I think everybody in the state knows Danny through his musical. Where's Danny? Through his musical exercises. And Danny is a native Montpelierite and very interested in Montpelier history. Thumper Colombo, who was a principal at DuWen King and is, again, another native. You don't have to be a native, but anyway. And a classmate of mine in Montpelier High School. And Thumper is kind of the go-to guy when we need to get something done. Next is Corinne Cooper. She isn't here tonight. Corinne is the president of the Berlin Historical Society and tells us how these things should be done. And there's one other C-word I thought I could remember from an alphabetical. Who am I forgetting? I'm forgetting as somebody whose name starts with C. Then we have Eric Gilbertson. And Eric was to be a part of the program today. And Eric had a little health problem, a minor health problem, that prevented him from coming. But again, Eric is a huge addition to our board. Spend his life in. Bebe's death is telling me who I forgot. No, I did him first. Whoops, this is, I think you can. Eric Gilbertson. Eric Gilbertson, you might have hit something. Eric Gilbertson spent his life, his career, in historic preservation. And was the historic preservation officer for the state of Vermont. Can you all hear me? And this little light has gone out. And Eric was also on the Preservation Society Vermont board, also the Precision Museum in Windsor. Eric brings a lot to the table. And Mike Doyle. Mike was an original member of the Montpellier Historical Society years ago. And Mike Doyle, if you look on YouTube, you'll find pictures, you'll find videos of Mike leading tours of the state house. And Steve Ribellini. Steve is another local person. And Steve has shown his tremendous support, his belief in Montpellier by investing in Montpellier. And Steve is on our board too. So we are looking to do three things primarily. One is to get space to meet in and work on our collection. And we'd like that space to be free because we don't have much money. Which reminds me, we'd like you to join our society today. And my wife Jill, some of you may have known Dr. Carnahan. I married the veterinarian's daughter. And my wife Jill is standing up back and would be glad to have you join. So please, before you try it again. Hold it down here, though. So another activity we're looking to become engaged in, you're here for today. And that is public programming. And Catherine Gwear was in charge of this program. And has done a fantastic job, as you can see by the turnout today. Lastly, we want to foster the research and writing of local history. And I could talk all day about that. But if you have more interest in writing things, whether it's your neighborhood, the house you grew up in, anything about Montpellier that his first-person history is particularly of interest. You're the person that lived it. You're the person that knows it. You didn't do research. You lived it. But also any other particular thing. They're a big part of the Green Non-Cemetery. I'm sure they all have histories at the hotel. But somebody bringing those histories together, bringing them up to date, is important. So anyway, that's what we're looking to do, too. Public programming will have another. Catherine has some ideas for the fall program, which is going to be outstanding. And we also have a cracker exhibit, the Common Cracker that's going to open at the History Museum in August. And there is an opening reception for that on August 6. So that's the other activity. And other than that, joining us would be helpful. We need your money. And yes? So business cards on the table. Business cards on the table with our contact information. And we welcome you to join us. And that's it. So Catherine, you want to pass this around and start the teleportion of our program? So the mic is a little tricky. We're just going to pass the microphone around and give all of the exhibitors a chance to talk for about five minutes regarding their family history and their business in Montpelier. So we'll start with Fred Vashara. Fred, when you're done, you can just pass it on to Abby and hold it right down on five. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon. I started in 1959, married my wife in 1962. So we're coming up on our 60th anniversary. And actually started working at the Paramount before I was married in 1964. Then afterwards, we worked with my problem of Richard Cotey with Montpelier Ice Company, who did that for me. 1980, our family split. Everybody wanted to retire. We didn't. We were running our 50s. So we ended up buying Capital Theater, Paramount Theater, three laundromats. And our family grew from there. That came out of college. Each one came back and worked with us. In 1992, you had a big flood in Montpelier. We had a big flood in Montpelier. And the result was the hotel went into bankruptcy. It was bought by previously two years earlier. John Kilmurray and Irving Anders, this is not working. That's OK. I'll talk later. Hold on. I'm going to hit myself. Anyhow, we bought the hotel out of bankruptcy after five other owners went bankrupt in 1993 and opened it up as a capital plaza, as you see it today. We opened up with 39 rooms. We now have 74. We're adding another 10 within a couple of months. We'll be working over the summertime. Jay Morgan's is also our family run, as well as the Capital Theater. There's pictures over here of the Capital Theater. It's called the Playhouse. I finally go back to about 1938 with the pictures. And you'll see pictures of the elm trees in front of the Playhouse. Then you'll see a picture of an elm tree falling through the Playhouse and a picture boarded up. One year later in 1939, it burned to the ground. And if you look at the outside of the building, you'll see the supporting pillars that are still there. They built around it. Now, Claire Gleir, where her father was called Nelson Paxman, he was one of the carpenters that built the capital. He started on one side, and they had another man called Jerry Dashner who started on the other. They hated each other so badly that the contractor would not let them get near each other. When they got near the back, they had to separate them. That same year, 1939, 489 elm was built. That was my father-in-law's house, my wife's house. He built the Bud Cody's house a few years later and built my house in 1966 at the age of 68. And he and I worked together and built that house. I don't think some of them even knew it was over there. Anyhow, we had a great time in Montpelier. We love it. I have four children. We just graduated the ninth graduation from college Friday. I've got three more to go. So here's Don, you take it. I appreciate that you're here. Here we go again. As you know, I'm Don Bigelstone from Capitol Stationers. We originally started in 1950 when my dad was a traveling salesman out of Boston. And he bought out a little shop called Richmond Office Equipment. There shortly after, in 1952, we obtained a bookstore called Lincoln Lily, which was over next to the fire station. We combined the Capitol Stationers with Lincoln Lily and eventually we bought out Mr. Lily. Shortly after that, we purchased Harrington's Gift Shop, which was down next to where the Capitol Plaza is. There was a building which was the J. Leo Johnson building and the gift shop was in one side of it. And it's interesting that J. Leo Johnson building also operated as a warehouse for us as you could drive your vehicle up onto the second floor on a wooden ramp. And we kept office furniture up there. So we had three locations going in Montpere at that time. So McClellan's building, which is now Walgreens, came up for sale and we purchased that in 1967 and we took the three stores, put them all into one. So in 1967, we came under one roof. But that roof started leaking. So we were gonna have to shut down for a period of time to rebuild the roof. So our contractor up in Barry Roland-Lajanes said, why don't you just put a second floor up over the top? So what we did is we straddled the original building and put another floor up above so we didn't have to shut down. We could keep on operating, which was pretty helpful. And after we moved in there, we had started selling office furniture from that on the second floor and we didn't need the warehouse anymore. Then we got a little bit bigger and we ended up buying the old Marvin and Cooley dairy up on Burlin Street. And that became our warehouse for a while. And then the community center was going out of business and so we took over the community center, which is where the police department is now and we turned that into a warehouse for us. And then at the same time, we were expanding in other locations and we had gone to the point that we had nine stores at that point. We had, I had about 120 employees and we were all over northern part of Vermont. And then we had one store and it was kind of called our vacation store. It was in Florida at the Sawgrass Country Club. So we could get down and watch the TPC tournaments and get into that for free and to play golf there. Then the flood came in 1992 and that just about wiped us out because we were storing a lot of merchandise in the lower level of our store, which is the Walgreens store. And there was no insurance because it was below ground. So we lost the inventory for five stores or it really did a job on us. But we've had a lot of fun over the years. And where we had locations was we were in Barry, Montpelier, St. Alba, St. John'sbury, Waterford, three locations in Burlington and one in Florida. So that kept me pretty busy running around between all the stores and it was a lot of fun. Interestingly though, when we first opened, my dad had a little thing in the window, giving away a puppy. And some little kid won the puppy and took it home. And I don't want to tell you about the phone call that my dad got about having a little puppy sent home. It wasn't met with the best success. But we got a lot of interest in the other things. One little story I like to tell is that we were storing the Berlin, up at the Berlin Mall, I had a store called Mr. B's. And I was up there working one day and somebody came in and wanted a certain product and I said, well, we don't have that here. But if you go downtown to Capitol Stationers, they have it. And the person looked at me and says, I don't like them. I'm not going to buy from them. That's why I come up here. I for once kept my mouth shut. So we had some fun over the years and I don't know what else to tell you. I don't want to hold you up too long. So I'll turn it over to the Cody so they can talk into the microphone. I'll just do the microphone. I'm Bob Cody. First of all, thank Catherine for dragging us out today to do this on a nice Sunday. And George Jetson, Uncle Fred and I were watching you on the podium, he said, my God, that's land up right there. The story of Cody Chevrolet starts with my grandfather. He moved here in 1922, 23, sometime in that timeframe. And he bought the Mump here ice company. Then my grandfather was pretty entrepreneurial. My grandmother was very conservative. So she, my grandfather just kept wanting to buy things and do things. My grandmother would always keep them. Let's see if we can afford this, but she made sure he didn't have too many follies. But so in 1956, my grandfather had a building here on Berry Street, Main Street, and it was a dealership called Downey Chevrolet. And back in those days, you just had one car in the showroom and people would come in and take that car and there'd be another car coming in. They didn't have lots or anything like that. And so my grandfather loved automobiles. He always liked big automobiles. And he thought, after having known theater business, gotta get in the car business. This is what seems to be growing. So in 1956, he purchased it from, at that time it was H.O. Taylor. There were two stores. There was one in Berry where the Old Dairy Queen, right back there. And that was named Bud Chevrolet. And the one here in the corner of Main and Berry Street was called Cody Chevrolet. When they signed the agreement with Chevrolet Motor Division, they required them to build a new building in five years. So in three short years, they built the building that we are presently in on the Berry Montpellier Road. In 1959, there's some pictures here of when they opened it up. And the time was quite a, I was born in 61. So I don't know any of this. I just had to get the stories from my older brothers and sisters and from my father. But at the time, my father was the president. He was the oldest of the four Cody boys. And all of them became officers in the company. My uncle Bud ran the sales department. My father ran the service department. And Uncle Don ran the treasury. And I think at that time, Uncle Ray was... So he was up in the strong. Yeah, he was up in the strong theater and everything. But he was still, you know, they're all, my grandfather always used to divide everything equally. He was the boys. So that's how everything started. And obviously, everybody knows the history of automobiles. They took off in 1956, 57, 58. It just kept expanding, expanding, expanding. Where the present property where Cody Chevrolet is located, right next to it used to be the old driving movie theater. And so we were very fortunate. But back in, my father tells a story back in the day when my grandfather had those movie theaters and they put the dealership there. The very Montpellier Road, it was just starting to be well traveled. There wasn't a lot of people going back and forth. You know, so it was a very prosperous time for my family to do that. And so fast forward a few years. The next generation, as Uncle Fred said, the Cody boys got a little older. They decided, let's start splitting up the businesses because they all own them together. And my father ended up with Cody Chevrolet. My uncle, but ended up with Midtown Chrysler Plymouth. I heard you talk about J. Leo Johnson. My family bought that in 1964 and built a building that is presently Midstate Chrysler Plymouth. And so that's how we end up. And so my brother and I got into the business. My sister, Robin, was already in the business and we kind of helped my father who's getting older. So we got into the business and it was good because I had a job. I got out of college, I had a job. I didn't have to go hit the pavement. And I've been there, I grew up at the dealership and so that's pretty much it. We've been very fortunate that we've always run it as a family business but the people that have worked for us have been just amazing. We've had employees, been in one employee that worked over 50 years for us, David Simpson. And all the employees that we've had over the years, some of them helped bring me up. When they were older, I called the dealership, they'd always were very generous to us. But believe it or not, we have two or three employees now that work for us. One sales manager for us, Jay Lecaire, his grandfather was our body shop manager. And my new body shop manager, his father was a mechanic, Ron Page, for years. So the family thing just continues on and we've been very blessed and very thankful for the Montpeyre and Berry community for having us all these years. Thank you. Thank you. There's a dead man, Pat. Isn't that good? Everybody. All right, thank you. Pat Catelli from Greenmount Cemetery. Thank you for inviting me. It's the cemetery. Again, it was dedicated. There's a hymn here, copy of the hymn. It was dedicated on September 15th, 1855. It was part of the rural garden movement for cemeteries, which as you know, there's a lot in Boston. A lot of them are in New England. And they wanted something that was right outside of the city, overlook the river. They looked at, and we face south. So it's kind of a natural amphitheater facing south. And the only thing we can see a little bit now is the interstate. But other than that, we're not seeing any buildings. And so it's really, I think it was a great place to choose. Now, Calvin Keith, prominent lawyer in Montpeyre is the one who donated money to buy land suitable for a cemetery. Now remember, suitable for a cemetery was in 1855. Who would buy a hill that we're gonna be having lawn mowers 100 years later, but nobody knew about that then. So I have a picture here from 1875 and it shows the hillside. Few trees are coming up. It's back when there were a lot of sheep farms in Vermont. So most of this area did not have trees, didn't have deer. So they could put in a rural garden cemetery and not worry about deer eating everything up. The other thing, so he wanted a couple of things, Calvin Keith, when he gave the money to the city. He wanted it to be planted thickly with trees. And we're starting to see some 150 year old trees coming down now. He wanted a part given to the poor. Those were his two conditions. The city matched the amount of money. They set up a, it's kind of a quasi municipal corporation. There's five publicly elected commissioners that run the city or run the cemetery in trust for the city. So we do not work for the city council. We work with them. We work with the city manager, but we're not directly under them. And that's how it works. And I think mostly because of money. They wanted to make sure the money stayed away from the town fathers. And that's only what I've been told. It makes sense. So anyways, we have 35 plus acres down there. There's over three and a half miles worth of roads. You got to be a half a mountain goat to walk a lot of the ridges, a lot of the terraces. Back when we started, well, not when we, but they started in 1855. It was a pine box, casket, simple. Maybe some bomb bombing, maybe not. It's gone full circle. It's now coming back to pine boxes or just going in natural without being involved. And we're allowing that. We're working it out. Also back then, there wasn't any lawnmowers. There wasn't a combustion engine. We're going back to much of the old part of the cemetery not being mowed until the fall. And so that's what we're struggling with. And it's kind of working out with COVID because our main workforce has been with the Department of Corrections probably since 1982. I've been there 35 years. And so hopefully we'll have corrections back but we're going to be doing other things with them. There's a lot of work that a lot of retaining walls, a lot of monuments need to be fixed and straightened. So anyways, I've got some different pictures here. I even have a picture that Beth Hill gave me of her aunt Emma riding in a horse and buggy around the stairs that were carved in the ledge on the shark corner. That was done by a civil war vet. We have over 105 civil war vets throughout the cemetery. We have hundreds of veterans down there. And one of the things we always need is someone to help us find these. We're finally getting a map made digitally so that we can start making special maps for the cemetery. So if anybody wants to volunteer at time, just let me know. What else do we have here? We have a log book here. One of the things about cemeteries, Green Mount, whoever, St. Augustine's, there's a lot of history there. If you know how to connect the dots, you can see in 1875, the middle of the cemetery, mostly marble monuments. Once in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when they figured out how to quarry granite, which was much harder, then they went to granite. So they started with slate and then went to marble then they went to granite. There's just so much history and a lot of lessons that need to be learned and need to be recorded for everybody. And the biggest lesson that I've learned recently, when COVID started, I looked up in 1918 when the Spanish flu occurred. And I just went from August 30th to like December 15th, 75 burials in 110 days. Keep in mind that wasn't with our mini excavator that we have now, that was with a shovel. And the only reason they stopped is because it was winter. So there's a lot of lessons to be learned at any cemetery. There's just so much information there that takes a lot of people to work on. So thank you. And I'm always open to tours for groups of people. So if you ever need a tour, just let me know. We can walk, we can ride, doesn't matter. So thank you. Thanks, parents. You want me to move this down? Well, it's a recorder for the cameraman. Oh, okay. I'm past the 40s. I'll hold it, I'll hold it for you. At one point he wanted to have five restaurants in Montpelier, which he did have, one for each son. Unfortunately, the sons went out to war, came back, decided they didn't want to be in the restaurant business. He was buying Miller's Inn, so he decided to keep that one and that's where the first lobster pot was. He had the lobster pot from there until 1970 when he sold it to his son, Paul, and myself. We ran it until 2001 when we retired and I have some of the memory here here from way back when. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'll hold this. No, I'm glad I'm holding it. You're on it. $22. I'm Mary Redmond, I was married to young Paul who got sick of coming back to Montpelier from the week school where he was working for Latin lessons, so we finally moved back to Montpelier and went into the bakery. And I have two articles, one about the bakery starting and one about the boys in the early 1970s. It's called Family Enterprise Crying Donuts. A fondness for homemade donuts like mother used to make was what started a Montpelier man baking his Ahab a years ago and he soon will be opening his own bakery shop in the Tamasi block on Main Street. Paul S. Redmond of Seven Lincoln Avenue, Montpelier will be opening his shop in about two weeks and will specialize in all types of donuts, bread, and squares. I first started baking donuts for the fun of it at home because I remembered how good my mother's donuts tasted, said Redmond. And the next thing I knew, my kids were selling them to the folks in the neighborhood. Redmond baked his first donut about 20 years ago and still has a yen for them. He worked at Cross Bakery until six years ago when he began his own business doing all the baking in the kitchen of his home. It's still going to be pretty much of a family enterprise with Mrs. Redmond and their six children joining in to help. And then this is an article about the bakery which was in the Retail Bakers Week magazine. Bakers get their due respect. That hero of the morning and savior of the palette, the hometown baker, is finally getting long overdue recognition when the country acknowledges independent retail bakers week, February 28th through March 4th. For visitors to Montpelier, the journey down Main Street begins with the wafting aromas of freshly baked goods from Paul's bake shop, a fixture in the capital city for the past 25 years. Paul, T. Redmond and crew begin their day at 1.30 a.m. in preparation for the onslaught of hungry workers seeking sustenance from their handmade donuts and freshly baked rude coffee. The originator of Paul's bake shop, Paul S. Redmond, Paul T. Redmond's father, began his baking career as a baker's helper at the Federal Bake Shop in Burlington followed by a short stand at Fassett's Bakery. A resident of Montpelier since he was a year old, the senior Redmond moved his employment back home and for 15 years worked at the Cross Baking Company. Around 1950, Redmond began making donuts at his Pearl Street home every Friday evening. He would send his six children throughout the neighborhood to sell the freshly baked goods. In 1955, the family moved to Lincoln Avenue in Montpelier and there they continued the weekly baking ritual, word spread about the quality of Redmond's donuts. And soon, using only a small stove top kettle, the Redwins were producing 15 dozen donuts for their customers. By 1957, the family began selling donuts wholesale to area stores, including some in nearby Burry. The demand proved too great for the Redmond kitchen operation, so in 1960, Paul's bake shop was born at its present location. Request poured in for more jelly donuts and breads and in 1974, Paul S. incorporated with the sons Paul T. and James and bought out the Jarvis Bake Shop on Main Street in Burry. Now under the management of young Paul and Jim, Paul's bake shop employs 14 people at their two stores and sells baked goods ranging from their famous donuts to French pastries and wedding cakes. Most of the elder Redwins recipes for donuts and breads are still being used at the bake shop. Other than the small computer in the back room, mechanization of the operation has remained at a minimum. And many of the baked goods are still cut and prepared by hand. Paul S. Redmond retired in 1978 and lives at the site of the original donut-making operation. His sons still have to endure the long days and hard work needed to make the product, which lives up to their father's original recipe. But nothing makes work easier than the thought of satisfied customers. A couple of stories that occur when a family has a longtime legend. They delivered donuts to Burry and Montpelier and even to Stowe. And Val's Market was one of the places that bought their donuts. So packages of donut holes was a big attraction. And so some mother sent this little six or seven-year-old boy into the market one day to get some donut holes. And he walked in and announced, I want some of Paul's balls. Now, if you knew my father-in-law, he had a tweakle to his eye when he was really tickled about something. And every time he told that story, he would laugh and laugh and laugh. And so I asked my daughter, who lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, what she remembered about the bakery. And she said, I loved going down to the bakery on Sunday night to take things out of the freezer. She said, I can still smell the smell of the freezer. But the best thing was baking at home with dad. So the circle went in 1987. So she was only six years old at that time, but she remembers. So that's my story. We thank you all for coming. I think, oh, Bob, would you like to? I thought I could say it. Yeah, sure. Bob Edson? My name is Bob Edson. She landed as George's father in genealogy. And he proved that we are related, although it's a ways back. I was born in Baroque and Montpelier. I had great home as a ninth grade algebra teacher and as a JV football coach. Built Wigelstone. Donnie's father was one of my little league baseball coaches. And I went to graduate from Montpelier High School. Before that, I was, of course, born at Heaton Hospital, which in the 30s, my mother graduated from a nursing school at Heaton Hospital School of Nursing. I'm a collector. I'm a collector, a compulsive collector. I collect stamps. Now, part of stamps is postcards. And I have in my books on the table here a few of my postcards. And I won't prolong anything except that you're very happy to look at any of that. One of them I found was a postcard made of the arsenal that used to be on Hall Street in Montpelier. And the little building is still there, but the arsenal is not there. And this picture is good. The Cynthia Mix Brady, her dad owned Bailey Mills here in Montpelier. And George Brady had a printing company in Barry and became good friends with my wife and myself. When they sold out of their place in Griesboro when they moved to Florida permanently, she gave me this picture, which is courtesy of the Vermont Historical Society, but it shows the depot in Montpelier. There's two buildings that are gone that are just totally sad. One is that the depot that was torn down for parking lot for state employees, the other one was the post office, which was just a magnificent, just a magnificent and my friend Stan could tell you what kind of architecture was, just a magnificent architecture. I really enjoy collecting postcards. I have about 1,000 Montpelier postcards and I'm happy to share them with anybody that wants to look at them. And I say one, just one other thing that I think the Bashera family saved downtown Montpelier. And the refreshment table is open. Come up and browse. And come back and continue to thank you all.