by Paul S. Gillies, Esq.


RUMINATIONS A Hero Once, a Jude for Life


There is a vein of copper pyrites in the


calciferous mica schist formation that runs along the eastern side of Vermont from Holland to Strafford.1


It was mined success-


fully in Corinth, Vershire, and Strafford.2 Getting it out of the ground, and smelting it into a more transportable form, was hard work and the environmental consequences of the process were severe.3


The Vermont


Watchman and State Journal in 1882 re- ported that at Vershire the “smelting fur- nace has destroyed the vegetation in the vi- cinity of the mines, and farmers have heavy claims against the company for damages.” Many suits were reported filed as a conse- quence.4 The mine was owned by the Vermont Copper Mining Company, whose princi- pal owner and manager was Smith Ely. He brought such industry and financial advan- tage to that little town that it was renamed “Ely” in 1878 by the General Assembly. That only lasted four years, when the eco- nomic fragility of the mine began to trouble the inhabitants, and the name was changed back to Vershire in 1882.5


The problems


went beyond the financial problems of the company. The miners, carpenters, and ma- sons who came to Vershire from Ireland and Sweden were a hardy lot, and there were conflicts with the locals.6


Mrs. Bartholomew was accosted by three


men while walking between Ely and West Fairlee village in September of 1882. They made “indecent proposals” and she in turn threatened one of the men to “call at her home in West Fairlee and settle for his tur- pitude or be prosecuted.” When he ar- rived, the miner was promptly arrested by the constable, but then escaped after three or four accomplices beat up the officer on his way to the jail. The original three were identified as employees of the company.7 On Saturday night in December 1882, the “boys were rough” after drinking too much beer, and shots were fired. Although no one was hurt, one man found a bullet in his boot and a hole in his trousers. A baker had fired on them and in retaliation they broke the window of his shop and cleaned him out.8 More trouble was brewing at the mines. Smith Ely sold out to the Vermont Cop- per Company, whose president was E. Ely- Goddard, Smith’s grandson. The company was cash-strapped, and by the late spring of 1883 had not paid the workers for two and a half months. Ely-Goddard turned the property back to his grandfather, but soon the revelation of a $30,000 debt ratcheted


www.vtbar.org


up the tension, and exposed the imminent bankruptcy of the company.9


The compa-


ny’s perilous financial situation left miners without any pay for months. The frustration finally boiled over in July of 1883. The newspaper reports of what hap- pened at Vershire that July paint two en- tirely different portraits of the controver- sy. The reporter for the Vermont Watch- man and State Journal believed the gov- ernment’s reaction was hysterical and un- founded. He also blamed Vermont’s former Governor Roswell Farnum, who was coun- sel to the company, for becoming “panic- stricken” and inciting his successor Gover- nor John L. Barstow to act. But a reporter for the Boston Journal called it an insurrec- tion, claiming the rioters had invaded Smith Ely’s home, emptied the company store, threatened public and private property, and planned to blow up the mine, as well as Vershire village and West Fairlee village. The powder house was controlled by the miners, and there were 125 kegs of blast- ing powder and “a quantity of giant pow- der in a powder-house on the bill near the entrance to the mine.”10 On Sunday, July 1, the miners went to church—the Irishmen to the Catholic Church, the Cornishmen to the Methodist Church. On Monday morning, there was a mass meeting. “Their grievances were dis- cussed in pretty outspoken language; the large sums which Goddard had squandered were sworn about, and a good deal of rough talk over the swindle which had been perpetrated upon them took place.” The body appointed a committee of six to meet with Smith Ely and work something out. At eighty-five years of age, Ely was in bed when the committee went to his home in West Fairlee to demand their money. Ely told them he had not a “dollar in the world.” But he also told them “this mine be- longs to the working men; I give this mine up to you.” He blamed F.M.F. Cazin, the en- gineer. If not for him, Ely could have paid them. “Cazin has ruined the mine.” He said he owned Cazin’s house, and invited them to “take and unroof it, as far as I am con- cerned. This property belongs to the labor- ing men in spite of everybody, and I give it to you.” Ely was rescued and taken to Brad- ford “in a great panic,” and left from there to New Jersey or New York the next day. The correspondent from the Vermont


Watchman also blamed Sheriff Luke Par- ish for overreacting. “In ordinary times, the chief duty of a sheriff is to shout ‘Hear ye’


THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2012


‘Hear ye’ at the beginning and end of court, and to sit in a box against the side of the court-room and sleep the day through as best as he can.” Called to Vershire, Parish saw firsthand the anger of the workers, and he feared the worst. He returned to Chelsea and swore in a posse of twenty men, “got guns and ammunition for them from the Grand Army post,” and “started again for Ely to put down the rebellion.” Parish then left his posse in West Fairlee and entered Vershire, only to find it quiet; but when he returned to West Fairlee he found the men had fled, with the guns. Parish rode to Shel- burne on the train with a report for Gover- nor Barstow, and this triggered the military reaction that has come to be known as the Ely War. The Governor called out the mili- tia, for only the second time in the state’s history.11 The reporter for the Vermont Watchman believed he understood the men’s thinking.


With their ideas of rude justice, they had adopted a theory that they had a sort of prescriptive right to have all the property of the mine devoted to the payment of their wages, and they didn’t wish anything to be got out of the way. All kinds of stories had been circulated about the fabulous sums with which it had been embellished, and they natu- rally felt bitter, when they realized their present destitution, at the squandering of the money which they had earned, and had the best right to of any one.12


Troops were on the trains from Northfield and Rutland—150 armed men in all—while a company of local militia from Bradford took wagons to Thetford, and then walked through the night, becoming the first to arrive at the scene. They reached the top of a “denuded hill which overlooks the vil- lage, all the vegetation of which has been killed by the fumes of the sulfur,” and then marched to the mine and retook the pow- der house. There were four miners guard- ing the explosives, and they gave up with- out a fight.13 The Bradford company was led by a thir-


ty-two year-old lawyer, John H. Watson. His actions at Vershire earned him a statewide reputation as a leader of men and as a man who could be trusted with an important of- fice. Sixteen years later, he was elected as an associate judge of the Vermont Supreme Court, and he served until 1929, almost thir- ty years, the last twelve as chief justice—the


7


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40