A Flock of Ransoms

Greetings from White River Junction, Vermont!!!

Emily and I have been vacationing in New England since last Friday in the company of my parents and other assorted Ransoms - we're reunioning in our onetime home of South Woodstock, Vermont.

While Vermont is the focus, we've managed to touch Rhode Island and Massachewysets as well, staying a couple nights (along with my folks) in Boston with family friends Frank & Polly Smith. Frank & Polly go back to the South End of Boston with my parents, living a few doors down on Dwight Street, my home from 0 days to 3 years. We were hosted regally, dining on grilled steak Friday night and a fresh lobster feast on Saturday (what would New England be without lobster?). While in Boston, we took a little time to tool around our old digs in the South End as well as the greatest hits tour -- Beacon Hill, the North End, Paul Revere's House, the Old North Church, and of course the swan boats in the Public Garden.

We also visited Copps Hill Burial Ground to visit some old kin. More on that in a future post. After Boston, we drove through New Hampshire (Live Free or Die!) on our way to the Kedron Valley.

South Woodstock, Vermont
As relayed in the "What's in a name?" post, the Ransom family emigrated to Vermont in the early 1780s, after the Revolutionary War. Vermont was largely unsettled then, and the Ransom's came with a wave of families from Lyme, Connecticut. Lieutenant Richard Ransom, a Revolutionary soldier, was the family patriarch, and he bought land in the Kedron Valley, little more than a turn in the road south of the already established town of Woodstock.

Along with Richard came all of his family, his brothers George Ransom and Elisha Ransom (a preacher), his sister Lydia Ransom and her husband John Sterling, his son Richard Ransom Jr. with wife Betsey Mather, and Betsey's father Dr. Frederick Mather.

There he and his son started a farm and built a store. One of their early homes survives to this day, pictured above. This beautiful white house was sold to the Kendall family in 1842, and they live there to this day.

Over the years, the Ransom operation expanded, and they built a store facing the road (dubbed The National Store, but called the Ransom Store), The National Hotel, and the National Hall, a place for dances and social events. While the National Hall did not survive posterity, both the store and the hotel exist today as part of the Kedron Valley Inn.

The store is pictured to the right. The brick is original, built by Richard Ransom Jr., but the porch and deck are more modern affectations. This building was constructed in 1822 and is in use to this day.
The hotel, pictured left, now serves as the main building of the Kedron Valley Inn and was built in 1828. Again, the brick is original, but the porch, deck and third floor were built later. My father stands in front. We stayed two nights in what was once our family hotel with the entire Ransom clan, plus the Warrens and Hillmans and Stokers who married into the line just as the Sterlings and Mathers did so many years before.

When Daniel Ransom sold the store and hotel in 1850 to move West our family did not lose all ties to the Kedron Valley. Daniel's son Lake Ransom was sent to board with some remaining family in 1860 and study at the Green Mountain Liberal Institute, a forward-thinking Universalist School about a hundred yards down from the Ransom Store. There, Lake met Lucy Bacon, his future wife, and we (the modern Ransoms) were priviledged with a personal tour of the School, now vacant a hundred years but immaculatedly preserved by the caring members of the South Woodstock community. We saw the school ledgers with Lake and Lucy's names, graffitti from Dick Ransom, and photos of Lake's schoolteacher -- who would later go on to mentor Lake's son William as fellow professors at Tufts University in Boston.

Savi Ransom, Daniel Ransom, and Guin Ransom Hillman in front of the Green Mountain Liberal Institute. The Ransoms have been proudly liberal over 150 years!

While in South Woodstock, we also had a chance to visit the Ransom-Kendall Cemetery, still well tended on a hill above the valley with the stones of Lt. Richard, Richard Jr., Betsey Mather and many other key figures in our family history. I'll post some images of the stones in a future update. My Aunt Guin provided newly typed copies of Daniel Ransom's life journal, a fascinating document I had not seen before, and gave Mather-to-be a framed sketch of the ancient Mather family coat-of-arms, a treasure that I hope Mather will appreciate.

Tonight my father, mother, sister & boyfriend, and Emily & I are lodged in the 1926 Coolidge Hotel in the railroad town of White River Junction, down where the White flows into the Connecticut. It's a fascinating little town, but more on our adventures since leaving South Woodstock later...