The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1852-06-30
Notes Of Hand, for the Register.

Manufacture has secured its seat on the
New Haven river, three miles to the
north of us at Beman's Hollow, or as it
ay very well be called, at Brooks
vile. The locality is celebrated in pop
ular legend, dating no further back than
in 1881, as the scene of sudden food,
which in single night swept the little
hamlet clean out from its locality, and
left to the morning light only the place
of its ruins and the track Of a subsiding
torrent The destruction of life was
melancholy, and hardly any change will
obliterate the memory of this, which
some survive to bear At later pc
riod the name was familiar perhaps in
Green Erin, for during the building of
the Rutland Railroad the labor-secking
IIibernian would hardly have escaped
from quarantine as redemptioner from
ship fever, before he was met inquiring.
in broguc, as inimitable as if never
initiated, for Beman's Hollow Sir. His
work at the high bridge, forty rods below
the dam, is monument that Paddy was
in earnest. At an earlier date than this
to wit, in ls43, the property was taken
up by the oldest brother of the Brooks
Es, as the site of an axe factory, and in
small but energetic and liberal mind
ed way, the business commenced
A few years earlier than this, perhaps
1890, the late Theodore Hinsdale, of
Winstcad, Connecticut, reported to the
writer a conversation held by him with
one of the Collinses of Collinsville, who
was out to see the works of his friend,
just expanding in his hand, the old iron
works and woolen establishment of S. &.
NJ. Rockwell. Hinsdalc had shown his
friend his scythes, which glowed abso-
lutely, so attractive was their temper, as
blue as the Mediterranean, though not
with the white aud veiny art Of the Da-
mascus sword blade The friends lay a.
wake and talked of things-You make
the scythes, said Collins, for the Mssis-
sippi valley, and I'll make the axes
Hinsdale was successful as he was honor
able and cnterprising, and as honorable a
memory survives him, as that of any
other competitor for favour in the Mis-
sissippi valley. And Collins extended
his school of artisans to his liking, till
from sceno of mere Arcadian dclicacy &
beauty where the promise of Thanksgiv-
ing week reposed with sweet luxuri-
ance of fruitage on the borders of the
Pennington, a village supported by his
establishment like city of enchantmcnt
arose, calling up from its bosom soon a
Vulcan's temple at the cost of forty
thousand dollars, workshop sheltcrina
the fires of fve-hundred workmen, as {
garrison of producers in this citadel o
success The waking dreams of boil
perhaps were realized, in the latter will
the impressiveness of vision of th'
night, so sudden has been the chang
from the tame familiar observation 0
a boyhood.
From this school of real art, with tn
skill of the cunning Yankee hand ou
young friends were graduated, but, a
We say on the hill, in the newly risin
groves of Acadcmus there, they wer
. fitted at home, under the eye of a cur
Il ming workman, none more so than tina
il, Of their father. The place, with dai
and privilege, was purchased, the fathe
II was induced TO move to it from the vi
&c lagc at Middlebury, and the bushes
commenced, the old man as tempere
We visited it in those days, for we loy
d the society of those sons of the muse
e whom the bees of industry never stinl
though theirs is the prize of honey.
- was the beginning ofskill, care and hope
: but energy and enterprise were large
b. words than they cared to air from I'll
N leaves of their vocabulary. "Over ii
Lake" was the limit of their field the
a market with the colliers of the ire
d district, to keep alive the forge and flu
q mace fires of Pcn6eld, Hammond an
Tower Some axes were sent to Troy
some were greeted, as axes even may 10y
e to be, in the home market-place, as ii
p best axes known. A modest and geni;
progress has followed their efforts sine
' The intelligent father died, dropping Q
At the burden of life with the equanimit
of a pure heart when life was don
But skill, attention and success survi
III cd. A hamlet with improved featur
Or smiled in the valley, not glaringly, NJ
extravagantly, but as the habitations
young advancing, toiling men. The o
ut shop below the dam, beyond the thick
I'd of cedars skirting the deep water, W;
repaired and extended, the building f
10 sale and finishing improved, and with
n are evidences Of production, fit for a
on Bile of statistics in the New State
Here is the most ex tensive axe wor
er shop in our State. The ordinary man
facture amounts to hundred and TIVE