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Duke, the Largest Horse on Earth, wore a horse collar by Rex Benson.
A DAR marker at the Retreat Farm memorializing the life of Fairbanks Moore.
A Rex Benson business sign in 1915.
Duke, the Largest Horse on Earth, wore a horse collar by Rex Benson.
A DAR marker at the Retreat Farm memorializing the life of Fairbanks Moore.
A Rex Benson business sign in 1915.
BRATTLEBORO — The historical society held its monthly board meeting last Saturday and finalized plans for its 40th Anniversary Open House at the Research Room in the Municipal Building. The historical extravaganza will take place Nov.12 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. We’ve asked Dana Sprague to give a presentation on the history of local baseball. He will begin his talk at 11:30 a.m. and the public is invited free of charge.
Sprague is a local history buff who has specialized in baseball and the Harris Hill Ski Jump for many years. We are very pleased that he will join us and present a slideshow on America’s Favorite Pastime. We will share more about this in the future. If you have the opportunity, please mark your calendars for Nov. 12 and join us on the third floor of the Municipal Center for an interesting presentation, anniversary cake, light refreshments and a tour of the historical society Research Room.
Have you ever played the 1990s parlor game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” What follows is a Brattleboro Historical Society version known as “Six Degrees of Fairbanks Moore.” In this version we take any local artifact, person or place and link it to Fairbanks Moore in six or less connections. Moore was a soldier at Fort Dummer who, in the 1750s, relocated his family north of the fort to land that is now part of the Retreat Farm.
In anticipation of our 40th Anniversary event at the Research Room we were organizing the local artifact collection and came across a metal sign advertising “Horse Furnishings…Rex Benson…Harness Maker and Repairing, Elliot Street, Brattleboro.” This piqued our curiosity so we began to do a little research. One thing led to another and the story, which began with the death of Rexford Benson in 1917, ended back with the first European colonizers of Dummerston and Brattleboro in the 1750s.
Rexford Benson opened his Elliot Street harness shop in 1899. At the time, most people got around town by horse and carriage. The electric trolley also ran from the East Village to West Brattleboro so people without horse transportation could catch the trolley for five cents a ride. Automobiles were not a part of the transportation equation at the turn of the century.
Rexford Benson advertised that he was a “repairer and dealer in hand and machine stitched harnesses, horse collars, whips, blankets and robes.” For example, Benson made a collar for “Duke,” a Percheron horse who was billed as the largest horse in the world, and owned by local farmer, Charles Miner. Duke weighed over 3,000 pounds and was displayed at many fairs.
Benson was also featured in a series of local ads for Doan’s Kidney Pills. The advertisements ran for many years in the local paper, the Vermont Phoenix. In the ad Benson stated that he suffered from “sharp pains across my back and hips and whenever I caught cold, I became so lame and sore that I could hardly get about” and the pills “removed every symptom.” He continued taking the pills for a decade and reported he always got good results. At that time, the main active ingredient in Doan’s Kidney Pills was potassium nitrate. This substance is currently used mostly in explosives and fertilizer. Unfortunately, Rexford Benson died of cancer in 1917.
While reading his obituary we found mention of his father, Arza Benson. He was a bit of a character. At the age of 90 he decided to walk from Guilford to Brattleboro, a distance of three miles, to prove he could still get around on his own. For 60 years Arza made his living traveling by horse to every town in Windham County in order to letter tombstones. When people died he would carve in the death date and any other information the family wanted shared on the gravestones. For six of those 60 working years he had been employed by John H. Kathan.
John Kathan operated a marble works near the railroad station in Brattleboro from 1854 to 1867. When Kathan was 21 years old he moved to Brattleboro from Dummerston to start a marble cutting business with Willliam Dutton. Kathan and Dutton focused on marble monuments, headstones, mantles and counter tops. Vermont and Italian marble was delivered by rail to the marble shed next to the train station. The Kathan Marble Works was partially financed by Jacob Estey, a local plumber who also helped finance other fledgling businesses. Within a year of financing the Marble Works, Estey would take over a failed organ business he had also helped finance and begin what became the Estey Organ Company.
Dutton left the Brattleboro business and relocated near Montreal, Canada to continue in the marble trade. In 1867 Kathan joined Dutton in Canada and continued working with marble as well. Kathan suffered from lung disease, probably acquired while breathing in the marble dust during years of grinding and cutting the stone. Kathan moved back to Brattleboro as he was too sick to continue working and died at the age of 50. The Kathan name is connected with the founding of Dummerston so we traced John H. Kathan’s lineage to see if there was a connection.
It turns out that his great, great grandfather was Captain John Kathan. In 1752 Kathan was the first English colonizer to move onto land that would later become a New Hampshire Grant known as Dummerston. Captain Kathan’s wife was Martha Moore. She was also the sister of Fairbanks Moore.
Fairbanks Moore was one of the first English colonizers to move out of Fort Dummer and attempt to settle near the West River in what is now Brattleboro. In 1758 Moore and his son, Benjamin, were killed in a Native American raid on their homestead. The Abenaki attacked the Moore homestead as part of an ongoing Abenaki/English conflict that had been fought in this valley for 100 years. By attacking the Moores the Abenaki were defending land they had farmed, waters they had fished, and sacred gathering and burial grounds they had established hundreds of years before the English arrived in what they called New England.
So that’s how a local business artifact from a little over 100 years ago can connect us to a 3,000 pound horse, the local trolley, dangerous ingredients in kidney pills, the founding of one of Brattleboro’s most successful businesses, and, ultimately, Fairbanks Moore.
For those of you keeping score, we begin Six Degrees of Fairbanks Moore with an old “Horse Furnishings” sign from Elliot Street. One degree of separation leads us to the business owner, Rex Benson. Two degrees of separation leads us to his father, Arza Benson. Three degrees of separation takes us to John H. Kathan, Arza’s boss. Four degrees of separation leads us to Kathan’s great, great grandfather, Captain John Kathan. Five degrees of separation leads us to great, great grandpa Kathan’s wife, Martha Moore. Six degrees of separation finishes with Martha Moore’s brother, Fairbanks Moore.
Brattleboro Historical Society: 802-258-4957, https://bhs802.org/
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Brattleboro Fire Department visited Green Street Elementary School in Brattleboro to talk to students as part of Fire Prevention Week on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022.
Paul Ethier, the park maintenance supervisor for the Brattleboro Recreation & Parks Department, and his team lay down a coat of white paint onto the ice at the Nelson Withington Skating Facility on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022, as they get ready for it to open to the public on Saturday, Oct. 22.
Bellows Falls hosted Hartford during a field hockey match on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.
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