WELLAND HORN, QUIETLY IMPORTANT

WELLAND HORN, QUIETLY IMPORTANT

One of Brandon’s finest men passed on recently, an event briefly noted on the obituary pages. But Welland Horn deserved more attention than that, because he did things that will matter to the future of the town especially and will matter to Vermont as a whole.
It was Welland who, in the 1950’s, learned that the state transportation agency was dynamiting an early 19th century iron-making blast furnace in Forest Dale to get rock fill for a small Route 73 bypass. He owned that furnace, so he went immediately to the site and put a stop to an act of official vandalism that today would be considered a major desecration of Vermont’s heritage. The Forest Dale blast furnace, now shored up at state expense, anchors a state Division for Historic Preservation plan to have the 10-acre collection of cellarhole holes and industrial remains become the primary site for documenting the lesser-known early 19th century Vermont manufacturing era. In the meantime, anyone can see the blast furnace and picnic on the grounds by following the Neshobe River westward from where it crosses Route 53 in Forest Dale (in other words, go up the small streets until you come to the gateway, which is marked). Trout fishing is pretty good along there, too, I can tell you from personal experience, especially in the fall when the big brown trout cruise upstream in search of gravel in which to spawn. It’s your historic and fishing site as much as anyone else’s because Welland donated it to the State. Obviously a man who didn’t hold grudges.
He also donated a site that is equally interesting, the location of which is common knowledge in Brandon, but which I won’t give here because the State is keeping it under wraps. (I doubt that anyone who has gotten this far with Out and About is the kind who would go pothunting or specimen-raiding.) At one point there was a mine 700 feet deep there, where a paint company had found kaolin—an extremely fine clay that made a good filler in paint. (Today’s equivalent would be OMYA’s finely ground marble, which chemically is the stable compound calcium carbonate.)
The same site produced ochre, the coloring agent in the paint. One definition of ochre gives two meanings: 1. “An earthy pigment containing ferric oxide, typically with clay, varying from light yellow to brown or red;” 2. “A pale brownish yellow color.” A house in Forest Dale painted the latter color with Brandon ochre now is under renovation, and probably the new owners consider the historic trove of ochre-painted clapboards an unsightly mess, to be sent to the transfer station or covered with “Vinyl is Final.” I’ll make the same Crazy Ed Barna Idea suggestion I made for the historic timbers taken from the renovation of the Sanderson Covered Bridge (cheerfully disregarded—the construction company burned them to avoid having to pay disposal costs): have a sculptor incorporate some of them into a public artwork commemorating the Paintworks era. Note the “ferric oxide” in the definition, which is iron oxide, or rust—again the presence of iron, which played such a role in the first decades of Brandon and helped build many of its finest houses.
But there’s more: the site has a deposit of lignite, a soft, brownish type of coal (carbon that didn’t get as much pressure as the black kinds). In that coal are fossils, some of them so rare that they constitute the world’s only evidence of some species of prehistoric plants. My mother, a high school science teacher, used to take field trips there, and I went along on one of them, so I can testify personally that the lignite is a wonder worthy of state preservation and interpretation.
But there’s more: Welland also gave Brandon the land on which the Senior Center now stands—a building that has hosted public meetings and a crafts school as well as numerous functions for elders. Previous eras used the land for a Boys and Girls Club (a local club, not an affiliate of the national organization like the one now in Rutland) and for a Fish and Game Club. There’s enough land for other public buildings, should the need arise.
Horn also had a distinguished record as a Freemason, and the Masons were there at his funeral, performing their unique rites in his honor. A lot of misconception have surrounded this not-so-secret society through the years, but the points to remember are that it brings men together in a charitable cause and enhances their moral development without reference to their political or religious beliefs. These days, the schools have discovered that service education has benefits of many kinds, not the least of which is bringing people together across previously imagined divides. Were he young today, I have no doubt that Welland would have devised some of the most ingenious and worthwhile projects, for himself, and his school friends, and especially for those in school who were not his friends.
When you hear the words “common ground”—the sermons and the pleas that we need to find more of it if we are ever to find peace—think of Welland Horn, who left three pieces of actual common ground. Welland, rest peacefully in the same perpetuity as your gifts.

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Comments

[Rita Phelps]

You are missed.

[Loren Penman]

Welland Horn, indeed, was quietly important. I think of him often and fondly, and I'm grateful to have spent many hours with him, Esther and my parents on Lake Dunmore.