For a clear historical snapshot of a community like Norwich, there is no better resource than a census report. The census sketches out the character of a town by providing information about where people were born, size of family, education, occupation, and income. If you look carefully, you can get a sense of the society in years past, especially when you examine the occupation column. For example, in the 1940 Norwich census, laborers, farmers, lawyers, doctors, and professors were positions all held by men. Most of the women were listed as housewives. It was a rarity of the times to find a woman who worked outside the home.… Read More

Four years ago, a group of area poets was offered the opportunity to explore the collections of the Norwich Historical Society to find inspiration for an original poem to present at an NHS event “Poets and the Past.” Phyllis B. Katz, a Norwich resident at the time, and a professor and poet at Dartmouth College, asked if there were archives about medicine. With the help of local historians, Nancy Osgood and Judy Brown, she was introduced to Norwich’s first female doctor, Edastina Bush, and guided to the Bush family archives. The poem she wrote, explained Phyllis “was triggered by things visible…in the Historical Society’s Lewis House… And inspired by things missing about Edastina that I wanted to be there but could not find.”… Read More

As the new school year begins, it’s probably a good idea for all of us, not just students, to brush up on our math skills. Let’s try a few questions. Here’s the first one: How many seconds in eleven years? Is everyone reaching for a calculator? The answer is 346,896,000. Next try this: What sum multiplied by itself will produce 998,001? Answer: 999. How did you do? Well, now consider this: in 1810, a six-year-old Vermont boy answered both of these questions in 8 seconds. His name was Zerah Colburn

Born in 1804 in Cabot, VT to Abia and Betsy Colburn, Zerah was the sixth in a family of eight children.… Read More

Much has been written about Alden Partridge, who established Norwich University (first known as the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy) on the town green in 1819. He was a great leader and an innovative educator. But what was life like for the teenage scholars attending the University who left their homes hundreds of miles away and sought an education in rural Vermont? Where did they live? What did they study? What did they think of Norwich?

Fortunately, many of the early school catalogs, student letters, and diaries have survived to this day, and from them, it’s not difficult to sketch out the daily life of the students while they studied in Norwich nearly 200 years ago.… Read More

Norwich Historical Society Shares Skiing Lore

What’s the magic behind Norwich and its Olympic skiers? Is there a secret group of ski coaches hiding in the woods at the top of Elm Street? Are ski jumping classes a requirement at the Marion Cross School? Or is there a magic elixir in the town’s maple syrup? What else could explain the abundance of Olympic athletes who have come from this small Vermont town during the last sixty years?

For starters, if you lived in Norwich in the 1930s, you really weren’t far from the center of a skiing revolution. It all began in 1934 with ‘Bunny’ Bertram, a 1931 Dartmouth graduate who captained the first Dartmouth ski team.… Read More

There is a black and white photograph of Norwich’s Main Street in 1940. It’s the view a driver would see heading out of town towards Hanover. Huge maple trees hang out over the road; by the sidewalks the grass is bushy and unmowed and there is only one parked car in sight. What was it like in the village of Norwich that day? In 1940, the Norwich Women’s Club assembled a detailed 103-page booklet entitled Know Your Town, whose purpose was to “evaluate the town’s social assets and liabilities… and to present a picture of contemporary life which shows the changes and trends in the community.”… Read More