Brandon chamber opens new visitor center
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The Brandon Museum and Visitor Center in Brandon. VYTO STARINSKAS / RUTLAND HERALD |
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By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: July 11, 2009
BRANDON — The visitor center at the Stephen A. Douglas Birthplace opened for business Friday.
Mostly.
"The toilets don't work and the Wi-Fi doesn't work," said Blaine Cliver, a member of the board of directors and the only person at the building just before noon Friday.
By the end of the day, Brandon Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Janet Mondlak said she believed the plumbing was being dealt with and that she was working on the Wi-Fi. Still, the center featured a large map of Vermont, event posters and brochures for travelers passing through the area.
The chamber closed the old information booth, in front of the library, last week. Mondlak said the chamber sold it to the National Bank of Middlebury for a $5,000 donation to the museum.
Mondlak said the bank bought it on behalf of the Fields of Otter Valley Committee, which will use it as a concession stand and cooking shack for the new football and soccer field. She said the committee will move and retrofit the booth this summer.
The historic building was, as its name says, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln's friend and political rival, Stephen Douglas. Douglas did not live there long, though, soon moving to his uncle's home nearby on Arnold District Road.
The building will also house a museum, which the chamber hopes to open on Labor Day Weekend. It will have one room dedicated to Brandon's history, particularly looking at topics like early industry, tourism and architecture.
"We're just about finished with the writing stages," Mondlak said. "There are going to be some artifacts, but it's mostly going to be a museum that tells stories through old photos and text."
Another section, called the Douglas Room, will look at the statesman's life and the abolition movement in Brandon. It's an ironic juxtaposition, as Douglas was no abolitionist, but rather one who believed the states had the right to decide whether to allow slavery.
"We framed it in terms of a story," local historian Kevin Thornton said. "The story is, Douglas leaves in 1830 as a teenager and returns in 1860 as a presidential candidate. When Brandon votes, it votes 4-1 for Lincoln. We're looking at why so few in Brandon voted for their native son."
The answer to that, Thornton said, is that Brandon and Douglas went in radically different directions on the subject of slavery in the ensuing decades. The exhibit will draw on Thornton's research into abolitionism in Brandon and the role of the Baptist church in abolitionism.
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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