The first AA college graduate built this amazing structure; to this day how he did it is a mystery

[cali]

<snip>

Alexander Twilight alone constructed this four-story granite building which was used as a dormitory for out-of-town boarding students at the nearby Orleans County Grammar School. He called it "Athenian Hall." Granite was almost never used in building construction in the early 19th century in Orleans County. No one knows where the granite came from.[2]

The dormitory closed in 1859, two years after Twilight's death. The Orleans County Historical Society bought it in 1918 for $500. Today it is called "The Old Stone House Museum." It is one of the best-preserved institutional buildings of its era in the United States. Operated as an historical museum, it contains collections of 18th, 19th, and early 20th-century furniture, paintings, decorative art, folk art, tools and household items.[3]

<snip>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Twilight


<snip>

The Old Stone House started as the grand vision of Alexander Twilight. The Rev. Mr. Twilight first saw Brownington in 1829, when he arrived to become minister of the Congregational Church and the Preceptor (Principal) of the Orleans County Grammar School. The co-educational “Brownington Academy,” as it was often called, had been founded only six years earlier, and was the only secondary, or high school, in the county.

Twilight felt strongly that if the Academy was to compete successfully with other institutions it would have to provide a well-equipped dormitory for its students. Unable to convince the school’s trustees of the need for such a building, he concluded that he would have to erect it as a private venture. One of the many unsolved mysteries about the Old Stone House is how one man, on the salary of a minister and schoolmaster, was able to finance the construction of this enormous building. He started to work on it in 1834.

There are hosts of fascinating legends about how he built the “Stone Boarding House.” Although there is evidence to the contrary, many believed Twilight himself quarried the granite blocks from neighboring fields and erected the building alone, using a wooden or earthen staging that rose as the building rose, together with a single ox that worked on a treadmill on the staging to raise the blocks into place. Local folklore has it that when the last stone was hauled to the top, it was found that the ox could not be lowered to the ground far below. Consequently the poor animal had to be slaughtered on the staging and was consumed in a great ox roast.

Twilight and his associates shared the popular veneration for Ancient Greece; they named the new building “Athenian Hall.” More commonly, it was known as the Stone Boarding House. Serving both boys and girls, the building was outfitted in a rather Spartan manner, without indoor plumbing or central heating. The huge kitchen fireplace and fifteen tiny charcoal fireplaces apparently supplied most of the heat. Wash water was collected from the roof in a huge underground cistern, from which it was fed by gravity into the kitchen.

http://oldstonehousemuseum.org/brownington/

On Monday, this is happening. I hope to be there:

40 oxen to move 1823 Vermont schoolhouse to original site

Vermont schoolhouse dating to 1823 will be returned to its original site with the help of 40 oxen.

The Burlington Free Press reports (http://bfpne.ws/2b1vxwL ) the oxen will pull the Orleans County Grammar School in Brownington one-third of a mile down the road next Monday to its original location.

Alexander Twilight was the school's headmaster from 1829 until 1855. According to Middlebury College, where Twilight studied, he was the first African-American known to have earned a degree from an American college or university.

The school was abandoned after the Civil War and didn't operate from 1865 through 1870. By then it moved from its original location in the Prospect Hill neighborhood to the village center.

With the addition of the schoolhouse, the Orleans County Historical Society now owns seven historic buildings in Prospect Hill.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-40-oxen-to-move-1823-vermont-schoolhouse-to-original-site-2016-8




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownington_Village_Historic_District#Cyrus_Eaton_House

[clarice]

1. A real mystery... how in the world did he move those huge granite stones?...

and from WHERE???!!!

[cali]

3. Amazing man. Graduated from Middlebury College. Was elected to the VT

State Legislature- teacher with revolutionary ideas about education, minister.

[clarice]

5. And yet...all some people want to know about is The Kardashians !!! Sad.nt

[whistler162]

4. Probably from a state with lots of Granite

like ummm Vermont, Orleans is in Vermont fairly close to some big quarries.

http://www.aggman.com/in-the-1800s-teamsters-got-an-early-lesson-on-the-economics-of-transporting-granite-during-the-construction-of-vermonts-second-state-house/

[clarice]

6. DOH !!!!!! nt

[cali]

8. Except there were no granite quarries in Orleans County in 1834

and Barre which is indeed a granite center, is 60 miles from Brownington. It still takes a good 1.5 hours to drive from Brownington to Barre.

[tblue37]

2. Very cool. Thanks for posting this. K&R. nt

[ailsagirl]

7. Wow! That's amazing!

Thanks for posting!

(and welcome back)

[retrowire]

9. i cant get over how cool the last name Twilight must be. nt

[cali]

10. Quite a few buildings in VT named after him

That little historical district is so cool. Up back roads in a VT hill town, with 7 historical buildings and lots of folk art and crafts and tools. It's like walking into the 1830s- not in a Williamsburg or Sturbridge Village kind of way. It has a different feel.

[Eleanors38]

11. Good post! From my reading of early-modern Florida history, dormitories were critical...

...to the effectiveness of early higherneeucation, esp. at the precursor institution to Florida A & M (Tally). If students lived beyond a day's ride away could not find local bed & board, higer ed was almost out of the question. Hence, the practice among many AA schools of students building their own buildings, most famously at Tuskegee U.

[IronLionZion]

12. I didn't know that, thanks for sharing

that's quite a story that gentleman had. He was the first AA elected to a state government, in Vermont!

Today, he would be considered bi-racial or mixed race because both his parents were mixed. But in the early 1800s he would definitely be considered black. Good that he was in the north.

[cali]

13. Vermont outlawed slavery in its constitution in 1777

while it was an independent republic. It didn't join the union until 1791.

[First Speaker]

14. Hmmm...could Mr Twilight have built Stonehenge, as well...?

...I mean, is there any *real* evidence that it existed before the 1830s...? No doubt, he used the same mysterious techniques as at Athenian Hall...and for that matter--how old are the Pyramids, really...?

[cali]

15. huh?

[First Speaker]

16. Sorry--just an attempt at humor that fell flat...

...I was remembering all those documentaries I've seen about the supposed mysterious construction of Stonehenge...

[Hissyspit]

17. Beautiful building.