A high school
drop out at the age of 15, Justin Morrill opened the
doors of higher education to millions of Americans.
He retired at the age of 39 as a gentleman to study
architecture and gardening—and to build a charming 17
room gothic mansion. Retirement was short and he was
soon elected to the U. S. Congress and later to the
Senate. There he sponsored legislation that established
the nation’s land grant colleges, forever changing the
shape of the nation’s higher education system.
Less than a year after
the signing of the Declaration of Independence, another
new Republic was taking shape. Delegates from the newly
independent Republic of Vermont gathered at a tavern
in Windsor to draft a constitution. The Vermont constitution
was far reaching - the first to prohibit slavery, establish
universal voting rights for all males and authorize
a public school system. The constitution guided the
Republic for 14 years until 1791, when Vermont was admitted
to the Union as the fourteenth state.
It was here that vacationing
Vice President Calvin Coolidge received an urgent call
from Washington D.C. informing him of the death of President
Warren Harding. Coolidge was immediately sworn in as
the 30th President of the United States by his father,
a Notary Public. Unique in American history, this event
occurred by the light of a kerosene lamp in the old
family homestead on August 3, 1923 at 2:47 a.m. One
year later, President Coolidge established his Summer
White House office in the dance hall on the second floor
above the local general store. Plymouth Notch remains
a pristine example of an early 20th century Vermont
hill town.
