(“Then Again” is Mark Bushnell’s column about Vermont history.)
[T]he home – really almost a Greek temple, with its six massive white columns – perches over the Burlington waterfront. For years it served as more than a home; it was testament to the business savvy of one of Vermont’s leading citizens.
Timothy Follett had become fantastically wealthy by correctly guessing what the economy of the young state would need next. Perhaps in celebration of his good fortune, he’d ordered this mansion built in 1841 under the direction of the architect who had designed the Statehouse.
Follett House stands beside College Street. From there, Follett could look out over his spacious gardens, which cascaded down to the edge of Burlington’s active harbor, the source of his prosperity.
Born in Bennington and educated at the University of Vermont, Follett showed his talents early. By the age of 30, he had been a lawyer, state’s attorney and county court judge. He would later serve in the Legislature. But Follett’s real passion was business. He preferred the life of a merchant, and resigned the judgeship to pursue commerce full time.
He profited mightily from the move. Follett saw the potential of the just-opened Champlain Canal, which connected the lake with the Hudson River, and therefore with New York City. Working with a schooner and steamboat captain, Follett bought a prime piece of real estate beside Burlington’s South Wharf and built a large stone warehouse, which still stands.
Merchants bought, sold and shipped anything they could find customers for, particularly lumber from a nearby mill. Eventually, to help facilitate this trade, Follett would establish a bank across the street from his business and name it Merchants Bank.
In 1841, the same year he built his manse, Follett and a partner launched their own fleet of canal boats to carry goods to and from New York. Despite the significant investment in his new fleet, Follett soon realized that boats would quickly be eclipsed by a much faster means of shipment: railroads. He had no intention of being left behind.
Follett and other investors lobbied the state Legislature for corporate charters that would grant them the exclusive right to build a rail line between two points.
Legislators were divided over the issue. The Whigs strongly supported the granting of charters as a way to encourage improvements in transportation, but many Democrats opposed them. A Democrat-supporting newspaper editor in St. Albans railed against such corporations as “the worst evils from the Pandora-box of Whiggery yet. I don’t believe the interest of the community, or the prosperity of the country require them … they are hurtful of them both.”
The Legislature approved the railroad charters anyway. The line that Follett backed, the Champlain and Connecticut River Railroad (soon renamed the Rutland and Burlington), received its charter in 1843. The corporation had won the exclusive right to build its route, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t face competition. Investors envisioned rail lines crisscrossing Vermont and the rest of New England. So many charters were granted, in fact, that entire books have been written just on the region’s failed railroads.
The Rutland and Burlington faced a major rival. The day before Follett’s line won its charter, the Legislature granted a charter to the Vermont Central.
The Rutland and Burlington’s charter called for it to lay track between Burlington and the Connecticut River Valley. The line would run through Rutland and end in Bellows Falls. Backers saw it as a way to connect with rail and shipping lines to provide a fast route from Canada and the Great Lakes to Boston.
Building the track would be a race for dominance over the Vermont Central, which was taking a route roughly parallel to the Rutland’s, only about 40 miles farther north.
Topography and the location of population centers should dictate railroad routes. But other factors proved pivotal in where these railroads laid their tracks. The logical route for one stretch of the Vermont Central would have been through Williamstown Gulf to Barre and Montpelier. It was the straightest line, with the lowest gradient, and served the largest communities.
Instead, however, the Vermont Central chose a route through Northfield. Why? Because company President Charles Paine owned a hotel, a woolen mill and other land in the town. The conniving Paine even managed to have the corporation compensate him for the “hardship” of having the track cross his land. As a result, the state capital would be served only by a spur and Barre would have to wait another three decades for a way to transport its granite by rail.
The Rutland and Burlington’s route had a more basic flaw. Follett, who was president of the company, and other Burlington merchants thought the line would enhance the city’s position as a major shipping hub. Goods moving north would be unloaded in Burlington and placed on steamers to cross Lake Champlain. On the New York side, the goods would be placed on north- and westbound trains.
Follett and his fellow merchants were blind to how hard it would be for this slower route to compete with railroads that ran across the north end of the lake.
It is almost a miracle that these routes were ever built at all. Construction crews, made up largely of recent arrivals from Ireland, had to carve a path through the state’s forests and along its riverbeds. Pay was meager, in some cases less than 4 cents an hour, when workers were paid at all.
Laborers for the Vermont Central, working on a stretch in Richmond, lay down their pick axes and shovels on July 3, 1846, and went out on what was probably the state’s first strike. The 200 men had been working since April but had yet to be paid.
As part of their protest, they took one of the contractors hostage. The local sheriff, in serious need of backup, called on an infantry unit stationed in Burlington for support. Local firemen were also given muskets to help put down the rebellion. Greatly outgunned, the laborers released the contractor and ended their strike. A dozen of their leaders were jailed for their troubles, and still many of the workers were never paid.
Despite the obstacles, both railroad lines reached Burlington in late 1849. Officials with the Rutland and Burlington celebrated by sending one train south from Burlington and another northbound from the Connecticut River. They met in Mount Holly, where a crowd gathered for a ceremony that was capped by men pouring together salt water from Boston Harbor and fresh water from Lake Champlain, and by Follett driving a silver spike into the track.
Follett had reasons to be excited. The new line ran conveniently behind his warehouse. He must have imagined this as the beginning of something great. If goods transported at the speed of a canal boat had made him wealthy, just imagine how much richer he was going to become once commerce hit railroad speed.
Things didn’t turn out that way.
Follett and other officials with the Rutland and Burlington realized too late the importance of an all-rail connection to Canada and the Midwest. Paine, who was something of a nemesis to Follett, was way ahead of them. He had negotiated to connect his Vermont Central line, which would later become the Central Vermont, with the Vermont and Canada line at a spot east of Burlington now known as Essex Junction. The connection linked the Vermont Central with points north and west.
Follett tried desperately to outmaneuver his rival, gaining permission from the Legislature to extend his track from Burlington to St. Albans, where he planned to hook onto the Vermont and Canada line. But an ally of Paine managed to tie the issue up in court. So in 1851, Follett had to admit to stockholders that his St. Albans scheme was dead.
The next year, Follett was ousted as president of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad. The company had run deep into debt as costs had proved too high and traffic too low.
Follett lost more than his job when the rail line foundered. Having invested heavily, he also lost much of his fortune. He was forced to sell his house, the monument to his success, in 1853. Making the loss all the more painful was that he had to sell it to Henry Roe Campbell. As superintendent of the Vermont Central, Campbell was one of the few men in Vermont who could afford it.
In the end, Follett had one more thing to lose: his mind. He died in 1857 in a sanitarium.