Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
AT&T was foundering. The telephone company had dominated the telephone market for more than two decades since its founding in 1885. But now it was facing competition from hundreds of smaller rival companies that were taking advantage of the fact that AT&T’s original patents had expired.
The company needed fresh investment and fresh ideas. An investment group of Wall Street bankers, including J.P. Morgan, decided the company also needed a new leader. They knew just the man.
Theodore Vail would know what to do. He had founded the company and served as its first president. In fact, he deserves more credit than perhaps any man, with the exception of inventor Alexander Graham Bell, for making the telephone a common household object. But Vail had left the company years earlier.
He was pursuing other ventures, notably mining and railroads in Argentina. And he had spent the previous two decades building an estate in the Northeast Kingdom. The challenge for Morgan and his partners was going to be to get Vail to spend less time on his Vermont farm.
Vail’s ascent in the business world had been meteoric. As a young man, he ran a local telegraph office in New York, then started working for railroads out west. He rose quickly in the Railway Mail Service, which provided long-distance mail delivery for the Postal Service. At the age of 31, he became superintendent of the service. When the U.S. postmaster general confirmed his appointment, he said Vail’s only fault was his extreme youth.
Two years later, in 1878, private industry came calling. Vail was hired as general manager of the Bell Telephone Company, which under Vail’s leadership dominated the industry. Vail arranged the purchase of Western Electric to manufacture the equipment Bell required. And under Vail, Bell established the country’s first long-distance phone service, connecting Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Not that long a distance, perhaps, but it was a sign of things to come.
In 1885, Vail created a subsidiary to expand and promote the company’s long-distance service. The new company would be known as American Telephone & Telegraph — AT&T for short — and Vail would be its president. Soon the offspring would dwarf the parent company.
By this time, Vail was splitting his time between the Boston area, where the phone company was based, and Vermont. He had gotten to know the state at the invitation of Vermonter Luther Harris, with whom he had worked in the Railway Mail Service. Harris was a native of Worcester. Thanks to a prosperous business career, Harris had set himself up as a gentleman farmer in Lyndon Center.
Vail, who was only in his late 30s, was feeling particularly harried at work when he visited. He found that Vermont brought him peace of mind, and a good night’s sleep.
Vail soon began buying up farms in the Lyndon area to establish a massive estate. How much land he purchased in Vermont is unclear. He once said he owned 5,000 acres.
He named the estate Speedwell Farms after his family’s New Jersey iron works. Though he loved the farm’s serenity, he couldn’t leave work behind. In fact, some believe that while in Lyndon he conducted the conferences that led to the creation of AT&T.
But the lure of Speedwell Farms wasn’t simply as an office with a better view. Though Vail had dedicated his professional life to bringing telephone service to the masses, he was also drawn to the farming life. During his teens, he had worked for a couple of years on a farm. The love of the land had apparently stuck with him.
Vail had numerous farm buildings constructed on his estate, which boasted a large cow barn, a sheep barn, a sugarhouse, and blacksmith shop. The farm raised cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and ponies. It was a sizable and diverse operation. At one point the farm was home to 400 sheep, 120 cattle, and 74 horses, along with 17 vehicles and 10 sleighs.
Vail and his wife, Emma, took up residence in the old farmhouse on the Bigelow farm, which offered fine views of Burke Mountain and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The 250-acre parcel had been his initial purchase.
The Vails’ residency was erratic. Some years, they lived on the estate year round; other times they merely visited for a few weeks or months.
The house, really a mansion, was seemingly under constant expansion and renovation. Vail served as his own architect. The home he fashioned was grand and elegant, but quirky, with uneven floors and numerous alcoves.
Vail enjoyed other luxuries, including a three-mile private paved road — possibly the first paved road in Vermont — that he had constructed from Lyndon Center to his estate. And, naturally, he had one of the few private phone lines in the area. His phone number was 30.
Vail soon became deeply involved in the local community. He helped bring telephone service to Lyndon. Oddly, a group of local investors had neglected to include him in their plans. But they eventually sought his help.
He also helped establish the Lyndonville Creamery, and was a director of the Passumpsic Railroad and a major investor in banks in Lyndonville and St. Johnsbury. Vail and his wife also donated money to a variety of educational, literary and religious groups.
When the Vails first moved to Lyndon, they restricted their socializing to a few select friends. But over time Emma began hosting large community gatherings that sometimes drew more than 100 people, including monthly parties for local children. Vail’s birthday, July 16, became a large community event, as did the estate’s annual clambake.
So Vail was thoroughly ensconced in the community when AT&T’s principal investors came calling in 1907, imploring him to return to his old job. But their visit was well timed. Vail had recently suffered a series of tragedies — his mother, brother and wife had all died within a three-year period. Perhaps he needed something to distract him from his grief.
When he told his sister of the job offer, she urged him to keep enjoying his semi-retirement in Vermont. “No, I must take it,” he replied. “It is the crowning thing of my life.”
He was right. Vail’s return to AT&T was like Steve Jobs’ later return to Apple. Vail not only rescued the company, he turned it into a giant in the industry. AT&T began buying up smaller competitors, and forcing others to sign cooperative agreements. Under Vail, AT&T secured a monopoly of the telephone industry and by 1915 had established the nation’s first coast-to-coast, long-distance telephone service. Vail argued that the competition bred by capitalism was destructive. He believed his regulated monopoly would serve customers better than myriad competing phone companies. His vision held sway, and AT&T essentially owned the industry, until a federal court ordered its dismantling in the 1980s.
Today, Vail is mostly remembered by economic historians. But his legacy lives on in Lyndon because of his contributions to a pair of local educational institutions. He helped save a predecessor of Lyndon Institute, a current-day boarding and day school, which attracts students both locally and from around the world. In 1912, when the school ran into serious financial trouble, Vail agreed to take over control and soon helped the school pay off its debts.
Upon his death, Vail left Speedwell Farms to the state, stipulating that it be used for a women’s educational institution. When the state failed to act, the land returned to private hands.
But in 1951, the state leased the mansion to house Lyndon Teachers College, an offshoot of Lyndon Institute. The state eventually purchased the property, and the teachers college became Lyndon State College in 1961. The mansion fell into disrepair and was torn down in the 1970s. Lyndon State is now part of Northern Vermont University.
Vail’s vast wealth also helped create another Vermont school. He left money to his daughter, Katherine Vail Marsters, who after her mother’s death had acted as hostess at Speedwell Farms. Marsters shared her father’s philanthropic interests, particularly in education. Twelve years after her father’s death, she helped found Bennington College.
Note: To learn more about Theodore Vail, check out historian Dan Swainbank’s 2010 book, “Mr. Vail is in Town: T.N. Vail, AT&T, and His Lyndon Legacy” published by the Lyndon Historical Society.