This past May, the Old Stone House Museum — a campus of historic 19th-century buildings in the Northeast Kingdom — announced an unusual wish list. The organization's spring bulletin solicited donations of laptop computers, museum tour guides, and oxen and teamsters to help "bring the Grammar School home." This would be the second trip for the 183-year-old structure, which Alexander Twilight established as the Orleans County Grammar School in 1823, with the Old Stone House as its dormitory. After the Civil War, the building was moved closer to the Brownington town center to serve as a community schoolhouse, with the Brownington Grange occupying the second floor. Last year, the town voted to give the schoolhouse to the Orleans County Historical Society, which also owns the Old Stone House. There were plenty of reasons for the "homecoming" itself. Richard Simpson, an Old Stone House board member, noted that his great-grandfather was a Grange member. "So it's personal," he said of the building's return. But oxen? To move a building? Why? "Because we are crazy enough to want to do something for the fun of doing it," wrote Peggy Day Gibson, the Old Stone House's director, via email. Plus, she added, "We're trying to bring attention to this special place." Under sunny skies on the morning of August 8, more than 2,000 spectators brought their attention to Hinman Settler Road in Brownington. Twenty-two teams of oxen prepared to haul the 105-ton schoolhouse a third of a mile up the road, back to its original site. It was something no one in the crowd was likely to have seen — or will likely see again — in their lifetime. Gibson assured a passel of reporters that relocating buildings using oxen occurred with such frequency in the 1800s that newspapers neglected to report it. Two centuries later, however, TV, radio and newspaper outlets from all over the state and as far away as Boston were on hand. So was Messier House Moving & Construction, an East Montpelier family business whose motorized, wheeled carriage has helped transport hundreds of historic buildings, including the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum's schooner, the Lois McClure. The oxen and the teamsters, many of them 4-H members, had arrived over the weekend to bed down in the "oxen hotel"— a canvas-roofed shelter complete with tie-up stalls for the animals and camper vans and tents for their humans. Some…
This past May, the Old Stone House Museum — a campus of historic 19th-century buildings in the Northeast Kingdom — announced an unusual wish list. The organization's spring bulletin solicited donations of laptop computers, museum tour guides, and oxen and teamsters to help "bring the Grammar School home." This would be the second trip for the 183-year-old structure, which Alexander Twilight established as the Orleans County Grammar School in 1823, with the Old Stone House as its dormitory. After the Civil War, the building was moved closer to the Brownington town center to serve as a community schoolhouse, with the Brownington Grange occupying the second floor. Last year, the town voted to give the schoolhouse to the Orleans County Historical Society, which also owns the Old Stone House. There were plenty of reasons for the "homecoming" itself. Richard Simpson, an Old Stone House board member, noted that his great-grandfather was a Grange member. "So it's personal," he said of the building's return. But oxen? To move a building? Why? "Because we are crazy enough to want to do something for the fun of doing it," wrote Peggy Day Gibson, the Old Stone House's director, via email. Plus, she added, "We're trying to bring attention to this special place." Under sunny skies on the morning of August 8, more than 2,000 spectators brought their attention to Hinman Settler Road in Brownington. Twenty-two teams of oxen prepared to haul the 105-ton schoolhouse a third of a mile up the road, back to its original site. It was something no one in the crowd was likely to have seen — or will likely see again — in their lifetime. Gibson assured a passel of reporters that relocating buildings using oxen occurred with such frequency in the 1800s that newspapers neglected to report it. Two centuries later, however, TV, radio and newspaper outlets from all over the state and as far away as Boston were on hand. So was Messier House Moving & Construction, an East Montpelier family business whose motorized, wheeled carriage has helped transport hundreds of historic buildings, including the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum's schooner, the Lois McClure. The oxen and the teamsters, many of them 4-H members, had arrived over the weekend to bed down in the "oxen hotel"— a canvas-roofed shelter complete with tie-up stalls for the animals and camper vans and tents for their humans. Some…
