The Vermont State Visit

Following a week in the office, I departed for Burlington, Vermont on Friday morning to arrive in time for lunch with the State Regent Carol Schwenk, Vice Regent Edna Curtin and my page for the visit, Emalee Morris. Unfortunately a fog obscured my anticipated view of the mountains, but enough of the landscape was visible that I could understand why it is called the “Green Mountain State.” I was introduced to another Vermont treasure when we visited the Ben and Jerry Ice Cream Factory and sampled their product! It was a wonderful visit and left me vowing to return. 

- President General Ann Dillon

Vermont DAR celebrated its 125th anniversary last year and paused to reflect on its long and busy history.  One of its most visible and profound accomplishments was the 1934 purchase and conservation of the General John Strong Mansion, the federal style brick mansion of a Revolutionary War patriot. The effort to acquire this historic home and acreage on the shores of Lake Champlain in Addison, Vermont was spearheaded by a small committee, who used monies from the Reserve Fund for the down payment and secured a mortgage loan from the Addison County Trust Company. The idea behind this action was to establish a forest on the "wild" land, to be known as the Florence Gray Estey Memorial Forest DAR, honoring a distinguished Vermont Daughter who had died in January 1933. However, they proposed to reserve a strip of land 150 or 200 feet wide from the forestland to the road for a DAR park, stating, “Here all tourists entering or leaving the state would find a DAR welcome”. They also desired to make a State DAR Headquarters and Museum of the stately mansion because of its historic past, and wrote in the DAR Magazine “The Daughters of Vermont want to preserve all this as a ‘Just Memorial to Vermont's integrity, to our ancestors, and to the principles of freedom, justice and humanity for which they fought, bled and died.’”

The Vermont Daughters began the work to restore the mansion and open it to the public as a museum. On August 24, 1934, the birthday of Mrs. Estey, the State Forest DAR Reserve was dedicated and, each year since, the Vermont Daughters make the Pilgrimage to this site every August. One of our board of management meetings, called our annual Pilgrimage, is held on the grounds of the mansion to celebrate our ownership and curatorship of this historic treasure. This year we were so pleased to have our President General, Ann Turner Dillon as our honored guest.

As this was Mrs. Dillon’s first trip to the Green Mountain State, it was decided that after checking into the hotel and relaxing with lunch, an outing to Ben and Jerry’s seemed most appropriate. Unfortunately, the weather was ghastly, making the scenery hard to appreciate. However, spirits were revived with a tour of the manufacturing plant and a tasting of the sample of the day. Insider information: the flavor, “Americone”, was an instant favorite! In an effort to further expand the culinary adventure, a quick jaunt down the road to a cider mill was undertaken and freshly squeezed cider and still-dripping cider donuts were sampled.