The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

I

Scenes of My Childhood

The town of Plymouth lies on the easterly slope of the Green Mountains, about twenty miles west of the Connecticut River and somewhat south of the central part of Vermont. This part of the state is made up of a series of narrow valleys and high hills, some of which rank as mountains that must reach an elevation of at least twenty-five hundred feet.

Its westerly boundary is along the summit of the main range to where it falls off into the watershed of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. At one point a little rill comes down a mountain until it strikes a rock, where it divides, part running north into the Ottauquechee and part south into the Black River, both of which later turn easterly to reach the Connecticut.

In its natural state this territory was all covered with evergreen and hardwood trees. It had large deposits of limestone, occasionally mixed with marble, and some granite. There were sporadic outcroppings of iron ore, and the sands of some of the streams showed considerable traces of gold. The soil was hard and rocky, but when cultivated supported a good growth of vegetation.

During colonial times this region lay in an unbroken wilderness, until the coming of the French and Indian War, when a military road was cut through under the direction of General Amherst, running from Charlestown, New Hampshire, to Fort Ticonderoga, New York. This line of march lay through the south part of the town, crossing the Black River at the head of the two beautiful lakes and running over the hill towards the valley of the Otter Creek.

When settlers began to come in around the time of the Revolution, the grandfather of my grandfather, Captain John Coolidge, located a farm near the height of land westward from the river along this military road, where he settled in about 1780.

He had served in the Revolutionary army and may have learned of this region from some of his comrades who had known it in the old French wars, or who had passed over it in the campaign against Burgoyne, which culminated at Saratoga.

He had five children and acquired five farms, so that each of his descendants was provided with a homestead. His oldest son Calvin came into possession of the one which I now own, where it is said that Captain John spent his declining years. He lies buried beside his wife in the little neighborhood cemetery not far distant.

The early settlers of Plymouth appear to have come mostly from Massachusetts, though some of them had stopped on the way in New Hampshire. They were English Puritan stock, and their choice of a habitation stamps them with a courageous pioneering spirit.

Their first buildings were log houses, the remains of which were visible in some places in my early boyhood, though they had long since been given over to the sheltering of domestic animals. The town must have settled up with considerable rapidity, for as early as 1840 it had about fourteen hundred inhabitants scattered about the valleys and on the sides of the hills, which the mountains divided into a considerable number of different neighborhoods, each with a well-developed local community spirit.

As time went on, much land was cleared of forest, very substantial buildings of wood construction were erected, sawmills and gristmills were located along the streams, and the sale of lumber and lime, farm products and domestic animals, brought considerable money into the town, which was laid out for improvements or found its way into the country store. It was a hard but wholesome life, under which the people suffered many privations and enjoyed many advantages, without any clear realization of the existence of either one of them.

They were a hardy self-contained people. Most of them are gone now and their old homesteads are reverting to the wilderness. They went forth to conquer where the trees were thicker, the fields larger, and the problems more difficult. I have seen their descendants scattered all over the country, especially in the middle west, and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and westward to the Pacific slope.

It was into this community that I was born on the 4th day of July, 1872. My parents then lived in a five room, story-and-a-half cottage attached to the post office and general store, of which my father was the proprietor. While they intended to name me for my father, they always called me Calvin, so the John became discarded.

Our house was well shaded with maple trees and had a yard in front enclosed with a picket fence, in which grew a mountain ash, a plum tree, and the customary purple lilac bushes. In the summertime my mother planted her flower bed there.

Her parents, who were prosperous farmers, lived in the large house across the road, which had been built for a hotel and still has the old hall in it where public dances were held in former days and a spacious corner on the front side known as the bar room, indicating what had been sold there before my grandfather Moor bought the premises. On an adjoining farm, about sixty-five rods distant, lived my grandfather and grandmother Coolidge. Within view were two more collections of farm buildings, three dwelling houses with their barns, a church, a schoolhouse and a blacksmith shop. A little out of sight dwelt the local butter tub maker and beyond him the shoemaker.

This locality was known as The Notch, being situated at the head of a valley in an irregular bowl of hills. The scene was one of much natural beauty, of which I think the inhabitants had little realization, though they all loved it because it was their home and were always ready to contend that it surpassed all the surrounding communities and compared favorably with any other place on earth.

My sister Abbie was born in the same house in April, 1875. We lived there until 1876, when the place was bought across the road, which had about two acres of land with a house and a number of barns and a blacksmith shop. About it were a considerable number of good apple trees. I think the price paid was $375. Almost at once the principal barn was sold for $100, to be moved away. My father was a good trader.

Some repairs were made on the inside, and black walnut furniture was brought from Boston to furnish the parlor and sitting room. It was a plain square-sided house with a long ell, to which the horse barn was soon added. The outside has since been remodeled and the piazza built. A young woman was always employed to do the house work. Whatever was needed never failed to be provided.

While in theory I was always urged to work and to save, in practice I was permitted to do my share of playing and wasting. My playthings often lay in the road to be run over, and my ball game often interfered with my filling the wood box. I have been taken out of bed to do penance for such derelictions.

My father, John Calvin Coolidge, ran the country store. He was successful. The annual rent of the whole place was $40. I have heard him say that his merchandise bills were about $10,000 yearly. He had no other expenses. His profits were about $100 per month on the average, so he must have sold on a very close margin.

He trusted nearly everybody, but lost a surprisingly small amount. Sometimes people he had not seen for years would return and pay him the whole bill.

He went to Boston in the spring and fall to buy goods. He took the midnight train from Ludlow when they did not have sleeping cars, arriving in the city early in the morning, which saved him his hotel bill.

He was a good business man, a very hard worker, and did not like to see things wasted. He kept the store about thirteen years and sold it to my mother’s brother, who became a prosperous merchant.

In addition to his business ability my father was very skillful with his hands. He worked with a carriage maker for a short time when he was young, and the best buggy he had for twenty years was one he made himself. He had a complete set of tools, ample to do all kinds of building and carpenter work. He knew how to lay bricks and was an excellent stone mason.

Following his sale of the store about the time my grandfather died, besides running the farm, he opened the old blacksmith shop which stood upon the place across the road to which we had moved. He hired a blacksmith at $1 per day, who was a large-framed powerful man with a black beard, said to be sometimes quarrelsome.

I have seen him unaided throw a refractory horse to the ground when it objected to being shod. But he was always kind to me, letting me fuss around the shop, leaving his own row to do three or four hills for me so that I could more easily keep up with the rest of the men in hoeing time, or favoring me in some way in the hay field as he helped on the farm in busy times.

He always pitched the hay on to the ox cart and I raked after. If I was getting behind he slowed up a little. He was a bighearted man. I wish I could see that blacksmith again. The iron work for farm wagons and sleds was fashioned and put on in the shop, oxen and horses brought there for shoeing, and metal parts of farm implements often repaired. My father seemed to like to work in the shop, but did not go there much except when a difficult piece of work was required, like welding a broken steel section rod of a mowing machine, which had to be done with great precision or it would break again.

He kept tools for mending shoes and harnesses and repairing water pipes and tinware. He knew how to perform all kinds of delicate operations on domestic animals. The lines he laid out were true and straight, and the curves regular. The work he did endured.

If there was any physical requirement of country life which he could not perform, I do not know what it was. From watching him and assisting him, I gained an intimate knowledge of all this kind of work.

It seems impossible that any man could adequately describe his mother. I cannot describe mine.

On the side of her father, Hiram Dunlap Moor, she was Scotch with a mixture of Welsh and English. Her mother, Abigail (Franklin) Moor, was chiefly of the old New England stock. She bore the name of two Empresses, Victoria Josephine. She was of a very light and fair complexion with a rich growth of brown hair that had a glint of gold in it. Her hands and features were regular and finely modeled. The older people always told me how beautiful she was in her youth.

She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars.