Photographs of Vergennes (Vt.)
Collection Overview
This collection contains 788 images comprising 122 years of history in Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. Featuring a wide range of topics, which date from the 1866 Civil War parade to the 1988 Bicentennial, the collection provides a comprehensive and unusual look at small town life in northern Vermont. These photographs document the full visual spectrum of history in Vergennes, from businesses, industries, and transportation to natural scenery, paintings, and portraits of people who once walked the city’s streets.
These images were scanned from 35mm slides located in the Bixby Memorial Free Library archives in Vergennes. The slides were made around 1987 from color photographs taken of the original images. The originals, mainly of the Vergennes area but including several from Ferrisburgh and Lake Champlain, had accumulated over the years in the library’s historical materials repository. Many of these photographs, along with the slides and accompanying inventory notebook, can be viewed with permission at the library.
The authors of these photographs remain undocumented and anonymous, except for a selection of photographs by local artist Harvey Custer Ingham (1863-1931), a personal friend of local businessman and library founder William Gove Bixby (1829-1907).
Mr. Bixby left funds from his estate for the founding of a public library in the city of Vergennes, including the construction of the imposing Greek revival library building on Main Street. The library opened on November 4, 1912, and in 2012 celebrates a century of continued service to Vergennes and the surrounding towns of Addison, Panton, Waltham, and Ferrisburgh.
Published: May 06, 2011, University of Vermont, Bailey/Howe Library, Special Collections
Rights: No part of the material may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, broadcasting or by any other information storage and retrieval system. Direct all inquiries and requests to the Bixby Memorial Free Library, Vergennes, Vt. 802-877-2211.
Browse Options
Place(s)
- Champlain, Lake [24]
- Otter Creek (Vt.) [10]
- Vergennes (Vt.) [10]
- Ferrisburgh (Vt.) [4]
Format(s)
- image [35]
Genre(s)
- color slides [35]
Topic(s)
- Boats and boating [35]
- Steamboats [35]
- Transportation [31]
- Ingham, Harvey C. [4]
- Postcards [4]
- Landscape photography [1]
- Rivers [1]
- Waterfalls [1]
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Topic: ("Steamboats")
Title: Champlain Tercentenary 1909
Date: 1909-07-03
Resource type: color slides
Vergennes Vt. July 3 1909
Title: Chateaugay
Resource type: color slides
Steamer "Chateaugay" (Capacity 50 cars) The largest steamer operating auto ferry service on Lake Champlain. Frequent trips between Burlington, VT., and Port Kent, NY (3 miles to Ausable Chasm)
Title: Chateaugay
Resource type: color slides
Steamer "Chateaugay" (Capacity 50 cars) The largest steamer operating auto ferry service on Lake Champlain. Frequent trips between Burlington, VT., and Port Kent, NY (3 miles to Ausable Chasm)
Title: Hickok's
Date: 1895
Resource type: color slides
Hickok's Dock and Hickok's Point. Picture taken 1895. Hickok's Point is about midway between Ft. Cassin and Basin Harbor on the Vermont side. Hickok's served as a landing place for the "Water Lily" and the "Nellie" on their trips to Vergennes and Westport. Other landings on this route were Ft. Cassin, Kimballs, Mile Point, Basin Harbor, with the occasional landings at Higginson's Harbor and Barn Rock on the N.Y. side.
Title: Lake Champlain
Date: 1893
Resource type: color slides
Diamond Island with steamer "Vermont" and Split Rock Mountain, New York in background.
Title: Reindeer
Resource type: color slides
The Str. Reindeer, built at St. Albans in 1882 (181' x 27' x 9'), was the largest to navigate Otter Creek. This picture shows her at Vergennes in her trimmer and more youthful days, before the life of an Excursion boat made her sag in the middle. In the gay Nineties, it was a common sigh to see her staggering up and down the lake, her decks weighed down with crowds who often flocked to one side or the other giving her a careening look, her guards on one side almost at the water's edge and the paddlewheel on the opposite side fanning the air. She would then stop until the crew could restore equilibrium among passengers and boat. She sank at her dock in Burlington in 1902 from causes not known.
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