Prologue: How We Came To Vermont

Prologue to Part 1 of 4 (to come in the next 4 weeks), written on 1/27/24:

We have to be thankful to the Shannons' Boarding House which operated on Stevensville Road in Underhill, Vermont from 1908-1931. It might be odd to thank a place from a century ago. But it is not lost on me that had my grandparents not spent summer stints there, they never would have discovered this old abandoned farmhouse at the end of a single-track dirt road heading up Mount Mansfield. My mother and aunt told us stories as we grew up about our grandmother tooling around the backroads in the area. Old timers in the 60’s and 70’s say my grandmother was not the best driver in town. Regardless, she found this place in 1931 and rumor has it, after walking around the property, she said, “I’d like to buy this place.”  From pictures it just looks like a ton of work. But I suspect she found something magic about the place, as so many people have since then. Squabetty and its land is my happy place. It’s the place my family gathers each year, the place that grounds me and brings me solace. For me this land is “home” …regardless of where I actually reside. I am forever grateful to my grandmother for seeing something in this place when she found it in 1931.

1930 Squabetty