Vail Field Playground: Progressivism in its Infancy
By Jennie Shurtleff
For over a hundred years, Vail Field has been an important landmark in Woodstock. The enduring legacy of this field began when a philanthropist named Henry Hobart Vail donated a parcel of land to the town. A group of progressively-oriented local citizens then implemented Vail’s vision and created a playground for the area’s children.
Henry Hobart Vail was a native of Pomfret, Vermont, and although he later became editor-in-chief and a vice president for the American Book Company in New York, he maintained strong connections to the greater Woodstock community. The two contributions for which he is best remembered locally are authoring a two-volume history of Pomfret and donating the piece of land on the eastern side of South Street that was to become Vail Field.
As the late 19th-century photo shown below reveals, while the western side of South Street was quite developed by the late 1800s, the eastern side of South Street, that was owned by Mr. Vail and later donated to the town of Woodstock, was not.
Henry Hobart Vail
Photo courtesy of Middlebury College Special Collections, Middlebury, Vermont
Late 19th-century view of South Street. At this time, the western side of the street was developed with numerous houses and outbuildings. In contrast, the eastern side of the street was largely unimproved.
Clues as to why the land might not have been developed can be found in two articles published in 1896 and 1897. The 1896 article, in the newspaper Spirit of the Age, states “The promise of a playground the coming summer has revived interest in baseball matters and athletics generally.... The voters at the village meeting last January gave the trustees full power to go ahead and put the ground kindly donated by Mr. Vail into shape for use, and work will begin on it as soon as the ground can be drained, it now being in a somewhat swampy condition.” The following year, in January of 1897, the notes for Woodstock’s Village Meeting indicate that the Village trustees allocated $728.25 for “grading and draining Vail Play Ground.” Based on these articles, one can deduce that the east side of South Street, while located in a convenient location, was quite swampy and probably did not lend itself to development without first being drained.
By August of 1897, after the land was drained and leveled with about 200 loads of dirt, the playground and a baseball diamond at Vail Field were installed. There are numerous articles in the field’s early days that attest to the field being heavily used, at least for baseball (little was written about the playground). However, by 1906, the condition of the field had fallen into decline as noted by Col. F.S. Billings who raised the issue of the field’s care at a Village meeting. His remarks clearly indicate that the field was being used for fodder as well as for a recreational park, and that its agricultural use had taken priority. Col. Mr. Billings noted that “for several seasons more attention was given to the hay crop and its profits than to making it a playable playground. Base ball managers have had trouble in getting the field mowed; balls have been swallowed up, men have disappeared in the waving grass, and here games have been lost and won. Now the trustees have orders to make a real playground of it as far as their appropriation will allow, and there are hopes that the place will next season look less like an agricultural experiment station.”
According to Billings, only about $16.00 had been spent on the upkeep of the property for the previous season, and if it were not going to be properly cared for, “it better be returned to Mr. Vail.” Furthermore, he stated that it was the “desire of the Village that the trustees keep Vail field in proper order for athletic sport during the entire season, [and] he considered it quite as much the business of the trustees to provide tennis courts, put up swings, etc; in short to make a real playground of the place.”
A group of progressively-oriented locals, who had formed an organization known as the Woodstock Improvement Society, heard Colonel Billings’ call to action. They undertook the task of converting the “agricultural experiment station” into a park for children.
In 1911, the Spirit of the Age announced that the Improvement Society had set up a supervised playground for children that would be under the direction of Miss Rachel French. Miss French, who had completed her first year at the New Haven Normal School of Gymnastics, was to be the supervisor and “have entire charge.” The supervised playground would be open every weekday from 9 am to 12 noon for children ages 2 to 10, and there was no charge to participate. The article noted that “it is hoped that the playground will be of use to busy mothers, who are assured that their children will receive the most careful attention.”
Eight years later, in 1914, The Elm Tree Monthly and Spirit of the Age noted that “Woodstock may well congratulate itself on its progressiveness in providing a public playground for its children, especially since Vermont as a whole is very backward in the introduction of the various forms of physical training.” The playground at Vail Field offered a variety of activities for children of all ages, including a sand pile (replete with pails and shovels), two swing sets (“one for the babies, made like a chair to prevent falling out”), a tether-ball, a slide, a “teeter,” and a tent. Favorite activities included making “remarkable sand pies,” catching small fish in the brook, playing “Indians and Cowboys,” building boats and rafts, and engaging in “wonderful engineering feats at the brook in building dams, bridges and wharves.” For children who got thirsty, spring water was provided, as were “individual paper drinking cups.”
Early 20th-century view of children at Vail Field on teeters and in the sandbox making “remarkable sand pies”
Over twenty children playing on a slide at Vail Field.
By this time, the playground at Vail Field was being heavily used by a “crowd of healthy young Americans entertaining themselves according to their devices and the desires of their own hearts.” The children at the Vail Field Playground, according to The Elm Tree Monthly and Spirit of the Age article, have a “wonderful time” playing, but also learning and applying important life skills. It states: “Of course there is not enough of anything to go around, whereby one learns to be enormous, and fair, and to limit one’s freedom for the good of the community. It is wonderful to see how ‘square” the older children are in the settling of disputes and quarrels. Clean amusement, a spirit of fair play and honorable dealings are found in this almost self-governing group of players.”
A group of children at Vail Field Playground
The establishment of the Vail Field Playground, in keeping with Mr. Vail’s vision, was just one of the Woodstock Improvement Society’s achievements. The organization also championed street beautification by planting flowers and ornamental shrubs, as well as health and the environment by setting up a garbage removal system for the village. The efforts of the Woodstock Improvement Society were a small part of a larger progressive movement that swept through the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jennie Powers, a 19th-century progressive. Jennie will be the topic of a program in March on the progressive movement in New Hampshire and Vermont.
Progressivism, and its many manifestations, is one of the topics covered in the Woodstock History Center’s new exhibit, Hindsight 20/20. It is also the topic of the History Center’s March lecture in which Jennifer Carroll will discuss Jennie Powers, an early 20th century progressive who used her camera to document animal cruelty, family violence, and wide-spread poverty in order to effect social change. For more information on the exhibit Hindsight 20/20 or the upcoming virtual program “Jennie Powers: The Woman Who Dares,” please visit the Woodstock History Center’s website at www.woodstockhistorycenter.org.