In the News: 1909

On January 16, 1909, the talk of the town appears to have been two enterprising young men who figured out a way to make a little money. According to the article printed in The Spirit of the Age:  

Several small boys were skating on a very small section of ice along the driveway between the New Park hotel and Dr. Burbridge's house Saturday morning. Tacked to a nearby tree, in brazen defiance of the Woodstock Improvement Society and the municipal ordinance against bill-posting, was a large sheet of blue paper on which was pencilled the following notice and schedule of prices:

SKATING RINK
ANYBODY OVER 15 YEARS CAN NOT COME ON THIS RINK. BUT ANY BODY BETWEEN 8 YEARS OF AGE TO 15 YEARS MUST PAY ONE CENT FOR COMING ON, AND TWO CENTS FOR SKATING. ONES UNDER 8 YEARS CAN COME ON FREE. Pay to Roger Eastman and Edwin Burbridge Woodstock Vt.

The poster was a little smaller than the "rink," but attracted much more attention.

Above is a photo of the New Park Hotel, located at 7 The Green. Just to the west of the hotel was a driveway that was the site of a "privately-operated" skating rink in 1909.

"Master Edwin Burbridge," as one of the newspapers referred to him, appears to have made it into the local newspapers with some frequency. In 1906, both the Vermont Standard and The Spirit of the Age reported on his tripping in a garden and breaking his arm in two places. Some fifteen years later, in 1921, the Vermont Standard reports that "Will Bradley and Edwin Burbridge have been practicing a few stunts in chemistry the past week. It seems they cleaned out the cellar of the garage at the Mackenzie place. Sweeping up the sawdust mingled with oil, gasoline, etc., they placed it in the furnace. After putting some coal on, Mr. Bradley touched off the combination with a match. Aside from blowing Burbridge about eight feet, singeing Bradley about the face and eyebrows, and breaking out two cellar windows, no damage was done."

Above: Company Q, a paramilitary children’s group in Woodstock to which rink entrepreneurs Roger Eastman and Edwin Burbridge belonged when they were young. Eastman and Burbridge are the two boys who are standing in the third row. © Woodstock History Center.