Olin Maxham
Character: Unforgettable People of Woodstock > Olin Maxham
“A Friend to Oxen”
(1904-1993)
Olin Maxham typifies the pragmatic, hardworking farmers who once lined back roads in Woodstock. Olin grew up on a farm in Pomfret, Vermont. He recalls that in the spring, when he got “big enough to work, after school we did chores and came home at 4 o’clock… and I would plow with the oxen until dark. And we’d get up in the morning and plow in the morning and then at 8 o’clock start for school…”
His long hours working oxen in the field were good preparation for ox pulling contests – in which pairs of oxen compete to see which pair can draw the heaviest load. When he was just eight years old, he took a pair of trained steers, Star and Diamond, to the Windsor County Fair in Woodstock. For the trained steer competition, Olin describes that the participants took their steers in front of the judges and used voice commands such as “haw” and “gee” to guide the steers to turn left and right. Olin must have impressed the judges because he and his steers walked away with a blue ribbon that year.
Olin never lost his taste for competitions and as an adult, about ten times a year, he’d go to different fairs to compete. One year, his team pulled 14,000 pounds, and in doing so set a record. Olin once stated, “Most everybody that had oxen to pull was out to win. Sometimes some of those other guys wanted to get some cider into you or some liquor into you, thought they could beat you. That was one thing that when I was pulling oxen I left the liquor and the cider alone. I used to tell ‘em my judgment weren’t any too good [anyways], no knowing what it would be if I had that.”
When asked what made him so successful, Olin stated, “Well, I just had a good pair that’s all.” Of course, his modesty belies the fact that he had many teams of both oxen and horses through the years, and his success was in raising, training, and instilling in his beloved animals a desire to please and work their hardest for him.
Positioning Middle Bridge
The Middle Bridge is a wooden covered bridge that was built in 1969 by Milton S. Graton. It was constructed on land and put together with wooden pegs instead of nails. To position the bridge, it was drawn across the Ottauquechee River on scaffolding via a capstan that was hitched to Olin Maxham’s two oxen: Joe and Ben. Every time the oxen walked around the capstan, the bridge was drawn 3½ inches closer to its final destination. It took 4½ days for the two oxen to move the bridge to its final spot.
Olin with a pair of oxen
While boxes of ribbons are proof of Olin’s success at fairs, Olin’s steers were not just for competitions and shows. For many years Olin used his oxen for work around his South Woodstock farm. Notably, in 1969, one of his teams was used to pull Woodstock’s Middle Bridge (which was built on land using traditional building methods) across the Ottauquechee River on scaffolding.
Besides working with his steers, Olin did farming, carpentry work, logging, and cutting ice. Despite long days and hard work, he still had time to help others in need. Friend and neighbor Don Prosch, who named his own son after Olin, notes that Olin was always willing to help some- one in need, whether it was a car stuck in a snowbank or some other issue. “If there was a problem, he’d take care of it.” Olin appeared to love work and didn’t relish the idea of retirement. Even after two by-pass surgeries, he continued to work on the farm.
While Olin’s life was marked by hard work and the loss of five of his seven children, Olin also recalled the happy times in his life. For instance, when he was a young man, almost every week there was a dance at the Grange Hall. Olin said, “I had a dapple gray that belonged to my father, but I called him mine, and I’d go get my young lady [Cora, whom he later married] and we’d go to the dance... and then I’d bring her home, 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning it would be, and I’d curl up on the seat and put the blanket over my head and the reins around my neck, and the dapple gray horse would take me home… All by himself….”
As a young man, Olin also went to husking bees, where friends and neighbors would get together to husk corn. Olin recalled at these husking bees if you found a red ear of corn, you’d get a chance to kiss one of the girls. He notes that back then “every- body planted a lot of red corn so as to be sure to have a lot of red ears.”
Tragically, Olin Maxham died in an automobile accident in 1993. Robert Maxham, Olin’s grand-nephew, notes that Olin “never talked much about dying. He talked about what we had to do next summer.” Olin’s death was a loss for the Woodstock community. Clearly the man who has been described as “a friend to oxen” left behind friends of the human kind, too.
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