Vermont Park To Give First NPS Home Front Interpretation
October 2003

WOODSTOCK, Vt. - The Marsh-Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park is the first federal park to offer a walking tour devoted to the Civil War home front. "The Civil War Home
Front in Woodstock" interpretation began in late September.Dwight Pitcaithley, chief historian of the National Park Service, said: "What makes the Woodstock tour so important is that it will be the first-ever exclusively focused on the home front and the broader social context of the war. This is ground-breaking." Thirty-eight national park units interpret the Civil War.

Woodstock was one of Vermont's most important home front communities. The state played an outsized role in the war considering its modest size and population.

According to Tim McGuire, chief of visitor services, the Woodstock tour interprets the Civil War from a fresh perspective and will engage the public in examining the war's wider causes and effects.

The tour route goes past some the most significant historic sites in Woodstock such as the Congregational Church, site of early anti-slavery activity; the Phoenix Block, recently identified as the nerve center for Vermont's war effort; and the River Street Cemetery, where eight veterans from Woodstock's longstanding free African American community are buried. A dozen Woodstock men served in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which was memorialized in the movie "Glory."

"So much of Woodstock's Civil War era is intact," said writer/historian Howard Coffin. "Woodstock is filled with buildings that stood during the Rebellion in which people played important wartime roles, or simply struggled to keep their everyday lives
intact during a time of war."

Coffin, who grew up in Woodstock and who has written three books on the Civil War, is principal advisor to the National Park Service on the project.

The tour includes stories of Woodstock residents in the military conflict, the civilian war effort, international diplomacy, and in community life.

The office of Vermont Adjutant General Peter Washburn was in Woodstock during the war years, making the village the "Pentagon of Vermont." Washburn's neighbors included U.S. Senator Jacob Collamer, a supporter and sometime advisor to Abraham Lincoln. The militaryencampment known as "Camp Dike," named for Lt. Andrew Dike of Woodstock, was located at what is now the Billings Farm & Museum.

According to Coffin, Woodstock, a town of 3,062 people, sent 284 men to war. Thirty-nine died. Fifty-nine of them joined Co. C of the 6th Vermont, a regiment in the 1st Vermont Brigade. Twenty-five of them died - at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, Third Winchester and Cedar Creek. A Woodstock soldier died at Andersonville prison, another fighting Pickett's Charge.

The home of conservationist George Perkins Marsh, who was minister to Italy during the war, and Julia and Frederick Billings is part of the national park. Billings worked to keep California, where he made his fortune, in the Union and to organize the Sanitary Commission. The
couple worked to rebuild the vitality and sustainability of Vermont's rural population that was depleted by war losses and agricultural collapse.

McGuire said the walks probably will resume next summer. The tour was debuted for residents the weekend of Sept. 20. The hour-and-a-half tours are led by ranger interpreters and limited to 20 people.

October tour dates are Oct. 5, 7 and 9 at 4 p.m., and Oct. 18 and 19
at 2 p.m.

All tours begin at the Billings Farm & Museum Visitor Center. The fee is $6 for adults and $3 for seniors and those under 16.

Ladies Home Journal once named Woodstock the "prettiest small town in America." The village was chartered in 1761 and became a prosperous shire town (county seat). It has many buildings that predate the Civil War and five bells from Paul Revere's foundry.

Today's visitors enjoy an array of shops, galleries, restaurants and inns. Woodstock is in south central Vermont, 30 miles east of Rutland and 10 miles west of I89 above White River Junction and Lebanon, N.H.