Theron Boyd, Woodstock, Vermont

Woodstock, Vermont----Theron Boyd, who successfully fought the onslaught of development on his 28 acre farmland by the Quechee Lakes Corp., died Wednesday morning. He was 88.

Boyd died at about 1:30a.m. at the Mertens House, a Woodstock community care home, according to Susan Skaskiw, Boyd's guardian for the last three years of his life.

Skaskiw said a small service for Boyd will be held at 1:30 p.m. Friday at the Cabot Funeral Home in Woodstock. A reception for Boyd's friends will be held at the Mertens House after the ceremony, Skaskiw said.

In the last few years of his life, Boyd became well known in his battle to save his 200 year old home and farmland from encroaching development. He gained the support of state officials and several local people in his fight.

Boyd became well known about four years ago in a court battle to regain title to his land. The land was deeded to a family friend, Elizabeth C. Henault, on condition that she take care of Boyd.

That condition was violated, some said, when Boyd was found by a friend one winter passed out in an outhouse. Attorney Peter Welch, of Hartland, began a fight in 1983 to regain Boyd's title to the land.

The lawsuit was successful. The parties announced a $100,000 settlement halfway through a court trial.

"He was a wonderful man, totally unfazed by the development around him and his own insistence in preserving his land the way it was," Welch said Wednesday. "He was a simple man in the profound meaning of the word."

Boyd withstood some extremely lucrative offers for his land, Welch said. Today, because of Boyd's efforts and efforts by state and local land trust officials, the farm land and the 18th century Georgian home remains. It is surrounded by the sprawling Quechee Lakes project.

Skaskiw said Boyd died of natural causes at the home. Boyd had few living relatives, but Skaskiw said she was trying to contact a half-brother before Friday's services.

The Vermont Land Trust sold most of the property to the state Division for Historic Preservation in January. The $600,000 sale consisted of a $300,000 state appropriation, a $160,700 grant from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and the rest came from private donations.

The other eight acres of the property was held by the land trust to be sold if Boyd needed it to pay his $100.00 a day Mertens bill.

In 1988, most of Boyd's furniture and other possessions were sold at auction to help pay for his care.

Boyd was born in this home in 1901. The house remains essentially unchanged from the 18th century, including a lack of central heat and plumbing. State officials say they will restore the home as an historical exhibit.

The home was once a stop in the underground railroad for escaping slaves, a stage coach stop and the site of the state's first agricultural school. It is worth an estimated $1 million.

Theron Boyd's Home -2003

Burtch-Udall-Boyd Home

Theron Boyd Dies at 88

by Dan Billin

Valley News Staff Writer

Woodstock---Theron Boyd, the retired Quechee farmer whose 200 year old farm has been preserved as a state historical site, died this morning at the Mertens House.

He was 88 years old. He died of natural causes, according to Susan Skaskiw, his guardian in recent years.

Boyd was well known locally as a hold-out against the Quechee Lakes development that transformed the old village of Quechee into an upscale, largely second home project. The remaining 28 acres of his farm are now surrounded by the 5,500 acres of the development.

His former home is within walking distance of the Quechee Lakes Land- owners Association clubhouse and golf course.

Boyd had been living in the Mertens House, a nursing home in Woodstock, for three years.

Boyd's house remains largely unchanged since it's construction sometime around 1786. He lived here all his life without such modern amenities as central heating, plumbing, electricity and telephone service.

"He was somebody who loved the land, loved his home and his routine," said Peter Welch, a White River Junction attorney who represented Boyd once in a legal dispute.

Welch said Boyd repeatedly rejected offers from developers over the years. "He was receiving unbelievably lucrative offers from people, as he put it, in plaid golfing pants." He wasn't even tempted, " Welch said. Preservation was a major preoccupation for him. There was no way that his property was going to be part of the condominium project."

"They're putting a fake village down on what they call the common. Built themselves a brand-new covered bridge, too," Boyd told National Geographic in 1974. Seems like people would rather go where those buildings come natural instead of paying.....for a copy."

Boyd drew local attention in 1986 when benefactors helped him file a lawsuit to regain a half interest in his property, which he had deeded to a neighbor. He said the neighbor had reneged on a promise to care for him in his old age and maintain the property.

Welch, who represented Boyd in that suit said Boyd signed over the interest in the property partly because he was unable to pay his $500.00 tax bill and feared losing his property to the tax collector.

"He was looking at taxes coming up and another Vermont winter on his own, and it was pretty tough, even for a tough guy like Theron," Welch said.

The suit was settled before the trial was concluded, with Boyd regaining interest in his property. In 1986, he sold the property to the Vermont Land Trust, which had targeted it as an important preservation project. The land trust sold the property in January to the state Division for Historic Preservation, which will restore the Georgian-style home and barn.

Theron was born May 30, 1901, son of William J. Boyd and Florence Cowdry Boyd. He was a stone mason. (William J. Boyd and Florence May Cowdry were married 28 Jan 1898 in Windsor County, Vermont)

The Cabot Funeral Home in Woodstock is in charge of arrangements.

Archaeologists Begin Dig

No Rare Treasures are unearthed at Theron Boyd House

Quechee----An incongruous collection of antique bottles, a very old shoe, and an empty aluminum can for caffeine free Tab share space on a table inside Theron Boyd's 1786 house.

Outside, archaeologists blend old and new as they sift through the soil with modern tools in their search for buried treasures and clues about the history of the Quechee homestead.

Archaeologists have yet to find any rarities in their excavations around Theron Boyd's 200+ year old barn, but the team is hopeful that digs around the house will be more fruitful.

Boyd, a stonemason and farmer, died in March at 88 years. The state owns the his Georgian-style house, a barn, a sugaring house and 28 acres.

Allen Yale, administer for the site, said the team of archaeologists and volunteers is puzzled by the sterile ground around the barn and is beginning to wonder why the group is not unearthing more artifacts.

One theory Yale is considering is that the barn, although it is 200+ years old, may have been moved to the Boyd site from elsewhere around 100 years ago.

Also the group has found ashes in one of the layers of earth around the barn, so Yale said he is also considering the possibility that a fire may have destroyed an earlier barn where the standing one rests. But, he said, he just can't be sure.

"We're sort of puzzled finding sterile soil quite early......We expected a lot of artifacts," Yale said last week as he walked among the toiling volunteers. But reaching into the pocket of his blue jeans, Yale pulled out a large, hand-wrought nail with square edges. Although not quite a treasure, the nails from the late 18th century are part of the homestead's long history.

This weekend the team began digging around Boyd's main house, Yale said, where they expected to find "more glamorous things." But all they found were more nails and pottery chips.

The group's major find in the barn, he said, was a wooden ox yoke. Glass, bottles, and cups are noticeably absent because "you don't take crockery out to the barn," he said.

Strolling inside a kitchen door at the main house, Yale looked down and predicted that this sector would yield the greatest findings. In the 18th century, " he explained, "people weren't as tidy and they would through their garbage out the back door. We expect this will be a rich area."

Strolling around the house, Yale said "This is a very exciting property because so little has changed," Reaching up to run his hands over the clapboards, he pointed out that they were feathered in 18th century fashion and were originals.

Hooks around the windows, he said, show there used to be shutters, and supports outside the front door bespeak the absence of a once-present porch. One of the decisions Yale said he has to make when the house is restored is exactly what should be restored. The porch, for example, was a later addition to the original house.

The house's interior presents Yale with a similar quandary in deciding what period to restore. A big fireplace in the kitchen, for example, was at first used for cooking as an open hearth. In later years was filled in with bricks and a wood stove was installed.

Having trouble deciding what story the fireplace should tell, Yale is toying with the idea of leaving half of the fireplace filled in with bricks and clearing the other half to show the dimension of the cavernous hearth.

Even if the archaeologists find few antiquities in the ground, the house is filled to its seams with relics. At the top of the time-worn staircase is a bedroom with a 1937 Old Farmers Almanac and downstairs in the pantry are shelves of aged bottles, china, pots, cutlery, spices and tins and bottles filled with medicine.

One blue and white tin of Watkins Antiseptic Cream boasts that it is good for what ails you; collar and saddle galls, barb-wire cuts, cracked skin, cuts, itching and bleeding sores, proud flesh, running sores, sore necks, sore shoulders."

The cure-all was made by J.R. Watkins Company----"The largest company in the world."

Yale said the team of excavators will be digging around the house this weekend and continue the work daily until June 22. Anyone who wishes to volunteer may speak to Yale on site.

The excavation of earth around the house is being done so that a contractor may come in and stabilize the two old structures which will be opened as a museum.

For more on this home see: http://members.valley.net/~connriver/V11-16.htm

Vermont Past - Where Time Stands Still

by Vivian Viola Kill (October 1991)

It was a strange contrast. From where we stood, at the door of a house that is almost unchanged from the day it was built more than 200 years ago, condominiums could be seen across a field.

We were at the Theron Boyd house in Quechee, now the property of the Vermont Historical Preservation Department, Boyd was its last private owner. He resisted all attempts by developers to buy the place; eventually, when he became too old to look after himself any longer, arrangements were made by interested friends to have Historic Preservation acquire the building and land, and Boyd spent his final years in the comforts of the Mertens Homestead in Woodstock.

Boyd's fierce defense of his home and his way of life preserved a house that has great historical value. It's a square clapboard structure of considerable size, with a large central chimney that measures 10 feet by ten feet at the base. It was never wired for electricity, and the only plumbing is a single cold water pipe.

John Dumville of Historic Preservation guided us through the building, revealing some of its secrets. An ell wing, used as a woodshed and carriage shelter, was built on at a later period than the original structure. The upper story of the ell was destroyed by fire in the 1930s.

In one room, where a partition had once divided it, the original wall color was visible.

A room that might have been an office had a window with a sliding board blind fitting into the wall that could be operated from inside the room.

Flooring throughout the house was wide boards and there was a generous use of wainscots, indicating the owners were in better circumstances than many people.

A smoke chamber can be seen in the front stairwell wall. In another room, the wallpaper is still unfaded, perhaps due to heavily draped windows and/or the quality of the paper itself.

The privy was accessible through the summer kitchen via a long walkway with a railing in the ell.

It must have been a cold trip to that little closet in the wintertime, and I'll wager no one tarried to read the magazines in the convenient rack next to the seats.

Repair work is underway. The main house has been re-roofed, and the underpinnings replaced.

The house will not be modernized, just restored and repaired. It will be open for tourist visits, a permanent demonstration of how our ancestors lived.

Pictures courtesy Patricia Boyd Barker, Compton, NH. (Patricia not related to this line)

Theron's Sugaring House Burns Down

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