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JERICHO ACADEMY

 Blair [Williams] and Jericho Center
(from “The Blair Williams’ Story,” a compilation by friends and colleagues, April 2007.)

A 1909 souvenir booklet from the Jordan Bros. Store in Jericho Center reports: “Twenty-five years ago our beautiful park was a rough, unkept country “green”, without a tree or shrub; many of the houses were run down, unpainted and un-attractive, and one of the first “village improvements: made was when we appealed to the selectmen of the town to compel one of the tenant farmers living in the village to keep his pigs at home, instead of allowing them to run at large on the “green” and in the neighbors’ door yards.”

​Today Jericho Center is a small village which, except for a bit too much 21st century traffic running down its main street, could almost be lifted from the 19th century.  In a scene fit for a postcard, there is the lovely green or common with many full-grown trees, a manicured lawn, and picnic tables and benches for both locals and visitors.  The beautiful Congregational Church sits on the north side with a new but tasteful addition.  The former Jericho Academy, now the Jericho Town Library, sits on the east side almost directly across the green from Jericho Center Country Store, formerly Jordon Bros. Store, which celebrates its 200th birthday in 2007.  In this scene, as in so many others in Jericho, Blair Williams had a hand.

​The Hiram Wilder place on Lee River Road was Blair’s first Jericho home.  She had already bought her property on Cilley Hill, But her stone house was in the future.  After putting an ad on a bulletin board in a faculty area at the University of Vermont, she sold the house to Willy and Bob Cochran, and moved to the former Frank Ransom house on the green, directly across from the general store and close to the church to which she was devoted.  Then in the 1950s, the state decided that changes had to be made in the Center.

​Automobile traffic had always gone through Jericho Center until it reached the southern side, taken an abrupt right turn at the Jericho Academy building, and then continued out of the Center down Barber Farm Road or down Browns Trace toward Richmond.  In an effort to ease traffic flow, the road on the norther side of the Center was cut down, and a plan was made to widen the road and create a curve on the southern edge of the green.  Unfortunately, the Academy building, home to secondary education for all of Jericho until the Jericho High School in the Center was build, sat in the middle of the proposed new highway, and plans were being made to tear it down.  Blair quickly initiated a drive to save the building.  The Ladies Aid Society assisted her in raising money to have the building moved, and Blair donated the land adjacent to her house to which it was moved in 1955.  Today the building is home to the Jericho Town Library and looks as if it had been there since it was built.

Jericho Academy on the move

Jericho Academy on the move

Concerned during the 1970s with the creation of the Jericho Historical Society and the preservation of the Chittenden (Old Red) Mills, Blair again turned her attention to the history of the Center in the early 1980s when she decided the Center should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  She organized the meetings of all of the local residents in the immediate Center to explain the benefits and the process of being selected.

​She had to reassure several concerned local people that being placed on the Register would not limit what could subsequently be done with their homes.  Most difficult, maps had to be drawn, buildings identified and described, and application forms prepared.  Mary Jane Dickerson explained that each homeowner was encouraged to research his or her own house but that much of the work was done by Blair herself.

The application which was submitted to the United States Department of the Interior was written by Blair and is a remarkable document which describes in detail the history of the Center, the architecture of each of the 27 buildings in the District, and the value of this modest village.  The final paragraph of her application reads

​The significance of the Jerich Center Historic District is not derived from the high-style individual expressions of the 19th century design  Rather, the simplicity of form and detail of the buildings, combined with their layout surrounding the green, the absence of 20th century modern intrusions, and the natural landscape, which includes very large shade trees, lawns, and surrounding fields, pastures and woodlands, make this village an important intact survivor of a place in time when the lives of most Vermonters centered around such small hamlets.

​In the week of May 22, 1983, largely due to Blair’s efforts, the Jericho Center Historic District was officially placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

​By 1991, Blair had lived for some time on Cilley Hill, but again became involved when two of the Center’s historic buildings were threatened.  That year the Jericho Elementary School on Route 15 was expanded to include the third and fourth graders who had previously gone to classes in two buildings which had formerly been the Jericho High School and the Unitarian Universalist Church.  These two buildings, which stand side by side just off the Jericho Center green, were to be sold.  The Congregational Church and the Jericho Center Preservation Association, founded in 1985, began efforts to acquire the buildings.  A flyer with information, historic pictures, and quotations was prepared to promote interest.  Of course the first quotation was by the most respected “historic” voice in Jerich, that of Blair Williams:

“There’s something about Jericho Center that brings us together, something we’re missing all over the country”…. ”These former school buildings reflect many of the changes that have taken place over almost 200 years of the town’s development.  If we’re not careful about keeping our past, we may become careless about our future, not building things to last.”

Happily, the Jericho School Board, for a nominal amount, sold the former Jericho High School to the Congregational Church for offices and classrooms and the former UU church to the Jericho Center Preservation Association for use as the Community Center.  Today both buildings are in constant use and in excellent repair.

Rob Towne, who lives on the Jericho Center Circle, reports that when he mentioned to Blair that he was planning a shrub border of viburnum next to his driveway, she explained that the roadside at her Cilley Hill home was full of the native paint and invited him to dig as much as he liked.  (After he attached the thicket and dug a couple of large clumps, Blair offered lemonade.) Recently Rob wrote, “it has now been over twenty years that Blair’s viburnums have brightened the side of my drive with spring bloom and scarlet winter berries.  Despite a recent plague of alien beetles that yearly try to the first new leaves, these tenacious little trees persist.  Like Blair herself, they have set deep and lasting roots in Jericho’s old stony soil.”

​Gail Schermer

Published with the permission of Ms. Schermer, October 21, 2023