Threads of History - Pulping the Green Mountains: A History of Paper in Manchester, VT

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America’s demand for paper grew at a fever pitch, and Manchester answered the call. Join Manchester Historical Society curator Shawn Harrington for a fascinating look at our town’s industrial and logging heyday, driven by the Mohican Pulp Company and the Rich Lumber Company. Discover how timber crews cleared mountain forests and ran even a 16-mile logging railroad up Lye Brook to feed the raw materials for wood pulp, connecting our mountain valleys directly to the nation’s appetite for paper. Alongside the lecture, get hands-on with the papermaking process as we use cut fabric scraps prepared during October 3rd’s Taconic Music event to make paper pulp.
John Vincent is a retired police officer, poet, letterpress printer, and director of A Revolutionary Press, a 501c3 nonprofit and volunteer-run collective of artists in service to the Common Good in New Haven, Vermont.
John is also the co-curator of “Finding Hope Within: Healing and Transformation Through the Making of Art Within the Carceral System”, a travelling art exhibition in Vermont for 2023-2026. He presents on the historical and contemporary significance of hand-setting type on the printing press, in context with the past and future Revolutions in this country. Learn more on his website.
Join us for all parts of the papermaking project to learn how scraps of fabric are turned into paper, and ultimately into works of art.
The full Threads of History program series:
• *Taconic Music with Tunes and Textiles of the Past | Saturday, October 3, 3:00 pm
• The Jane A. Stickle Quilt | Thursday, October 8, 5:30 pm
• *Pulping the Green Mountains – How Manchester Helped Feed the Nation’s Hunger for Paper | Saturday, October 10, 11:00 am
• The Remarkable Life of Fred Nicklewhite: Tailor, Jazz Lover, and Village Icon | Thursday, October 15, 5:30 pm
• The Story of the Manchester Journal: 165+ Years of “Local Intelligence” | Thursday, October 29, 5:30 pm
• *Broadside Printing with A Revolutionary Press | Saturday, November 14, 11:00 am
BONUS: Join our monthly True Crime, Local Lore, and Comic Art zine workshop for adults and teens every fourth Saturday of the Month from 1 - 3 pm. Next meeting: Saturday, October 24!
*indicates papermaking events.
This program is supported in part by the Vermont Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. www.vermonthumanities.org.
The Threads of History program series at MCL, in partnership with MHS, features Manchester and Southern Vermont’s textile past and weaves the fabric of history into auditory, visual, and tactile experiences of the Industrial Revolution. The series, supported in part by Vermont Humanities, explores themes from this year’s Vermont Reads book, Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden.