As two of Strafford‘s store buildings merit special mention this year —Coburns’ Store building having reached its 100th birthday in I985, and the old White Store in the upper village having been extensively restored —it seems fitting to present here a brief history of our main commercial structures.

This document in our archives is the deed of sale for a 125 acres of land sold by Samuel Pennock to Titus Goodall of Lyme for twelve pounds, in September, 1775. By this time, Pennock was already identified on a list of suspected Tory sympathizers in what was then Gloucester County, New York. He and his brothers and fellow Loyalists, James Jr. and Aaron, would have property in Strafford confiscated in the 1780s. Selling the land was perhaps a stopgap measure on Pennock’s part to gain some sort of income on the property before it could be seized. Read more about the Pennocks and this property here.

A cenotaph is a tombstone that has been relocated and no longer rests in place on the original burial site. The Strafford Historical Society has received two cenotaphs: (1) the Pennock family tombstone (James Pennock, died Nov. 2nd, 1808, aged 96 years: and Thankful Pennock, Esq., died Dec. 23rd, 1798, aged 81 years), and (2) a white marble tombstone that commemorates George Day, a Union soldier from Strafford who was captured in the Civil War and sent to the infamous Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia.

Adapted from John Freitag’s Historical Note, “Why Justin Morrill Got His Stamp”, printed in the 2023 Strafford, Vermon Town Report.