Vermont's Northland Journal

Vermont's Northland Journal These are changing times in the Kingdom, and the mission of the journal is more important than ever.

For the last 20 years, VT’s Northland Journal has been the only publication dedicated to sharing and preserving the history and heritage of the Northeast Kingdom. The monthly journal, which comes in both print and electronic versions, also celebrates the sacrifices of our veterans, and it gives people, particularly our seniors, a forum for them to share their memories. In addition, the journal is

an educational tool to not only educate our young people about the region, but to instill pride within them for the region they call home.

Flashback to the days of the Broadview Avenue which was located on Broadview Avenue in Newport. It was owned by Dr. Char...
10/15/2025

Flashback to the days of the Broadview Avenue which was located on Broadview Avenue in Newport. It was owned by Dr. Charles Schurman Sr. and Dr. Charles Schurman Jr.

How many of you have memories of this hospital and this father/son team? I had Dr. Schurman Jr. as a doctor when, I believe, his office was located on Pine Street in Newport with two or three other doctors.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher VT's Northland Journal

For some people today is Columbus Day, for others it is Indigenous Peoples Day . These two people here are/were first co...
10/13/2025

For some people today is Columbus Day, for others it is Indigenous Peoples Day . These two people here are/were first cousins - the late Gertrude Essaff of Newport (Gert died last year at 102 years old) and Paul Lahar of Derby. Their mothers, members of the Obomsawin family, were born on the Abenaki reserve at Odanak, Quebec. Vermont is also part of the Abenaki homeland.

The following is from a book I wrote a few years ago which included Gert and Paul's stories:

“My grandmother used to make baskets, and my grandfather used to make canoes out of white birch,” Gertrude said. “He made other things too. And in the spring, when my dad had a car, he used to go there [Odanak] and they’d fill up the car full of my grandmother’s baskets, and they’d sell them. I don’t know where they went to sell them—in stores, or on the streets, or what. They’d come back empty.” By that time, Gertrude said her grandmother was a widow, and it’s most likely she sold the baskets to support herself. If she recalls correctly, some of the baskets her mother made from sweetgrass.

It wasn’t until the last 20 or 30 years, she said, that she even thought much about her Native ancestry. That was about the time when Americans, including some Vermonters, were coming forward to proclaim they were Indians. Some did so to rightfully reclaim their Native heritage. Others, though, especially those with questionable or no Native ancestry, did so to claim Native ancestry they have no right to claim as a status symbol. This left some people of Native heritage feeling their ancestry was being co-opted by people who had no right to it.

And the following is an excerpt about Paul's memories from the same book:

"Lahar also spoke about the harsh economic conditions his mother’s family experienced on the reservation.

“They were very poor and her father fished all the time, and they ate fish all the time. Ma hated fish because that is all they had to eat growing up.”

He suspected she’d been a basket maker during an earlier chapter of her life. Whenever he asked about baskets she’d have a sharp reply: “Oh, those damn things!”

Since she was a devout Catholic, Lahar said for her to use the word “damn” certainly meant he’d hit on a topic she did not want to talk about. Eventually, though, he did learn much of the story about the baskets and why it likely bothered her to talk about them.

Apparently when she made baskets as a child, it wasn’t something she did for fun; it was something she had to do.

“She said before she could go out and play, on their days off during the summer, she had to make a basket.” The baskets were then sold to help subsidize the family’s income.

Because he never learned the art of basket making from his mother, Lahar took a basket making class about ten years ago. Learning this traditional art, at least in part, was to bring a piece of his Native heritage back to life. Lahar is now an accomplished basket maker and he is proud to show his baskets to visitors at his home.

“My mother could do anything she put her mind to,” he said. “If she needed a corner table she would go get my father’s saw and hammer, and she’d build a corner table herself. It might not have been pretty, but she could build it.” Betty added that Paul’s mother could also make dresses for her granddaughters without even using a pattern.

Many people of their generation, Native or not, were survivors. Arthur and Rose were no exception.

His parents made the best of life, even during the Great Depression. Lahar told how they made annual payments on their house, the house he and Betty now live in, by trapping and selling muskrats, most of them trapped on the South Bay section of Lake Memphremagog.

“He used to come home with a burlap bag of muskrats. My mother would skin them, and Dad would flesh them and stretch them, then put them upstairs in a room to dry. Back then you could sell them for two, four, or six dollars a muskrat. That was a lot of money back then.”

I am so fortunate to have spent time with these two cousins, and recorded their stories.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher VT's Northland Journal

Buy four or more of our 15 ounce coffee mugs and we'll throw in a copy of "Don 'Sleepy' McNally: From Vaudeville to Driv...
10/13/2025

Buy four or more of our 15 ounce coffee mugs and we'll throw in a copy of "Don 'Sleepy' McNally: From Vaudeville to Drive in Pioneer". The book will certainly provide you with some wonderful flashback to the Derby Port Drive in which the McNally family helped open in the 1950s.

Scott Wheeler/VT's Northland Journal

Photos of the fishmen on the railroad bridge in Newport - the one that straddles the lake between the lower end of Main ...
10/08/2025

Photos of the fishmen on the railroad bridge in Newport - the one that straddles the lake between the lower end of Main Street and what is now the Waterfront Plaza are, in my mind, some of the most iconic photos of the region.

Scott Wheeler
Publisher

We are looking for a few advertisers to promote their buinsesses in the December issue of the Journal. The feature story...
10/08/2025

We are looking for a few advertisers to promote their buinsesses in the December issue of the Journal. The feature story will be how Rod Barrup of Derby waged war on winter in the Northeast Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s with his Walter - a massive blow truck built by the Walter Motor Company. Please message me this week or next week if you have a business you'd like to promote .

Thank you,

Scott Wheeler
Publisher

This photo appears in the November issue of the Northland Journal in an article about the life and works of Rod Barrup. ...
10/06/2025

This photo appears in the November issue of the Northland Journal in an article about the life and works of Rod Barrup. Rod lived most of his adult life in Derby, but he got his start in Morgan. He lived in the house left of the Morgan Church in the house where Roland "Monk" Besaw lives today.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher

A number of people who heard about the sizeable earthquake in the Philippines that has left at least 70 people dead, hav...
10/03/2025

A number of people who heard about the sizeable earthquake in the Philippines that has left at least 70 people dead, have reached out to me and asked if Nenz’s family members were safe. Although they certainly felt the earthquake, and it made things shake, their community was pretty much left unscathed. However, six hours away in Cebu, on another island, it was a different story. There was destruction and death. These are some photos of Cebu following the quake. Thank you everybody who reached out to me.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher

The cover of the November issue of the Northland Journal.The Journal is a print magazine dedicated to sharing and preser...
10/02/2025

The cover of the November issue of the Northland Journal.
The Journal is a print magazine dedicated to sharing and preserving the history of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, often through the words of people who lived it. It is delivered to subscribers in almost all 50 states. We also sell NEK books (by Scott Wheeler), caps, winter hats, and NEK coffee mugs. Also, if you'd like an electronic version of the Journal sent to you by email each month, we can make that happen.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher

Please Share Your ThoughtsWhen my late wife, Penny, and I began the Journal 23 plus years ago, if we thought we'd get ri...
08/30/2025

Please Share Your Thoughts

When my late wife, Penny, and I began the Journal 23 plus years ago, if we thought we'd get rich, we would have been complete failures, because in all those years we never got rich financially -not even close - but we got rich in so many other ways. The outpouring of love we get has been second to none.

As most of you know, the Journal, a print magazine, works to preserve the history of the region, but it does much more than that. It also serves as a valuable forum for people, especially our seniors, to share their memories and for members of younger generations to learn from the generations that came before them. Quite honestly, I doubt there are many other magazines in the country quite like the Journal - a magazine that often focuses on ordinary people, many who have lived simple lives in earlier time that many of us have only read about in books. Yet others have lived extra ordinary lives, lives that many people have either forgotten about, or never known about, until their memories were published in the pages of the Journal.

What makes the Journal special to you, and why are the stories and photos found within it pages important to you? Is the Journal important to the the Kingdom? Does it serve a purpose? And is it even important that we, as a people - lifelong locals, newcomers, and everybody in between, know the region's history as we move into the future?

For your enjoyment, I've included a few old photos of a few Northeast Kingdom communities from an earlier time. Click on the photos for identifiers.

Scott Wheeler/Publisher VT's Northland Journal

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PO Box 812
Derby Center, VT
05829

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+18024870254

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The Story of VT’s Northland Journal

Born and raised in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, Scott Wheeler of Derby, who publishes Vermont's Northland Journal with his wife, Penny, is on an unstoppable mission to preserve the history and culture of the land of his birth. Proud of the Kingdom, he writes about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, all which make the Kingdom the amazing place it is today. He sees no reason to whitewash its history to portray the Northeast Kingdom as something it isn’t, or to bend reality a bit to entice visitors. Instead, he insists the beauty of the working landscape, its history and culture, and the people speak loud enough to attract visitors from every corner of the world.

For the last 18 years, the Northland Journal has been the only magazine dedicated to sharing and preserving the history and heritage of the Northeast Kingdom. The monthly magazine, which comes in both print and electronic versions, also honors the sacrifices of our veterans, and it gives people, particularly our seniors, a forum to share their memories. The Journalis also an educational tool to not only educate our young people about the region, but to also instill pride within them for the region they call home. This is what the now late renowned Northeast Kingdom author, Howard Frank Mosher, said about Scott and his work in a newspaper article: “Scott has kind of an inside track to some of the most interesting people in the Northeast Kingdom”.

Besides being publisher of the Journal, Scott, a Johnson State College graduate, and a former Vermont legislator, hosts a weekly television show on NEK-TV called The Northeast Kingdom Voice and a weekly radio show on WJJZ Country called The Vermont Voice. Each program is designed to serve as a forum for people to tell their stories and/or to promote community events. Scott is also the author of six regional history books: “Rumrunners and Revenuers: Prohibition in Vermont”, “When Salmon was King: Voices from the Clyde River”; “Don ‘Sleepy’ McNally: From Vaudeville to Drive-In Pioneer”; “Newport’s Centennial: Voices from a Lakeside Community”, “Jay Peak: Voices from the Mountain”, and "Booze in the Kingdom: Voices from Prohibition".

Scott is a popular public speaker, and he is a resource for local, state, national, and international media outlets for his knowledge of the history and culture of the Northeast Kingdom.