Ethan Allen

At this place in history, we're in the village of Beecher Falls, within sight actually, of a Canadian border crossing with Steve Perkins, the executive director of the Vermont Historical Society. And Steve, a famous name in American furniture is what brings us here this week. Absolutely, Mike. I think most people have heard about it, that it started here, one of the biggest furniture factories really in New England in its time. So we're going to talk to Dennis Fuller, who's chairman of the Canaan Historical Society. You told us that something had to be done with the more dense varieties of wood that could not be floated down the Connecticut River, which led to this. So how did that start to come about? It started as a sawmill. A gentleman came up from Concord, New Hampshire, George Commons, and built a sawmill right on the Canadian border. There was an agreement made by businessmen from Canada who had sawmills up there and business people from Canaan and Beecher Falls area that needed jobs, other than running logs down the river. And the hardwood logs, of course, wouldn't float, so they had to have a place to sell their hardwood logs. Probably around 1898, the agreement was made to build a building with volunteer labor. People would sign up and say, I'll work two weeks for free if you'll give me a job when the business has started. The Beech Falls manufacturing at the time. They started out making bedroom furniture. You had the depression, so the factory had to close, people moved away, but then a bunch of local people started buying into it. And you've shown us quite a few of those stock purchase agreements. Yeah, there was stock purchase agreement sold, $100 a share, paid back at $1 a week out of their paychecks. Where does this guy come in? Well, it's a story that goes with it. There were a bunch office people from, at the time it was called Bomber at a Corporation. It was chartered out of Massachusetts, and they were sitting around and they were deciding what they were going to do as far as a line of furniture. And they picked a name that was hard to pronounce and didn't make any sense. Stuart Holbrook happened to be around at the time. He was born in Newport, grew up in this area, and he became a writer. He happened to show up at this meeting they had at a hotel down in Colbrook. Somebody had invited him. And he said, well, that's a stupid name for a furniture. And he said, what better name for a furniture factory in Vermont than Ethan Allen? Ethan Allen Furniture really became, by the middle of the 20th century, one of the best known names in furniture really in the world. I mean, it drove the whole town, the whole area. People came from Canada to work. People came from Pittsburgh, different towns in New Hampshire. And when I was a kid, there was anywhere from four to six hundred people working here. I worked here. I mean, whole families worked here. There's probably 90 to 100 people that work here now. They cut the dimensionals and ship it over to Orleans. There's trucks back and forth every day. And Orleans got all of the manufacturing positions that didn't go overseas. So you can still buy Ethan Allen Furniture today. Around here, you can find it. Any yard sale will have Ethan Allen Furniture. The good stuff. A renowned furniture brand originated in Vermont's northeast corner at this place in history. Baseball was the. . .