Mr. Glover's Childhood: How Vermont Rural Life in the 1880s and 1890s Looked to a Boy of That Era

Waldo Fredrick Glover was born in Fenton’s Store, on the Glover Farm, October 4, 1879. His Grandfather, Otis Glover’s house, just across the road, was the first frame house built in Groton, by Revolutionary War soldier, Dominicus Gray. Waldo and family eventually moved to Winchester Mass. so daughter Helen and son Gordon could attend Boston University. They never installed electricity or plumbing and returned to the Farm for holidays and summer vacations until the late 1970’s. Waldo died Feb. 28, 1976. He built a stone birdbath with a ceramic tile sculpture, created by Russell Crooke, who was his brother in law, a potter and apprentice to Augustus St. Gaudins, in the garden of Fenton’s Store, which still remains as of 2018. He is the author of Mr. Glover’s Groton, The Sleeping Sentinel, and numerous articles published in the Vermont Historical Magazine in the 1920’s and 30’s. The hand typed manuscript of this collection of delightful stories, written in 1946, were given to Deborah Jurist and Mark Gleicher, current owners of the property, by Helen Glover, in the hopes that they would someday be published. They represent, not only the joyful memories of a boyhood spent on a Vermont Hill Farm, but also a connection to the patchwork of characters who lived the little town of Groton, Vermont in the 1890’s.