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Abby Maria Hemenway - WIH Mystery Cache

Hidden : 8/10/2018
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


 Don't go to the listed coordinates.  They are fake.  To find the cache, read the the article and solve the simple puzzle, which will take you to the real coordinates, and maybe teach you about an important Vermont woman you never knew about.  This is one of the Women in History series begun in NH by MAMD.  

Abby Hemenway was born in Ludlow, Vermont on October 7, 1828. She attended Black River Academy, afterwards beginning a career as a teacher in Michigan.

Hemenway returned to Ludlow, became interested in publishing literature specific to Vermont, and attempted to attract supporters for her project. Refused backing from established printers and publishers, in 1858 she published on her own "Poets and Poetry of Vermont", an anthology of verse by Green Mountain State writers.

The success of her volume of poetry encouraged her to continue in publishing, and she began the Vermont Historical Gazetteer. She planned to produce histories of every city and town in Vermont. Prior to Hemenway, publishing history usually meant biographies of famous military and political men and stories about the major events in which they took part. Hemenway advanced the concept of history as a social science by encouraging local authors to compile information on their areas and submit it to her for editing and publication, which placed the focus of Hemenway’s Gazetteer on chronicling the day-to-day activities of Vermont’s cities and towns, rather than focusing only on prominent individuals and events.

Many individuals prepared histories of their towns and cities and submitted them to Hemenway. For towns where she could not obtain the cooperation of a local author, Hemenway wrote the histories herself. In preparing for her first volume, Hemenway had to overcome the objections of several Middlebury College professors, some of whom had been working on town histories for Addison County. (Middlebury College is in Addison County.) These professors, all members of the Middlebury Historical Society, signed a letter to Hemenway insisting that her project was not feasible, asking how she expected to succeed when 40 men of the historical society working for 16 years had not. They described the project as "not a suitable work for a woman," and predicted that she would quit before she finished visiting half of the county. Undaunted, she set out to visit every town in person to recruit local authors.

Hemenway succeeded, and in 1861 she published the first volume of the Vermont Quarterly Gazetteer, which focused on the towns of Addison County.

From 1867 to 1882 Hemenway published four more volumes of the renamed Vermont Historical Gazetteer. She had collected material for sixth and seventh volumes, but financial setbacks caused her to delay publication. She subsequently moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she continued to edit materials for the Gazetteer and even set type in her apartment in an effort to continue publication. When a fire destroyed materials for the sixth and seventh volumes, she collected them again and continued her work.

In 1886 Hemenway was run over by a sleigh and suffered a broken collarbone. She continued working on the planned sixth volume until she died in Chicago after suffering a stroke on February 24, 1890. She is buried at Pleasant View Cemetery in Ludlow.

Hemenway’s sister published the sixth volume of the Gazetteer in 1891. The materials for the planned seventh volume passed through several hands until they were destroyed in a fire in North Carolina in 1911, so that volume was never published.

The six published volumes of the Vermont Historical Gazetteer (five plus the one Quarterly Gazetteer), which include local histories on 13 of Vermont's 14 counties (Windsor County is the exception), are still used as the primary historical reference on Vermont in the 18th and 19th Century. They contain invaluable information, including the names and terms of service for local office holders, names and terms of service for clergy members, and genealogical information on the early white residents of Vermont.[19]

Hemenway’s pioneering legacy as a publisher in an era when few women worked in the field, and her efforts to change the concept of history as a social science were rediscovered in recent years after publication of a 2001 biography, Deborah Pickman Clifford’s "The Passion of Abby Maria Hemenway".   (Source: .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Maria_Hemenway)

This article leaves out some of the exciting bits, like her having to steal her own work to preserve it, and escaping to Illinois.  Also the shameful way the Vermont Legislature treated her.  But you can read more about it!  If you are lucky enough to have ancestry in Vermont, you can follow this road to a library that preserves her work, and you can learn about your ancestors, thanks to Abby.

The Quiz: 

You will find the cache at N44  08.ABC W 072 21.DEF

 

The Quiz: 

  Abby Hemenway is best known as the great aunt of the author of "For whom the Bell Tolls"

For ABC:

T: 739

F: 564

Abby Hemenway was just a compiler of other people's work, and never wrote the articles herself.

For DEF

T:  913

F: 319

 

You too can add to the Women in History series.   Please include the WIH tag in the title.

The CC is big enough only for very small tradeables. There is room to park one car nearby. There may not be in winter. Safety first!

Congrats to Snarfmon23 for FTF!

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Vpr Pernz hfrq gb znxr zr fzvyr.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)