Page 17 - Taverns Stands in Woodstock - for Flipbook_Neat

Taylor also erected a brick block next to his hotel (location of the current TD Bank branch) in 1807 for selling
merchandise. The building was constructed with brick ends, having a storeroom and small office on the lower
floor, and in the second story a single apartment fitted for a Masonic Hall. In 1807 this hall was occupied by the
Vermont Governor (Israel Smith) and Council during the State Legislature held in Woodstock that year. Anoth-
er building on the Green (Former DAR House as seen below) served as a tavern and boarding house for the use
of the State Legislature that year.

Elijah Taylor fell on hard times and it is said that “He loved good drink; loved it heartily and wholly, so that
in the end it became more to him than home and money and friends.” To meet his debts, he first mortgaged
his store building and the “old garden”, January 4, 1808 to Allen & Dana for $1,300. In the following May
he mortgaged the hotel to Jabez Bennett, Joel English, Nathan Lamb and Robert Perry for $1,000. In Febru-
ary 1814, he gave to Willis Hall and Charles Dana a mortgage on the same property for $900; to which he
added in the following year, February 21, another mortgage from Mower & Burdick for $537. On August 7,
1815, he sells all his property to Charles Dana, Willis Hall and Lyman Mower for the sum of $2,500. They,
in turn, sold the property to Eliakam Spooner for $2,800 on No-
vember 27, 1815.

Eliakam Spooner (see below) took over management of the Village
Hotel in August 1815 until his death in 1820. Spooner supposedly
created a water system that served the hotel, and possibly originat-
ed from the aqueduct on the Marsh property (now Marsh-Billings-
Rockefeller National Historic Park). “Mr. Spooner was among the
first inhabitants in Vermont, having settled within the limits of the
State prior to the organization of a State government. He was of a
very social and companionable disposition, yet withal a man of
stern, republican integrity, qualities that furnished him a passport
to many of the responsible offices within the gift of the State. He
was possessed of an original turn of mind, and it is understood
that the aqueduct so much in use sixty years ago along this neigh-
borhood and elsewhere, composed of logs perforated with an au-
ger, was an invention of his. He died in this town, January 3, 1820,
in the eightieth year of his age.”

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