Dale Family Papers

The Dale Family Papers consist of approximately 43 linear feet of correspondence, business records, bound manuscripts, speeches and writings, diaries, scrapbooks and clippings, and miscellaneous other papers. The chronological span of the collection is from 1841 to 1961, with the heaviest concentration of material falling between 1875 and 1935.

The Dale collection provides a revealing look at the interests, activities and careers of three generations of a prominent Vermont family. Students of social history will find considerable amounts of material in the papers on family networks and relationships, the role of women in Victorian and early twentieth-century America, family and household expenses, the temperance and womens' suffrage movements, and other aspects of Vermont and American society between 1860 and 1935. The social history sources in the collection include large numbers of family letters, personal diaries, family photographs, newspaper clippings and ephemera, poetry, and bound manuscripts.

There is also much in the Dale Papers relating to the history of the town of Brighton and village of Island Pond. Among these local materials are bills and invoices from Essex County merchants, town and village tax documents, records of the Island Pond Electric Company, manuscripts concerning the activities of town clubs and organizations, and papers reflecting the official and unofficial influence that the Dales exercised in their community.

In addition to its usefulness for social and local history, the Dale collection is rich in sources on the professional careers of George, Porter, and Timothy Dale. One of the more substantial subsections of the papers details George N. Dale's extensive northern Vermont legal practice. The legal papers include printed and manuscript briefs for individual cases, note on particular cases and general points of law, deeds and depositions, and other court documents. There is also a smaller amount of material from Porter H. Dale's occasional law work, most notably a group of papers about his work as counsel for accused murderer Florence M. Dodge in 1911. Numerous receipts, reports, letters and other papers document the Dales' work as U.S. customs officials. Although the papers from the thrid generation are not as extensive as those from the first two, the collection does contain a variety of material generated by Timothy C. Dale during his years as an electric power company manager and administrator, as president of the Burlington Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and as a Vermont state government official.

A good deal of the Dale collection concerns the financial and business interests of the family. These papers include manuscripts pertaining to investments in various lumber companies in Maine, New Hampshire and northern Vermont, the Clyde River Power Company and the development of the other electric power companies in Essex and Orleans Counties in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and scattered railroad express company manuscripts. There are also large amounts of correspondence and financial documents dealing with Porter H. Dale's role in the District Florida Corporation's real estate activities in the 1920s and '30s. Account books, bank statements, checkbooks and cancelled checks, and a wide variety of bills and receipts offer further insights into the financial aspects of the family's history.

As might be expected, politics and the political careers of George N. Dale and Porter H. Dale account for a sizeable percentage of the Dale collection. George N. Dale's correspondence includes letters from many of Victorian Vermont's government leaders; these letters complement the late nineteenth-century political papers in the Benedict and Farnham collections at UVM. Porter Dale's political papers deal more with the Vermont aspects of his campaigns and activities than with his attention to national issues and projects as a member of Congress. Correspondence, scrapbooks, speeches, printed campaign ephemera, voters' petitions, and other papers provide considerable documentation on Dale's election and reelection efforts between 1900 and 1933. However, despite the presence of small groups of papers on scattered aspects of national politics in the 1920s and '20s, there is surprisingly little material relating directly to Dale's work in Congress. According to Dale family tradition, Augusta M. Wood Dale discarded most of the Congressional papers that were at the Dale house in Washington after her husband's death, while the manuscripts relating to politics in Vermont remained in storage at the family home in Island Pond.

In addition to the major concentrations within the collection, there are other small groups of interesting material on individual subjects. Among these are: George N. Dale's papers as a Civil War military recruiter; many Porter Dale manuscript sermons, speeches, short stories and other writings; printed and manuscript poems by Amy K. Bartlett Dale; Timothy C. Dale school noted and papers); newspaper clippings on various 1900-30 topics; and George N. Dale II scrapbook on the 1910-11 Vermont State Legislature (carton 38, folder 18). Materials in the Papers on World War I include letters, clippings, maps, photographs, speeches, and reports from Porter Dale's trips to Europe in 1917 and 1919, as well as letters and books relating to Timothy Dale's service in France.

There are eight distinct series of material in the Dale Papers: correspondence and miscellaneous papers; legal papers; legal notebooks; newspaper clippings; photographs; checks and bank statements; bound volumes. The basic arrangement within the individual series is chronological, with undated material at the back of each group. Researchers working on particular subjects should check the inventory listings for each series, as the series groupings are by type of material rather than by topic. For biographical and genealogical information on the Dale family, see carton 1.

The Dale Family Papers came to the Wilbur Collection between 1982 and 1986 in a series of donations from Dr. Porter H. Dale of Montpelier, Vermont, and Mr. Lawrence P. Dale of Colorado Springs, Colorado.