Whetstone Brook - Brattleboro Historical Society

Helen Dorr and the Carnegie Hero Medal (1915-1922)

In 1915 a little seven year old girl named Helen Dorr was recovering from a traumatic few months. In mid-November her father, Arthur Dorr, died from complications resulting from severe diabetes. He was thirty two years old and operated a machine that made stationary in a paper mill along the Whetstone Brook. As his health slowly failed, Helen’s dad had not been able to work for about a year before he passed away. Young Helen witnessed her father’s passing and was saddened by the experience. Helen’s mom was a seamstress and there was a younger daughter in the family as well. The family lived on Western Avenue and a week after Helen’s father had passed away Helen was accidently run over by a motorcycle. She had been on the side of Western Avenue, playing with friends, and the motorcycle lost control on the dirt road and ran into seven year old Helen. She was severely […]

Stephen Greenleaf and the Revolution

In April, 1772, Stephen Greenleaf was appointed Justice of the Peace for Cumberland County in the Province of New York. He had recently moved from Boston with his family and purchased 800 acres of land and a saw mill from Samuel Wells. The 800 acres would become the most valuable land in Brattleboro, but 250 years ago the two room home that the Greenleaf family moved into was the only building in the area now known as Main Street. The 800 acres purchased from Wells had originally been the land set aside for New Hampshire’s Governor Wentworth when the town was chartered in 1753. In 1766, after the King of England had declared that Brattleboro was really a part of the province of New York, Samuel Wells traveled to Albany and obtained New York title to the land. In the 1770’s the Great River Road, now Main Street, ran from Fort Dummer to the Wells […]