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Autumn
Since 1843, the Addison County Fair had served as the herald of autumn. Originally held in October, the height of harvest time, the Fair was a showcase for excellence in agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as domestic arts including cooking, baking floral arranging and needlework. It soon became the most popular community-wide leisure event in the region. Sporting and entertainment events, such as horse races, music and ended with a dance. As individuals and in groups, Vermonters took to the mountains, lakes and rivers. As the century drew to a close, hiking, hunting and fishing parties included women as well as men. Vermont autumns gave cyclists their last and, perhaps, best period of activity. They took full advantage of the cool bracing air until the first snows. With the first snows - sometimes as early as October -- skating clubs, which organized late in the century, became active. At the peak of its fad in the 1880s, roller-skating was a favorite indoor recreation. Although less spontaneous than the events from which they descended, variations on harvest time traditions dating back to the eighteenth century -- harvest suppers, "corn husks" and apple bees - continued throughout the century. "With the advent of longer evenings, comes social activity," commented the Middlebury Register in October 1893. Indoor activities, sponsored by church groups, schools, lodges, fraternities, fire companies, hotels, sponsored parties, sociables, oyster suppers, entertainments and dances for any occasion, including the Thanksgiving Ball, a highlight of the season since the early years of the century. In the nineteenth century, autumn was not a season for team sports. Although it had been in existence for several decades, football - the ultimate American fall sport -- was far from the wild popularity it achieved in the twentieth century. Middlebury College, for example, didn't organize its first football team until 1894. The Middlebury College school year resumed in autumn and, with it, the return of the cycle of social and cultural events that had involved local residents since 1800.
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