A SUCCESSFUL FARMER.
Mr. Oliver R. Hadwen of Springfield, Vt., a Former Resident of Danby, Earns Distinction of Being One of the Most Practical Farmers in the State of Vermont.
It gives us much pleasure to this week present our readers with an excellent likeness of a native of Danby who is now highly honored and respected in the home of his adoption in the eastern part of the state.
Mr. Oliver R. Hadwen, son of Barney and Mercy (Vaughn) Hadwen, was born in Danby March 28, 1825, and was the youngest of a family of eleven children, four of whom are still living. His family has been noted for longevity and nearly all of his brothers and sisters who have completed life’s journey, have lived to a good old age.
Mr. Hadwen’s early life was spent on the old homestead now owned by Mr. George A. Hadwen, near the Wallingford line.
December 10, 1851, he married Sarah J., daughter of Benjamin and Roxana Baker of Granville, N. Y., and commenced housekeeping in the old tannery house in this village, where he resided until 1853, when he moved to Granville, N. Y., and in partnership with his brother-in-law, George F. Baker, carried on the farm for his father-in-law for two years. In the spring of 1855 he moved to Poultney, Vt., where he was engaged in farming for eleven years. Mr. Hadwen moved to Rutland in 1867, where he resided for two years, and then returned to this village. After living here three years he moved to Springfield, Vt., where he has since resided.
Nearly his whole life has been spent in tilling the soil, and he has been a very successful farmer and dairyman, owning a fine dairy of Ayrshire cows, and for many years making the milk into cheese at home. He was largely instrumental in founding the Rockingham Cheese Co., which for several years did a prosperous business. For the past several years he has rented his farm, wholly or in part, and he cultivates some crops every year he has retired from the more active duties of farm life.
Mr. Hadwen has four children—Chester B., who married Emily Fletcher of Keeseville, N. Y.; Emma J., who married George F. Tanner of Granville, N. Y., but who has since moved to Springfield; John E., who married Minnie E. Perry of this village, and William E., who married Arable E. Fairbanks of Springfield.
While it is usually necessary for children to leave the “home nest,” Mr. Hadwen is peculiarly fortunate in having all of his located near by, three of them owning adjoining farms, and the fourth only a short distance away. He is never so happy as when they all meet together. It is one of the chief desires of his life to see them all prosperous and contented, and is always ready to lend them a helping hand. His life partner succumbed to that dread disease, pneumonia, October 15, 1884, and he married Ella W. Fairbanks in March, 1887.
Mr. Hadwen is always interested in improving the soil and to “make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.” Since the cry of “abandoned farms” has been raised in Vermont, the writer has often heard him say that he wished that he were a young man again, as it would be a pleasure to redeem some of those farms and bring them back to their former fertility.
His business life has been characterized by honesty and integrity and he is an earnest advocate of better roads and rural free delivery of mail. He is unusually active for a man of his years, and although somewhat handicapped by losing an eye in 1888, moves around as spry as a boy, and bids fair to yet see many years of usefulness.