After studying a two-volume description of historic Craftsbury architecture, Tom Twetten was left wanting more. Craftsbury Historic Sites & Structures Survey of 1983, conducted to qualify sites for the Vermont State Register of Historic Places, “is beautifully done — very thorough on surrounds and roof pitches and foundations,” Twetten said. “But if you’re not a historic preservation architect, it’s terribly boring.”
His adopted hometown deserved more, he believed. And so Twetten, who moved to Craftsbury 30 years ago — “which makes me a newcomer,” he said — set out to tell the stories of the town’s historic buildings and the people who lived in them, and those who still do. He recruited another “newcomer,” 45-year resident Harry H. Miller, to take photos, and nine months later, the limited-edition, 194-page book they published to benefit Craftsbury Public Library rolled off the press.
Craftsbury Celebration: Old Homes, Barns, and Their Stories goes on sale at a book launch at the library on Friday, August 8. Five hundred signed and numbered copies are available for $49 each. There won’t be a second printing. An additional three leather-bound volumes are priced at $1,000. If everything sells, the endeavor will raise $27,500, a hefty sum for a small-town library with an annual budget of $144,000.
Like many Vermont libraries, Craftsbury Public Library operates independently of the town. It has a small endowment, the town contributes 40 percent of its budget, and the library raises the rest. “I’m always writing grants,” director Susan O’Connell said.
Twetten and Miller each chipped in $4,000 to publish Craftsbury Celebration so that the library would receive the full cover price. Board of trustees president Alan Turnbull was floored when he learned of their project. “To have a thing like this for an organization that’s used to bringing in $800, $400 or $1,500 is really terrific,” he said.
Turnbull was one of the first to see the finished product. “It’s gorgeous,” he said.
Twetten, 90, is a retired CIA deputy director for operations, a former antiquarian book dealer and past president of the library board of trustees. Miller, 67, is a custom home builder and avid photographer who built the current library 23 years ago. Their book features 74 Craftsbury homes built in or before 1860 that remain in use, along with a handful of newer structures significant to the town: barns, Craftsbury Academy, East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church and the public library. Twetten wrote the book’s 90 essays, and Miller photographed each building three times: this past fall, winter and spring — though in most cases, just one portrait of each is included.
Historic photographs are scattered throughout the book, providing then-and-now images.
Miller captured the lemon-yellow Brassknocker Farm barn — raised in a single day in 1906 — standing behind an apron of snow with a Christmas wreath on each of its sliding doors. He climbed onto a bank this spring to photograph Barbara Paterson and James Whitby’s home with a tire swing hanging from a maple tree and a magnolia bush in full bloom.
The skies cleared on Memorial Day just in time for the entire Craftsbury Academy student body to assemble in front of the school, exactly as their counterparts had done in 1890. Miller preserved the moment from the same angle, and the two photos are published side by side.
Historic photographs are scattered throughout the book, providing then-and-now images. Twetten included the 1983 survey numbers the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation assigned to buildings so that readers can learn more about their architecture. The survey is available at the library and on the division’s website.
Twetten interviewed townspeople and relied on Betsy Davison Post’s 2006 book The Founding Families of Craftsbury, Vermont as a primary research source. Anecdotes in his essays range from historically significant to amusing. In one, he recounts the history of Sterling College’s Simpson Hall. Roger Easton, born in Craftsbury in 1921, grew up in that house. During his career at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, he invented TIMATION, the satellite navigation system that led to GPS.
On a lighter note, Twetten later tells of the time a young Rick Johnson and his best friend stole a cow and maneuvered it down the narrow stairs to the basement of Johnson’s 19th-century home, which his daughter now owns.
Many of these homes still stand because Craftsbury was spared the mid-20th-century “renewal and revitalization” that bulldozed many historic structures in Vermont’s larger communities, historian J. Kevin Graffagnino writes in the foreword. They were maintained by generations of hardworking people who looked out for each other, Twetten said — a spirit, like the buildings, that remains in the town today.
Book launch party, Friday, August 8, 6 p.m., at Craftsbury Public Library. Learn more and preorder a book at craftsburypubliclibrary.org.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Structural Integrity | A new book celebrates Craftsbury’s historic buildings and benefits the town’s public library”
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.
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