The Modern Day Joseph Beeman

(Betty and Ed Moore enjoy their ride as Grand Marshals in the Harvest Market parade on Saturday, September 27, 2008)

Since my mailing address is Cambridge, at the beginning of October I received a copy of The Mountain Gazette, a free newspaper that covers Bolton, Cambridge, Jericho, Underhill, Westford and Jeffersonville, Vermont. On the front page was a familiar photo to me of Ed Moore and his wife Betty of Underhill Center.

I first met Ed Moore, back in 1992 when I retired and worked with him on mapping the town of Fairfax. He is a gentleman who must be close to 90 years old by now and possesses a lot of self taught skills in the programing field. Now way, way back in the late 1700s, a guy by the name of Joseph Beeman mapped out the town and we have one of those original maps in a tin cylinder in the Fairfax Town office. Joseph Beeman had each lot and each owner in town mapped out, but I would have to say, by the early 1990s, that map by owner was just a bit outdated. I had been told by somebody that the only original lot left in the same boundaries was the Win McNall farm up on Route 104.

Well, I didn't actually have any idea what I was doing, but was kind of on a let down, looking for something to do, as I began my retirement and followed Ed Moore's instructions along with Sally Sweet as we made numerous trips over to Ed Moore's home up past the Old Underhill Ski Bowl in Underhill Center. We would bring aerial photos of the town of Fairfax, taken in the 1970's, place the large photo on a big drafting type table and attach it to the table with masking tape. Meanwhile Ed Moore would be doing his thing with the computer and his AutoCad program. God only knows what he was doing, but when he was ready and had everything synchronized (I think), Sally Sweet and I would start to place a pointer on a particular lot we wanted to map here in Fairfax. We would follow the tree lines around each particular farm, or fence line, I guess you would call them, and soon farms, houses and businesses were mapped out in this fashion, at least until surveyors would come in and do their exact surveying of the lots and sub divisions.

And that was how the first modern day mapping of Fairfax was done under the direction and skill of the gentleman you see in the photo above, Mr. Ed Moore. Now, Ed was at least the age I am now, when I started working with him, but he had a far sharper mind than I have. I still marvel at the way he was able to use those old aerial photographs and how easy it was to see from the air, just where the land boundaries were by the stone walls, tree lines and fences.

Since that original roughed out map was done, surveyors have fine tuned the divisions and subdivisions to what we have now - Ed Moore used his AutoCad and his DBase programming to create the original map and I believe our listers now use a new and improved program now to keep the Fairfax Detail Map updated - I am so happy I had a chance to experience the breakthrough to another Era, even though I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, just following directions - Isn't technology great??