October 6, 1875. Wednesday morning in St. Albans and Aldis Brainerd is reading the paper. He’s at his house on North Main Street or at his offices in the Brainerd Block. He’s taking breakfast, perhaps, or sitting at his desk when he unfolds The Daily Messenger to its second page, a headline reading: 

Another New Hampshire Horror
A School Girl Outraged & Murdered

In the Barn: Luman & Alma Smith

Vermont is known for the beauty of its woods and mountains, but the cost of that beauty is often forgotten. For much of our history, Vermonters endured unimaginable hardship and poverty that limited opportunities for growth and preserved, as if unchanged, the landscape of today. Their suffering is always with us, written on the land, inscribed in cellar-holes and graveyards and orchards gone to wild. Welcome to These Dark Mountains.&nbsp;