Saturday, October 10
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Manchester Community Library

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America’s demand for paper grew at a fever pitch, and Manchester answered the call. Join us for a fascinating look at our town’s industrial and logging heyday, driven by the Mohican Pulp Company and the Rich Lumber Company. Discover how timber crews cleared mountain forests and ran even a 16-mile logging railroad up Lye Brook to feed the raw materials for wood pulp, connecting our mountain valleys directly to the nation’s appetite for paper.

John Vincent is a retired police officer, poet, letterpress printer, and director of A Revolutionary Press, a 501c3 nonprofit and volunteer-run collective of artists in service to the Common Good in New Haven, Vermont.

John is also the co-curator of “Finding Hope Within: Healing and Transformation Through the Making of Art Within the Carceral System”, a travelling art exhibition in Vermont for 2023-2026. He presents on the historical and contemporary significance of hand-setting type on the printing press, in context with the past and future Revolutions in this country. Learn more on his website.

This program is supported in part by the Vermont Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. www.vermonthumanities.org. 

The “Threads of History” program series at Manchester Community Library, in partnership with Manchester Historical Society, explores this year’s Vermont Reads themes, focusing on the history of American textiles, comic arts, historic printing, and the role women played in the Industrial Revolution. The 2026 Vermont Reads book, Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden, is available for pickup at the Library. Learn more about Vermont Reads.