Jigsaw for October 12, 2026: Columbus Day on Elm Street, Woodstock, 1892
On Friday, October 21, 1892, Woodstock held a parade. The Vermont Standard printed the route and the order of march the next week:
The paper does not say who was in the boat. The four-horse coach in the photograph is most likely number 7, the teachers, with the schoolchildren on foot behind it.
The date was the 21st, not the 12th. Columbus landed on October 12, 1492, by the old calendar, which is October 21 by ours. That July, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed the 400th anniversary a national holiday, put the schools at the center of it, and asked that the flag fly over every schoolhouse in the country.
The schools had a program to follow. The Youth’s Companion, a Boston magazine, printed one for the National Public School Celebration, and in it a short pledge for children to say to the flag: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” Schoolchildren across the country first recited it that week.
The words those children said are not quite the ones said today. In 1923 a national flag conference changed “my Flag” to “the Flag of the United States,” and in 1924 it added “of America.” Congress made the pledge official in 1942. “Under God” was not in it at all until 1954, when Congress added it and President Eisenhower signed the change on Flag Day.
Over the street hangs a flag and a banner: “CLEVELAND & STEVENSON.” Grover Cleveland and Adlai E. Stevenson, grandfather of the Adlai Stevenson who ran against Eisenhower, were the Democratic ticket, and the election was eighteen days off. Vermont gave Benjamin Harrison 68 percent of its vote, his best showing in any state. Cleveland won, the first president to lose the office and win it back.
Monday is the second Monday in October. In Vermont it has been Indigenous Peoples’ Day since 2019. New Hampshire and the federal government still call it Columbus Day.
Jigsaw: Columbus Day on Elm Street, Woodstock, 1892
Full-resolution images
Columbus Day parade on Elm Street, Woodstock, 1892
The order of march, Vermont Standard, October 27, 1892
More from the Upper Valley
A word of thanks
To the Woodstock History Center, whose 2018 piece by Matthew Powers dates this photograph and draws on the Vermont Standard’s account of the day.
Thanks for your support, as always,
Cameron Cross
Sources
Woodstock History Center, “Columbus Day, 1892” (Matthew Powers, 2018)
“Pledge of Allegiance,” Wikipedia
Vermont Act 18 of 2019 (S.68), Indigenous Peoples’ Day
1892 United States presidential election in Vermont, Wikipedia