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Calvin Galusha, his son, John, Victoria, and the others marked a number of anniversaries. One was the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen colonies. But there was also the anniversary of the first Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War, to which the state had given many men; Vermont, after all, had been the first state to call for the abolition of slavery in its constitution. Another John Coolidge, a doctor who had served at Antietam, was buried in the little cemetery as well. John and Victoria might remember July 1609, when Samuel de Champlain had discovered the great body of water, Lake Champlain, that now defined their state’s border. In July 1777, the Republic of Vermont had made its own declaration of independence at Windsor, a few miles away, announcing that inhabitants of the Green Mountains would “form a government best suited to secure their property, wellbeing and happiness.” It had been July 1782 when Ethan Allen, pounding his cane and ranting against the clergy, had finished dictating a book after leading the Green Mountain Boys in battle against their great enemy, New York. All those events and their facts jostled against one another in Vermonters’ minds; some preferred the Ethan Allen story to the Civil War or the Revolutionary account.
    In July 1872, in the midst of all these anniversaries, the first child of the couple who stayed was born. They named him John Calvin Coolidge, after his father and grandfather, after all the other Johns and Calvins who had gone before. The anniversary that the child’s birthday happened to fall on was that of the Declaration of Independence, which the village marked with festivals and an annual game: the men of Plymouth Notch stole an old cannon; the men of Plymouth Union stole it back.
    Within months of his son’s birth, John Coolidge went to the state capital, Montpelier, to serve as a state legislator, another quest that seemed necessary; if one wanted to ensure that prosperity would be possible in the future of Vermont, one must participate in framing that future. Victoria was young and delicate. Though Plymouth was still a hamlet, the store was its center, and the traffic there wore on the young mother. “I hope you will end your public life this year and then we will retire to some quiet place. I do not care for even the honor of being the representative’s wife,” Victoria wrote John. But John enjoyed the honor. He was working on soldiers’ legislation and told his mother he wanted to prepare so well he could give a speech on the topic. He joined the state committee on reform schools and served on it for the next few years.
    Victoria drew consolation from the landscape, sunsets, flowers, and, always, books and reading. One of the first toys the Coolidges gave their new son was a set of blocks with the alphabet on one face and Roman numbers on the other. In 1875, Victoria had a daughter, Abigail Gratia Coolidge, to join Calvin. The education of Calvin and Abbie started with scripture. There was no regular minister at the church; traveling preachers passed through. But Coolidge’s grandmother Sarah taught them the Bible by the chapter.
    From the start, the entire Coolidge clan focused on training this new son to take his place as a citizen in the Vermont community. When Calvin was three, his grandfather took him up to Montpelier to visit his father the lawmaker and placed the boy in the governor’s chair, hewn from the timbers of the USS Constitution , known as “Old Ironsides,” one of the United States’ first ships, authorized by the Naval Act of 1794. The Vermont State House was a grand structure; the governor’s chair sat in a large Greek classical office with pedimented windows. On that trip the boy spied a stuffed catamount in the state museum, and that too made an impression upon him.
    Soon enough, the children came to know firsthand the challenges of rural life. When Coolidge was just learning to read, his grandfather