14 Gove Court
Gove Court is a small dead-end street off Shelburne Road in the south end of Burlington that was developed in the 1920s, about the same time as the nearby Five Sisters neighborhood. Clayton F. Gove, a local dealer in farm equipment from Lincoln, VT, decided to get into the development business. In 1924 he purchased a piece of land from Ernest and Bertha Metcalf. In September of 1926 he submitted the plan for Gove Court to the city, and in October of that year lot #8 in the plan was bought by Charles L. and Doris P. Hudgins. He was a clerk for the U.S. Rubber Company at 213 College Street, born in Putnam, Connecticut to parents from upstate New York. She was originally from Massachusetts.
Their home, #14, is first listed in the Burlington City Directory for 1927. #38 was the first house on the street, listed in 1926, with #14, #24, and #34 listed in 1927. Doris lived in the house longer than anyone else, until the 1980’s.
By 1933, Charles was the manager of the Thom McAn shoe store on Church Street. In the 1941-42 city directory he is listed as the secretary of the Masonic Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. Possibly this post didn’t pay too well, as Doris now is listed as a corsetiere, fitting ladies to Spencer corsets.
On Feb 18, 1954, Charles died. There is no obituary in the Free Press, His death certificate gives the cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver, and the condition’s duration as 8 years. His ashes were sent to Troy, NY, possibly a family grave site.
After her husband’s death, Doris rented out her spare bedroom. Ruth Davis, a secretary at Pilgrim Mercantile on College Street was a tenant. By 1962 she has remarried. Her husband is Roy Eaton, a salesman for an Albany company and a widower who has a house at 84 Caroline Street. They rent that house and live on Gove Court. By this time Doris is also working as a saleswoman for Avon products. At some point they bought a small strip of land adjoining their lot from the lot of their neighbors, Harold and Sadie Thomas.
Roy died in 1968. Somehow he is listed in the city directory for 3 more years. In 1973 Doris is listed as Roy’s widow. I have no explanation for that! Doris is still working for Spencer and Avon.
In July of 1983, Doris sold her home to Robert Resnik and Ruth E. Reames, a married couple. The couple divorced and Ms. Reame got #14 in the settlement. Doris died almost four years later, March 15, 1987, in Burlington’s Converse Home.
Ruth Reames, who was a teacher in the Burlington school system, lived at #14 until 2000, when she sold the house to Nathaniel and Barbara Fernandez, At the end of 2002, the couple sold their home to Paul. B. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt sold to the present owner, Marilyn Richardson, in 2016, who has been told that her home may be a kit house, one of those houses sold by companies like Sears Roebuck, Aladdin, and Montgomery Ward. These kits, which contained the plans and some of the material for each house, were very popular in the first part of the 20th century, especially in this section of Burlington. So far I have not found an exact match for the house, but it should be possible to do further research.
Image credit: Redfin