I've been working on the West Danville history today - all day, actually.  I meant to get outside and walk, but I never made it.  First of all, it seemed really chilly to me - so I hiked up the thermostat and got out my flannel shirt.  I'm not moving around much when I'm working at my computer, so I get pretty cool sometimes.  
      I've hit some roadblocks today, trying to piece together the huge spurt of growth around Joe's Pond that began just before the turn of the century.  I don't want to leave anyone or anything out - it's all important to somebody - but we have gathered an enormous amount of material, and it's like a giant, very complex puzzle.  To make the process even harder, we're dealing with lots of newspaper clippings and I hate to say it, but names are often misspelled or garbled in some manner, making it difficult to search and find what I'm looking for.  So I use as many variations as I can think of to be sure I've got all the information on any individual.
     Today I came across an article referring to Dr. Warren from Cabot.  He had a cottage here in the early 1900s.  Trouble is, I know him from our Cabot Historical Society as Dr. M. D. Warren, or Dr. Mial Davis Warren; and the newspaper article has him as "Dr. O. C. Warren of Cabot."   I'm pretty sure there were not two Dr. Warrens who had cottages at the pond.   I'm having trouble figuring out how to pronounce his first name - Mail, Mile, Meal, Mee-al, My-all?  I just don't know.  I think people referred to him as "M.D." which of course was entirely appropriate.  He was an interesting fellow.  My father liked to tell the story about Dr. Warren and his first automobile.  The doctor lived on Main Street in Cabot and was used to driving his horses at a good fast trot wherever he went.  He would always bring them to a stop by pulling up on the reins and shouting a loud "Whoa!"  He hadn't been driving his automobile very long when he drove into the shed where he kept it - probably at a pretty good clip - and stepped hard on the accelerator as he pulled up on the steering wheel and yelled "WHOA!"  He crashed through the end of the shed and landed in the meadow behind his house.  Fortunately he was unhurt, but the shed and the car didn't fare very well.  Dr. Warren died in 1926 and is buried at Cabot's Elm Street Cemetery.
     The people who lived on the eastern slope of Cabot Plain were more inclined to do business in West Danville and Danville than in Cabot.  Some people who lived on the Cabot side of the pond got their mail in West Danville, the same as today.  That complicates things when I'm trying to locate where some of these old timers lived.  I have a list of people and places I will need to search in town records, so I'll be visiting both Cabot and Danville town offices soon.  It will all come together, I'm sure.