James Fisk was a manufacturer in Adams, Mass.; was burned out, and as the business at that time was unsatisfactory, he went to Brattleboro, his wife's home, and started what he called a "traveling emporium." He had twenty teams and a salesman on each one. His own team was very handsome; on it he drove four horses, a coachman in livery. He also had another four horse team, which was the "wholesale wagon." In this way he traveled all over New England. Each Saturday every salesman reported to him, at a given place. His bookkeeper was there, and, in fact, the business was carried on then as the large stores are now in the city; everything was systematized. He carried only silks and handsome shawls and wraps on his own team; he had his regular customers all over the country, who waited for him, and in many towns he would stay from two to three weeks. He was a very handsome man, six feet two inches, and the "pink" of neatness; very careful about his dress and of a very elegant, courtly manner. His wife used often to say laughingly "I first met Mr. Fisk in a stage coach, and was attracted by his fine clothes and noble bearing. He was a strong Prohibitionist, and built the Revere House in Brattleboro and opened it, the first temperance house ever opened and kept in the State of Vermont. After the death of his son he was ill for a year, in fact out of his head, made so by the shock of his sudden death. He was walking up Broadway and heard the newsboys crying the murder on the street. He fell unconscious and remained so for twenty-four hours; he never saw his dearly loved boy again. He recovered his mind, but never his health.

(Fiske and Fisk family. Being the record of the descendants of Symond Fiske, lord of the manor of Stadhaugh, Suffolk County, England...)