Mildred Ellen Orton, who along with her husband Vrest launched The Vermont Country Store catalog in 1945 and opened a retail outlet in 1946, died at her home in Weston, VT on May 6. She was 99.
Orton was primarily responsible for keeping the books and handling correspondence during the company’s first decades. Vrest Orton found the products and wrote catalog copy touting themselves as “purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find,” a tagline The Vermont Country Store still uses.
The first catalog was 12 pages, and listed 36 products, according to the company’s Web site.
A few years later, one of those practical items would be her cookbook, “Cooking With Wholegrains,” which was originally published in 1947 and is scheduled to be reissued later this year.
“Vrest, a frugal Yankee at heart, insisted that the merchandise be durable and above all practical,” according to a company history page. “His wife, Ellen, who grew up on the Wilcox dairy farm in nearby Manchester, Vermont, made certain the new business was as practical as the products it sold.”
“She was the bookkeeper and made sure the money got into the bank so my father, Vrest, didn’t go out and buy another antique car,” Orton’s son Lyman, who eventually took over the business, wrote in an introductory note to the company’s fall 2007 catalog.
Direct Marketing Association interim president and CEO Bob Allen began working at The Vermont Country Store in 1982 as an assistant to Lyman Orton. Even though Mildred Ellen Orton had retired as bookkeeper four years earlier, “She remained a fixture at The Vermont Country Store,” Allen said. “She would stop in almost daily, mostly just to touch base with employees and thank them.”
She was also actively involved with the Bryant House Restaurant, which was affiliated with the retail operation and which served many of her whole-grain recipes. Allen said the woman he knew as “Ellen” ascribed her longevity in part to her whole-grain diet.
“She was a real stickler for detail. She felt our customers would appreciate it,” Allen added. “One time we were repainting the restaurant, and we uncovered some old stencils underneath several layers of paint. She insisted we find someone who could redo those stencils and do them right.” The stencils, he said, were recreated meticulously.
Orton was born Mildred Ellen Wilcox in 1911, according to an obituary published in the Manchester Journal. She was part of the 1928 graduating class of Burr & Benton Seminary (now Academy). In 2008, she became the first – and to date, only – graduate of the institution to attend an 80th reunion.
According to her obituary, she later graduated from Rutland Business College. After graduation, she was hired by the Tuttle Publishing Company, where she met her future husband Vrest. Vrest died in 1986.
Orton is survived by her son Lyman, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, according to the Manchester Journal. Lyman and his three sons, Cabot, Gardner and Eliot, are the current proprietors of The Vermont Country Store.
