History of the town of Montpelier (Vt.) ... together with biographical sketches of its most noted deceased citizens, etc

Front matter

■ HISTORY ol THh TOWN OF MONTPELIER, Jf'BOU IHH TIME IT W.VS URs'l «1 AltTtRKl) IN 17»s*l TO TH'K VKiVR IW60. TuiiK'l II IK WI I H BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ITS MOST NOTED DECEASED CITIZENS, Written in act-ordaace with a vote of tlie Towu iu March Meeting, 1859 BY D. P. THOMPSON. MONTPELIER : £ P . WALTON, PRINTER 1860. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1860, by DANIEL P. THOMPSON7, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Vermont. HOW >NI TO THE NATIVE CITIZENS OF MONTPELIER, OF THIS AND COMING GENERATIONS, WHO MAY BE DESIROUS OF KNOWING THE INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THE ORIGIN OF THEIR TOWN- THEIR FytTHERS AND MOTHERS OF THE EARLY TIMES LIYZI) HOW T H E V TOILED; HOW THEY BTHrOGLED, HOW THEY CONQUERED THE WILDERNESS AND ITS DIFFICULTIES TO LEAVZ FOE THEIR DESCENDANTS THE PLEASANT VILLAGE HOMES AND CULTIVATED FARMS THEY NOW ENJOY, fins fMork i» Brsptctfulli! Srbi'ratrfi, BY THE AUTHOR.

Preface

. A Preface, which can only be necessary for explanation of matters which otherwise might not be clear to the reader, or of matters which might not otherwise be so fully appreciated, to be <rood for anything, should never be touched till the last line of the book to which it is attached has been written. And having completed our task of writing a History of Montpelier, according to the best of our humble abilities, with our means of information and the time we could bestow upon it, we now sit down to write a brief preface, both explanatory aud apologetic — to explain and designate our means of information on the subjects introduced and discussed, and render our excuse for having per formed the literary part of our task so imperfectly. Earing, when Zadock Thompson had his Gazetteer of Ver mont in preparation, undertaken, at his request, to furnish a brief history of Montpelier, we visited, for the purpose of collecting materials for that task, the most intelligent survivors of the first settlers of Montpelier aud the neighboring towns, and made minutes of the facts and incidents which we condensed into the brief sketch of the town that appears in that work, together with many more which the space allowed us would not permit of being in troduced.

Among the best informed of the men thus consulted were Jam es Sawyer, Col. Crac* Johnson, Zachariah Perrin, and others of the first settlers of Berlin ; Hon. Seth Putnam of Middlesex, and John TyU'LiN, Esq., Clark Stevens, and Ren. Pearly Davis of Montpelier, who were considered the best historians of the first settlement then living. And to the facts and representations then derived from these well-informed and reliable men, and especially General Davis, Judge Putnam and Esquire Taplin, who had heen leading men in the public preface. V affairs of the early times, we have been indebted not only for much correct information, which, as they have all since passed away, could not now have been obtained, but for our conceptions of the true character of those times, and of the characters, hab its and springs of action of the hardy men who figured therein.

With these important advantages we commenced the present work. But feeling that we had only entered the field to be explored, we begun our investigations anew. Aud besides ex amining all the written and published evidence to be found, which had any reference to the subject on hand, we at once commenced a series of personal visits to all the still remaining survivors of the first settlement in Montpelier and the neighboring towns, that we might take down from their own lips that oral testimony of general facts, particular incidents, 'personal descriptions and the current opinions and notions of the men and times of which they spoke, and which could alone enable us to give a true and just picture of those men and times. Among the principal persons thus visited and consulted arc Thomas Da vis, Jonathan Shepard, Mrs. Marsh, the widow of the late Wil liam Marsh, Mrs. Brooks, widow of the late Lemuel Brooks, and Mr. Levi Humphrey, who died September 1859, about a fortnight after our interview with him, — all of Montpelier, Mr. Elisha Cummins of East Montpelier, Rev. James Hobart, Simeon Dewey, Esq., and Mrs. Hannah Jones, widow of the late Major Jones, of Berlin, and Captain Holden Putnam and Mrs. Warren, widow of the late Lovell Warren, of Middlesex.

From these persons, all bordering the age of ninety, and several of them from two to five years older, we have gained much ofthe additional information we needed to make out a full and reliable account of the first do7.en years of the settlement. And for much we have em bodied connected with the period immediately succeeding 1800. we acknowledge our indebtedness to the Hon. Geo. Worthing ton and Mrs. Clarissa Worthington, the venerable Capt. Jewett, the Hon. Daniel Baldwin, the Hon. Joseph Howes and Mr. VI

PREFACE.

. Samuel Goss, of Montpelier. And to these we should, perhaps, add Gen. Sylvester Churchill of U. S. Army, who, having resid ed here at the time tlie first State House was built, has furnished some interesting incidents of that period. Thus it will be seen, the sources and means of our information have been good, and we have spared no time or pains in availing ourself of them to the best advantage. But we cannot say as much for the manner in which we have elaborated and brought out the materials of tlie work. There was scarcely a day during the time we were engaged in the composition of the work, in which we were not compelled to drop our pen aud go abroad to ascertain from old living witness es, family records or books, or pamphlets out of print, some fact, circumstance or date, which we found it necessary or desirous to introduce.

This not only greatly limited the time we had to bestow on the composition of the book, but had the tendency to disturb tlie keeping, ease and harmony of the style, and in many instances to cause it to be left imperfect. For these reasons, we must ask the indulgence of the reader in making all the allowance for the literary execution of the work, to which the cir cumstances may entitle him. In regard to the biographical sketches, which are now made to constitute a considerable portion of the work, it may, per haps, be proper to remark, that they have been extended in num ber, and in the length of most of them, much farther than we oginally designed : For, on investigating the facts and events connected with the public and private lives of the individuals whose characters have been sketched, we found many matters of historical interest which, had we discovered them before, we should have inserted in the body of the work, and which, deem ing our history incomplete without them, we have taken this method to add to it. D. P. THOMPSON. Montpelier, August, 1860. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

The location of the town in latitude, longitude and altitude above the ocean — Origin of the name of the town — of the names of the rivers bordering the township — The physical or geological features of its location. 9

Chapter VII

First Military Company — Town Library — General healthiness of the Town— Deaths and Births enumerated up to 1800 — First Schools — First Merchants — Mechanics and Professional Men. 83 CHAPTER VUI. Growth of the Village — Educational Interests — Epidemics — Ecclesiastical Affairs — Newspapers — The Town made the Seat of Government — Alteration of County lines and the Town embraced in the new County of Jefferson, and made the shire. 94

Chapter IX

Increase of the Village immediately subsequent to the location of the Seat of Government here — Opening of State Sireet — First 4th of July Celebrations — Building of the State House — First Election Day — Great War Meeting of 1812 illustrative of the party feeling of that period. 108

Chapter X

Inventors — Improvements — Novel Enterprises — The Vermont Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and Bank of Montpelier. CONTENTS.

Chapter XI

Concluding view os the Village for the period from 1800 to 1830 — State of Morals and their reformation — Trade, its irregularities and reformation — The moDey making period. 128

Chapter XII

New Institutions established between 1830 and 1860 — Foundery — Factories — Banks- Insurance Companies — Telegraph and Express Offices opened — Fire Department — New Cemetery — Union School — Opening of Rail Roads and their effects — Division of the Town. 135

Chapter XIII

Fires, Floods and their casualties, together with a list and description of other fatal casualties, from all causes, in Village and Town since the settlement. 147

Chapter XIV

Intellectual and moral standards among the people — Literature of the Towu — Offices held by citizens ofthe Village and Town — Concluding Reflections. 160 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. Page. Col. Jacob Davis, - - - 169 Mrs. Rebecca Davis, - - - 174 Hon. David Wing, Jr., - - 175 Clark Stevens, - - - - 178 Elder Ziba Woodworth, - - 181 John Taplin, Esq., - - - 185 Dr. Edward Lamb, - - - 190 Gen. Pearley Davis, - - - 194 Rev. Chester Wright, - - 198 Col. James H. Langdon, - - 204 Hon. Jeduthun Loomis, - - 208 Hon. Timothy Merrill. - - - 211 Hon. F. F. Merrill, ... 214 Hon. Araunah Waterman, - - 216 Appendix. Page. Hon. Cyrus Ware, ... 221 Hon. Salvin Collins, - - - 22o Capt. Timothy Hubbard, - - 228 Gen. Ezekiel P. Walton, - - 232 Calvin J. Keith, - - - 238 Hezekiah H. Reed, - - - 241 Dr. James Spalding, - - - 244 Col. J. P. Miller, - - - - 249 Hon. William Upham. - - 263 Mrs. Sarah Upham, - - - 268 Hon. Joseph Reed, - - - 269 Hon. Sumuel Prentiss, - - 27C Mrs. Lucretia Prentiss, - - 286 288 ERRATA.

Besides a few typographical errors which the eye of the reader will naturally cor rect, there are two so much affecting the sense that we are unwilling they snould pass without being pointed out : Page 155, about midway, on the subject of floods, 4c, read quantity, not quality. " 22i, top line, in the sketch of Judge Ware, read fertile, not futile . The christian name of General Davis was always written, by himself and others of his times, Parley, and was intended so to have been put in type in this work, till too late to make the change.

Chapter I. Origin Of The Name Of The Town

THE NAMES OF THE RIV- ERS BORDERING IT. THE PHYSICAL AND GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF ITS LOCATION. On the sinuous banks of the upper portion of the mountain born Winooski, amidst the clustering confluences of its chief tributaries, in latitude 44° IT', longitude 4° 25' from Washing ton, and at an altitude of 540 feet above the level of the ocean, lies, snugly embosomed among the hills, in the heart of the Green Mountains, the flourishing and important interior town of which I have undertaken to give the history, under the unusual name of Montpelier. As enquiries respecting the origin of a name so peculiar as the one bestowed on this town will here very naturally arise in the mind of the reader, and some explanation as naturally be looked for in a work of this character, I will endeavor to meet this, and other anticipated queries of the kind, at the outset.

The name in question was bestowed by Colonel Jacob Davis, a leading proprietor, and the first permanent settler of the town. The Colonel being a man of an independent and originating mind, and consequently one of those who are not to be led by the examples and customs of others any farther than found con sonant with their own notions, had noticed, with dislike, the pro pensity of the proprietors of most of the townships of the State to bestow on their respective grants the names of the towns in the old States where they resided, or with which they were in some way associated ; and he, therefore, resolved to have a new name for the township in which he was interested — one which should not be obnoxious to the imputation of such servility as had been shown in the naming of other towns in the new State. and one, at the same time, which should obviate the inconvenience and confusion that he foresaw must some day arise in con sequence of having so many places of the same name in one confederacy.

And in casting about for such a name as he would be willing to appropriate for the purpose, he thought of the city of France bearing the name of Montpelier, a word originally o compounded, perhaps, of Mont, a hill or mountain, and peller, bare or shorn, and first bestowed on account of some bare elevation at or near the site of that city. But however that may be, the name, the more particular applicability of which for the name of a town among the mountains was suggested by the first part of the word, seemed to strike the fancy and meet the requirements of the Colonel ; and proposing it to his fellow petitioners for the proposed grant of a township here, it was at once adopted , the name of Montpelier inserted in the petition to the Legis lature, and the grant made accordingly.* Next to the name of the town, the name of the important river that bounds or passes through the borders of more than half the town, together with those of the four of its principal tributaries which enter it within the limits of the town, or dur ing its long, winding course around it, demands from us, we think, something more than a passing notice.

This river, previous to the settlement of the part of the country through which it runs, was mostly known to people abroad by the name of French River. This fact we not only learn from tradition, but from the terms used in bounding the other towns bordering on this stream, in whose charters, issued by the royal Governor of New Hamp shire, nearly twenty years before that of Montpelier, the words " French or Onion river" may be found. The name was doubtless derived from the well known fact that, during the old French wars in this country, the French and Indians made the valley of this stream their principal route in their predatory excursions from Canada to the frontier settlements of New Hampshire and Massachusetts ; while the hunting and trapping stations which the French subsequently established along the banks of the river, in consequence of their knowledge of the localities thus obtain ed, and to which they, for years after, continued to resort, con tributed to confirm and prolong the use of the appellation among the English colonists of New England.

But when this section began to be explored with the view of settlement, the explorers found everywhere growing along the banks of this river great quantities of leeks, or wild onions, which soon led to the discov ery of the Indian name of the river, or rather the land bordering upon it, Winooski, a name composed of two words of the Algonquin language, winoos, onions, and ki, land. The true signification of the term, therefore, as applied to the stream, * My authority for this statement respecting the naming of the town is derived from the Hon. George Worthing ton, who married Clarissa, the youngest daughter of Col. Davis, and the first child born in the town. Mr. W. well remembers being in company among others with the Colonel, when the latter was asked how the town came to be named Montpelier, and that he then, by way of reply, made the statement I have, in substance, above given. would be Onion Land River.

The French, through whom we obtained the word, pronounced it Wenooskee, the i taking the sound of our e. But as the Indians would give the same sound to the i that we do, I do not perceive the propriety of our fol lowing the French pronunciation of the name, especially while the original Indian pronunciation must be nearly or entirely con sonant with that of our own language. There is a literary snob bishness of our times that affects the French sound of the vowels in all possible cases. It is proper, perhaps, that we should retain the French pronunciation in all the words we adopt from that language, but that is no reason why we should try to Frenchify everything. I cannot forbear, in passing, to express a regret that the prac tical tastes and common-place notions of our first settlers should have so far governed them, in respect to this name, as to have led them generally to adopt the homely translation instead of the poetic original.

The Indian names arc not like most of ours, arbitrary and inexpressive, but ever have their significations. This of itself is a beauty. It ensures, also, the applicability of the name to the thing. Aud as the appropriation of these abo riginal appellations would have furnished us with sonorous and ex pressive names for our streams, lakes, mduntains, Arc, besides ob viating the inconvenience ever experienced from duplicating our common ones, it is much to be regretted, we think, that they had not been more generally ascertained and scrupulously adopted. The writer of these pages well remembers having had, more than twenty years ago, a conversation with his friend and namesake. though no relative, the late Zadock Thompson, on this subject generally, but in reference more particularly to the name of the river now under consideration, when we mutually agreed that we would do what we could towards restoring the Indian name.

That eminent historian and naturalist, of whom the State may well be proud, has done much towards effecting this object, es pecially among the people of Chittenden County, embracing the lower portion of the river, where it is now very generally called Winooski ; shall not the surviving party to the agreement be aided in completing that object, by restoring the name also among the people of Washington County, within which the stream col lects the great body of its waters ? Let its name never more be written otherwise than Winooski. Of the four tributaries of the Winooski, before mentioned, the first, when taken in order, in ascending the main stream, is Dog- Ricer, which, rising in Roxbury and Northfield, enters it from the west part of Berlin, about a mile below Montpelier village. The name grew out of the fact that one of the white pioneer hunters had the misfortune to catch his dog in a trap set for beaver or otter in the edge of the stream, when the animal, in his struggles to escape, was drowned.

The manner by which this name was derived from the circumstance just named was cer tainly not quite so forced as that by which the wit derived the name of the British orator, Fox, from rainy day—" rainy day rain hard— reynard— Fox. But the process by which the subju gates, varying and abreviated from time to time, finally settled down into the name seems, nevertheless, to have been a little awkward, lt probably began and proceeded somewhat thus : Ihe river where the hunter lost his dog — the river of the lost dog — the lost dog river — Dog River. It could have been wished that this river had received a more appropriate and dignified name. It is surely deserving of one ; for it is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful streams, of its size, in the whole country, being surpassed by no other for the coolness, purity and crystal clear ness of its waters, which have ever made it, from the earliest settlement of the country to the present day, the favorite resort of the fastidious trout.

The next tributary in order is the Little North Branch, which, coming in on the opposite side, gathers most of its waters in Worcester, gains some additions in East Middlesex, and passes through the midst of Montpelier village, within which it enters the river. The reason why this was called the Little North Branch is not now very apparent, for it is not the least North Branch of the Winooski, the lesser one coming in about seven miles further up the river. It was probably so called, however, in contrast with the principal stream, which here begins to wind round the town from a northerly direction. But the impropriety of the term has latterly been obviated by the now more generally used name of the Worcester Branch. The third tributary in order is Stevens Branch, which, start ing within the borders of Williamstown, Washington and Orange, and draining the town of Barre and the east part of Berlin, enters the river, in the last named town, at the great northern bend about two miles above Montpelier village.

The name of this quiet stream was derived from a singular casualty, which may well be ranked among the incidents composing the romance of our early history. A reputable young man by the name of Stevens, residing in Corinth, when that was a frontier town bordering the great wilderness thence to Lake Champlain, was engaged in marriage to a girl of the same town, who, from fick leness or some unwarranted freak of jealousy, broke her plighted faith, and suddenly married another. This so wrought on the mind and feelings of Stevens that he soon resolved to banish himself from society into the lone forests, never more to return. Accordingly, throwing up his business, which was that of a house carpenter, he provided himself with gun, traps, and other things composing the hunter's outfit, and having made his way to the nearest part of the Winooski, established his camp on the east bank of the stream that subsequently took his name, about a quarter of a mile from its mouth, on the farm occupied, for the first forty years of the present century, by Daniel Thompson, the father of the writer of these pages.

This was, as has been sup posed, in early autumn ; and nothing more was heard from him until the following spring, when two hunters, passing that way, found his dead body near his camp, in a situation which pretty plainly indicated the circumstances which must have attended his melancholy exit. An old tree had fallen lengthwise the bank of the stream, so as to form a sort of wharfing to the deep, circular eddy here formed by an abrupt turn of the current above. A few feet in the rear of this fallen tree the body was found, with one hand resting on a fishing-pole, with a half rotted fish-line at tached, and extending across the log over the waters. Within about a rod of the body stood a hunter's camp, containing a gun, hatchet, traps, and a blanket spread over the usual bough-bed. Before the camp lay the charred remains of a fire, over which was suspended, from a cross-bar or pole lying in upright crotches, a camp kettle half filled with herbs and water ; while on a sharp knot, projecting from a spruce tree standing near by were found hanging a few mink skins, aud other small peltries.

He had ev idently been seized with sickness, superinduced probably by despondency , and here, in a last effort to procure a fish to sus tain life, while his herb tea was steeping, his strength had entirely failed him, and, with none to aid or nurse him, and no friendly eye to witness his death struggles, he had breathed his last alone in the dark wilderness. The exact spot where the hunters buried him was not known till about the year 1806, when Mr. Thomp son, in plowing up a spot from which he had removed an old hedge fence, turned out his bones. I, then a small boy, was present on the occasion, and the sensation which the sight of these remains, as they were thrown out by the deep furrow that was made lengthwise through them, with the rust-eaten jack knife lying in the midst, palpably to view, caused it to become one of the most vivid of my early recollections, and subsequently led me to make minute enquiries of the oldest settlers in all that related to the unfortunate hunter.

And it was from their con current testimony, and particularly that of Grandmother Fowler, as she was called, who was the wife of Jacob Fowler, the old hunter and first permanent settler of Berlin, and who, when a girl, lived in the same neighborhood with young Stevens, that these particulars were derived.* The fourth and upper great tributary of the Winooski is Kingsburys Branch, which, after draining most of the numerous ponds of Woodbury and Calais, enters the river in the north easterly corner of the town. Its name was derived from that of an early settler living on the stream. And for the particulars of the naming I am more especially indebted to A. J. Sibley, Esq., of North Montpelier, who, having investigated the subject, writes me : " There was once a man who lived in Woodbury, (but now lives in Goshen Gore,) very near this branch, and used to fish in it a great deal, and call it his branch ; and after calling it his branch lor many years, it became a name for everybody, who thenceforward called it Kingsbury 's Branch."

This completes our account of the , four great tributaries that enter the Winooski in and around Montpelier, more than doub ■ ling it in size. These four streams, except the one last described, which is perceptibly smaller than the three others, are so nearly alike in size that it is very difficult to decide which discharges the greatest average volume of water into the main river. Here the Winooski, after having wound, like a serpent, round half this town, and gathered in its course the tribute of these streams, seems to start off direct, in its accumulated strength, and sweep on, in an almost straight line, to the beautiful border lake, into which it disembogues its mountain waters. This river is the largest, and, considering its course almost through all the central portion of the State, and the immense number of mill privileges it furnishes, quite the most important river of the State.

The Vermont Gazetteer ranks the four lar gest rivers of the State, with their relative sizes computed from the number of square miles they respectively drain, as follows : The Winooski draining 970 square miles, the Otter 900, the White 680, and the Missisco 582 square miles. This method of computing the size of rivers might not be very accurate when comparing the rivers of one country with those of another, since some rivers flow through a long stretch of country after gaining nearly their full size, which would, of course, greatly increase the area they may be said to drain ; while others terminate al most as soon as they acquire their greatest volume, and therefore draw their water from a much smaller compass. But it is the * The Vermont Gazetteer, under the head of Berlin, states, in regard to this incident, that the bones of Stevens were discovered by Mr. Thompson in 1812, in digging a ditch.

There are two errors in this statement": the hones were found about a"hais dozen years earlier ; and they were plowed out of a dry piece of ground from which an old log and bush fence had just been removed. They were reinterred near, but the ex act place is again lost. most accurate method yet known ; and. so far as regards our Vermont rivers, must give their comparative sizes with a very close approximation to exactness. 1 have measured over the areas drained by these rivers, on our best maps, and cannot but think that, in case of the Winooski, the author of the Gazetteer, who probably computed by right line parallelograms, must have omitted the measurement of several irregularly shaped gores of land shooting out considerably beyond the general outline of the tributaries, such as those drained by the upper portions of Hun tington and Waterbury rivers ; and he thereby made the area drained by the river in question at least thirty square miles too small.

I cannot make the true area drained by this stream to be less than one thousand square miles. Its length, from its mouth to the head of its most distant source, in the town of Walden, is, when measured on the stream, nearer ninety miles than the seventy given for it in the Gazetteer. By the travelled roads nearest the stream, the distance between these two points is about seventy-five miles, and nearly ten more should be allowed, probably, for the short turns and windings of the river. The true head of this river, however, is in the Peacham, or Winooski Pond. Those who will go to the junction of the Cabot branch and the outlet of Peacham Pond, cannot fail to perceive, after a few fairly made observations, that the latter discharges the great est average volume of water, and should therefore be considered the main stream, and bear the name of Winooski to its true head in Peacham Pond, which should also take the same name.

From the source of the inlet of this pond, through the pond, down the tortuous outlet, and then down the river to its mouth, would probably be about seventy-five miles. The geological formation of the township of Montpelier is mainly slate and limestone, prevailing separately and wholly in a few localities, but perhaps more generally alternating on the same piece of ground, and mingled with other substances, such as talc, mica, hornblend, &c. The crumbling and pulverization of in termingled slate and lime compose, perhaps, the best and most durable soils to be found ; and this will account for the excellence of the soil of the town of Montpelier, and that of the other towns in Washington County of like formation. The site of Montpelier was evidently once the bed of a lake over one hundred feet deep.