USA > Vermont > Rutland County > Middletown > The history of Middletown, Vermont, in three discourses, delivered before the citizens of that town, February 7 and 21, and March 30, 1867 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 2760
1
THE
HISTORY
OF
MIDDLETOWN, VERMONT, IN 1
THREE DISCOURSES,
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
CITIZENS OF THAT TOWN,
FEBRUARY 7 AND 21, AND MARCH 30, 1867,
BY THE
Hon. BARNES FRISBIE,
POULTNEY, VT.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE CITIZENS OF MIDDLETOWN.
RUTLAND, VT. TUTTLE & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1867.
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyofmiddlet00fris
1770101
HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS :- You have assembled this evening to hear from me the history of Middletown. I should rejoice if I could assure you that I had a full and complete his- tory ; but I cannot so assure you. I have recently written it out, although I have for twelve years or more intended to do so, and in the meantime have been collecting the materials, as I had opportunity. I now present it to you, not as a full and complete history, but as the best production I am able to give you.
Much of the early history of the town is in oblivion. Fifty years ago, when many of those pioneer fathers and mothers were living, the most of it might have been gathered up and saved ; but such as I have been able to collect in my time is hereby most respectfully and affectionately dedicated to and for the use of my native town.
I wish here to say, that for the literary merits of my produc- tion I claim nothing. My desire, and, I may say, only purposes have been to collect all the material facts I possibly could which go to make up your history, and to express them intelligibly and truthfully, conscious that if those facts can be preserved, they may be put in better form by some one more capable than myself, who shall come after me.
In regard to the history of this town, however, I do claim, that with the labor and attention I have given the matter during the last twelve years, that I have collected a good deal more of it than is now in the possession of any other person ; hence the importance of my writing it. I fear that unless I should write it,
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
and leave it where it will be preserved, that a large portion of what I now have, incomplete and imperfect as it is, would be beyond the reach of mortals at my decease. With this view I have written it, and am now happy to meet this full house and read it.
MIDDLETOWN is situated in the south-western part of Rutland County, and is bounded on the north by Poultney and Ira, on the east by Ira and Tinmouth, on the south by Tinmouth and Wells, and on the west by Wells and Poultney. As will be seen from the map, its shape or form is peculiar, which will be hereafter accounted for. The territory of which it is composed was taken from the towns of Poultney, Ira, Timmouth and Wells. Poultney, Tinmouth and Wells received their charters as early as 1761. The date of the charter of Ira is believed to have been about the same time, though I have been unable to obtain the exact date.
About three-fourths of a mile north of the village of Middle- town, a little east of the present dwelling house of Harvey Lef- fingwell, and in a pasture belonging to Royal Coleman, Esq., is the locality where was the north-east corner of Wells, the south- east corner of Poultney, the south-west corner of Ira, and the north-west corner of Tinmouth. The line from thence, between the towns of Wells and Tinmouth, run south, passing in its course through the eastern part of the village between the school house and the stream, a little west of the school house; also, in its course further south, it makes the west line of the "old Zenas Frisbie farm," so called, the cast line of the "Thomas Morgan farm,"' and passes very near the west line of the "Burnam farm," now owned by S. W. Southworth, and the " Perry farm," now owned by Mr. Atwater. The line from thence (the corners above named), between the towns of Poultney and Ira, ran directly north from those corners, and lines running east and west from thence divided the towns above named.
. The township of Middletown was created by an act of the Leg- islature of October 28th, 1784. Prior to that time the town. or the territory of which it is composed, was included in the above named four towns, with the lines as above indicated. The settle- ment of the town, or the territory, was commenced some years
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
before 1784; and in speaking of this settlement, we shall, for convenience, speak of it as in Middletown.
The exact date when the first settlers of the town came here, perhaps cannot now be given. It was before the revolutionary war. Mr. Thompson in his history says, that " the settlement was commenced a short time before the revolutionary war by Thomas Morgan and others," "and mills were erected." Thomas Mor -. gan came here before the war, and so did Richard and Benjamin Haskins, Phineas Clough and Luther Filmore. Mr. Morgan, who lived until 1841, said to me before his death, that when he came here he found his way by marked trees, and that when he arrived not a tree had been cut, but throughout the entire town it was one unbroken forest. He also said to me, that he came about three years before the war commenced, and that when that commenced he left. But he probably treated the stirring events of 1777 in this region, in which we may include the evacuation of Ticonder- . oga, Burgoyne's invasion, and the battle of Bennington, as the commencement of the war, for he was here until a short time before the battle of Bennington, which occurred August 16th, 1777, over two years after the war had commenced. So that the probability is that the settlement was commenced in 1774.
Mr. Morgan, after he came, like all the carly settlers, put up a log house, and commenced clearing up the forest Mr. Morgan purchased a hundred acres of land about three-fourths of a mile south of where the village now is, and put up his log house a few feet north of where the framed house now stands on the "old Morgan farm." By the summer of 1777, I should judge, he had made considerable progress in clearing up his land, as he had that summer four acres of wheat, some sixty or seventy rods from his house, opposite of where Truman Kibburn now lives, and on the east side and adjoining what is now known as the " Coy Ilill road." He was called away to Bennington, and his wheat was never harvested. Richard Haskins had commenced a settlement a little cast of the village, near where Lucius Copeland, Esq., now lives. He, too, in the summer of 1777, had two acres of wheat which he never harvested, but went to Bennington.
Benj. Haskins had built a log house and commenced a settle-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
ment near where Dea. A. Haynes now lives. Luther Filmore had put up a log house on the south-west corner of what is now known as " the green," in the village. Where Phineas Clough first located himself is not now positively known; but he very early settled on what has since been known as the "Orcutt farm," now occupied by Mr. Lobdill. Those five men are all who are now known to have been here before the Revolutionary war. They all left in the summer of 1777, joined the militia at Manchester, and were all in Bennington battle.
But were " mills erected " before the war? The mills known as " Miner's mills," in an early day, were built by Gideon Miner in 1782. They were located about a mile and a half east of where the village now is. Mr. Morgan then assisted Mr. Miner, as a workman, in building the mills. Morgan brought the mill irons from Bennington on a horse. Some of the Miner family have informed us that there was " some sort of a mill there " when Mr. Miner came ; but Mr. Morgan's descendants are confident that he had nothing to do with mills in Middletown until he worked for Miner in 1782. So that we cannot reliably state by whom this some sort of a mill was built. The opinion of the old people seems to have been that it was the work of Mr. Morgan. It might have been ; but whosoever it was, the mill never went into operation, and Mr. Miner had to build anew in 1782.
Mr. Thompson says, that the settlers " returned after the war." It is true there was not much done by way of settlement for some three or four years subsequent to the summer of 1777, when the settlers left to meet the invaders at Bennington. But we find Benj. Haskins and Phineas Clough back here in 1778, and Mor- gan and Filmore were back soon after; and a good many others were here before the close of the war. Azor Perry came as carly as 1778. James and Thomas McClure, it is supposed, came in 1779. William and Jonathan Frisbie came in 1781; and Gideon Miner, Nathaniel Wood and his sons, Jacob and Ephraim, Caleb Smith, Jonathan Brewster, Gamaliel Waldo, Nathan Walton, and some others were here as early as 1782. And Joseph Spaulding and some others, it is supposed, came the same year, but we can- not be positive. We find that a Congregational Church was organ-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
ized as early as the spring of 1782, and Mr. Spaulding was made the clerk of the church.
We shall now omit further mention of the first settlers, and the incidents, trials and hardships attending the settlement, until after we give an account of the organization of the town.
It is evident that the settlement was rapid, for in the fall of 1784, the people petitioned the Legislature, then in session at Rutland, for a new town-and we can now very readily see that the settlers upon those parts of the then towns of Poultney, Ira, Tinmouth and Wells, now included in the limits of Middletown, would naturally become a community by themselves, and unite their interests and feelings in spite of town lines. They had already done so --- two churches had been organized-Congrega- tional and Baptist, and a log meeting house erected near the south-east corner of the present burial ground, and the members of the churches were from the four towns, but had a common center, where it has been since, and now is. If those town lines had never been changed, there must have been the same churches here, the same business-the same village. Nature formed the territory for a town, and as the settlers increased in numbers, they became aware of it.
The original petition for a town, I have not been able to find, but the prayer of the petitioners was granted. On the 28th day of October, 1784, the Legislature passed an act of which the following is a copy :
An Act constituting a new Town by the name of Middletown.
" WHEREAS, the inhabitants of a part of the towns of Wells, " Tinmouth, Poultney and Ira, which are included in the bounds " hereinafter described, have, by their petition represented, that "" they labor under great inconveniences with meeting with their " several towns for public worship and town business, by reason " of being surrounded by high mountains,
" Be it therefore enacted, and it is hereby enacted by the repre- "tentatives of the freemen of the State of Vermont in General " Assembly met, and by the authority of the same, that the tract " of land or district hereinafter described, be and is hereby created " and incorporated into a township, by the name of Middletown,
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
" and the inhabitants thereof and their successors with the like "privileges and prerogatives, which the other towns in the state " are invested with, viz :
" Beginning at a beech tree marked, standing west 26 degrees " south 310 chains from the north-east corner of Wells; thence " east 40 degrees south 290 chains, to a white ash tree standing " in Tinmouth west line ; thence east 10 degrees south 45 chains, " to a beech marked ; thence north 33 degrees east 264 chains, " to a beech marked; thence north 10 degrees west 333 chains, " to stake and stones standing in Poultney east line; thence " south 10 degrees west 28 chains, to stake and stones; thence " west 11 degrees north 60 chains, to a small beech marked ; " thence south 45 chains, to a hard becch tree; thence west 40 " degrees south 207 chains 5 links, to a stake and stones standing " in Wells north line ; thence west -- south 4 chains, to a stake ; " thence south 10 degrees west 185 chains, to the first mentioned " bounds."
From Thompson's Vermont we find that three thousand five hundred and ten acres were taken from Tinmouth, six thousand one hundred and eighteen acres from Wells, two thousand three hundred and eighty-eight acres from Poultney, and one thousand eight hundred and twenty-acres from Ira ; making in all fourteen thousand eight hundred and forty-one acres.
Those " high mountains," with which the petitioners for a new town were " surrounded," seem to have directed the survey ; as, in point of fact, all acquainted with the locality well know that the town is surrounded by hills and mountains running around it in such directions, that the survey, as above given, in running around on the tops of those hills and mountains, gives the pecu- liar and unusual form which Middletown has, as will be seen from the map ; and this accounts for the form or shape of the town.
I have very much desired to give you more than I am able to of the action of the people in procuring their charter; or, more properly speaking perhaps, their act of incorporation, and for that purpose have sent to the office of the Secretary of State for the original petition, but the Secretary writes me that it cannot be found. Joseph Spaulding, doubtless, took the lead in that move-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
ment. He was a practical surveyor, and made the survey which appears in the act; and in this survey he was governed by his own judgment, that is, the people submitted that matter to him, and he, in fact, located the bounds of the town. He ran his lines where he thought it best for all concerned, and no one, either in Middletown or the towns from which it was taken, to our knowl- edge, was ever dissatisfied ; and, indeed we do not see how any. one could be. After Mr. Spaulding had made his survey, and completed his arrangements for bringing the matter before the Legislature, the people conceded to him the honor of giving the name to the town, which he did. Mr. Spaulding had removed here from Middletown, Conn., and that name he said was thereby suggested to him, and he thought it very appropriate from the fact that the new town which they had in contemplation, and which if created, would be located in the middle of four towns. In the fall of 1784, the Legislature of Vermont sat at. Rutland. Mr. Spaulding, with the petition in his pocket-the necessary arrange- ments having been completed-went to Rutland while the Legisla- ture was in session, and as we say in modern times " engineered it through ;" the act was passed.
This act of the Legislature we have seen was passed October 28th, 1784. We find a record of a town meeting November 17th, 1784, of which the following is & copy :
" At a town meeting holden at Middletown, at the *meeting " house, on Wednesday, the 17th day of November, 1784, " Voted, Edmund Bigelow, Moderator ; Joseph Rockwell, Town " Clerk ; Edmund Bigelow, Justice of the Peace ; elected as a " committee, Edmund Bigelow, Joseph Rockwell and Joseph " Spaulding, [to reckon with several inhabitants of the town " respecting costs made in getting the town established. The " meeting was adjourned to Thursday the 22d inst."
" At the adjourned meeting-Voted, That the amount allowed " by the committee chosen for examining accounts for getting the " town established be two pounds, 12 shillings and 7 pence.
JOSEPH ROCKWELL, Register."
* The meeting house mentioned was the log one.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
The record of which the foregoing is a copy, must be regarded as the record of the organization of the town. There is no record of any notice of the meeting, (if there was one it was not recorded,) but the record leaves no doubt of the date of the organ- ization, to wit: November 17th, 1784. From this record we learn that Edmund Bigelow was the first moderator of the town, and the first Justice of the Peace-the latter office he held for many years afterwards, and that Joseph Rockwell was the first Town Clerk. We also learn the expenses of " getting the town established," from which we may conclude that it was not very expensive, at least to the town.
The first annual town meeting was holden March 7th, 1785, at which meeting they elected the following town officers : Hon. Thomas Porter of Tinmouth, being present, was chosen moderator, Joseph Rockwell, town clerk ; Jonathan Brewster, Jacob Wood and Edmund Bigelow, selectmen ; Caleb Smith, town treasurer ; Ephraim Wood, constable ; Ashur Blunt, Jona. Griswold, Reuben .Searl, listers; Silas Mallary, collector ; Jona. Frisbie, leather sealer ; Samuel Sunderlin, Reuben Searl, grand jurymen ; Nathan Record, tithingman ; Elisha Gilbert, hayward; Caleb Smith, brander of horses ; Increase Rudd, sealer of measures ; Edmund Bigelow, sealer of weights ; Abraham White, Solomon Hill, John Sunderlin, Benjamin Haskins, Benjamin Coy, Phineas Clough and James McClure, highway surveyors; " Luther Filmore, pound keeper, Thomas Morgan, William Frisbie and Increase Rudd, fence viewers.
At the same meeting Ephraim Wood, Gamaliel Waldo, Reuben Searl, Bethel Hurd Benj. Coy, James McClure and Edmund Bigelow, were appointed a committee to divide the town into school districts. That committee afterwards performed that duty, and the school districts, with a very little alteration, remain to this day as recommended by that committee.
At the same meeting the town
" Voted, to work two days on highways."
" Voted, that swine should not run at large."
" Toted, that warnings be put up on the meeting house until a " sign post be erected."
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HISTORY OF MIDDLETOWN.
Immediately following the record of this the first annual town meeting, is a record of what is called " A Roll of the freemen of Middletown." There is no date given to it, and my first impres- sion was, that it was a list of those who voted at a freeman's meeting in the fall of 1785, but on examination of it, and other records and facts that have come to my knowledge, I was well satisfied that it was made in the spring of 1785. It may be a list of those who voted at the town meeting March 7th, 1785, but that it was made early in the spring of that year, I think is quite certain. This " Roll " I have copied. The following are the names :
Ephraim Wood,
Isaiah Johnson,
William Frisbie,
John Sunderlin,
Abel White,
Anson Perry,
Dan'l Haskins,
Benj. Coy,
Sylvanus Stone,
Samuel Sunderlin,
Timothy Smith,
Thomas French,
Jacob Wood,
Francis Perkins,
- Gideon Buel, Caleb Smith,
Reuben Searle,
Samuel Stoddard,
Joseph Spaulding,
-Benj. Butler,
Jona Griswold,
Jona. Brewster,
Nathan Record,
Gamaliel Waldo,
Benj. Haskins, V
Jona. Haynes,
Jona. Mehuran, Elisha Gilbert,
Joseph Rockwell, David Griswold, Edmund Bigelow,
Jesse Hubbard,
Thomas Morgan,
Philemon Wood,
Barzilla Handy, Gideon Miner.
Chauncy Graves,
Jona. Frisbie,
It is very fortunate for our purpose that the foregoing roll was made and recorded. By that means we are now able to give all . or nearly all the names of the first settlers of the town, or of those who settled here prior to the spring of 1785. We can add to that list the names of Luther Filmore, James and Thomas McClure and Silas Mallary, who are known to have been here prior to the time this roll was made. Fillmore, as we have seen, was here before the revolutionary war, and was elected pound keeper at the first annual meeting ; Mallary was elected collector, and James and Thomas MeClure are known to have been here about as early as 1779. Were it in my power, I should give a biography of each and every man on the roll, and of the four others last above
Increase Rudd,-
Richard Haskins,
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named ; but I shall give you all that I have been able to learn of them, after speaking generally of their character, and of the progress they had made in the settlement of the town up to this time, (spring of 1785.) It is due to the memory of those pioneers that we record their good deeds-and this too, we would also do for the benefit of the present and future generations. If we may learn from example,. in my opinion, none more worthy can be found than we have in the men whose names are on that roll. They were men of great physical strength and endurance, but that was not all ; they were men of decided energy and mental ability-nor was that all ; they were honest men, unselfish, and a large majority of them were religious men of the Puritan stamp. They were mostly from Connecticut, and came poor, some with nothing but their hands, others with a horse or a yoke of oxen, bringing with them their families and effects upon a wagon or sled. I have often thought that we, at this day, have very inadequate ideas of what is to be done in a new country, especially in one covered with a heavy forest as this was before our ancestors came here. The prairies of the West may be put under improvement, and towns built up with much less labor and time-but when a man makes a pitch in the woods, though he may be young, strong and healthy, the best part of his life for physical labor will be spent by the time his farm is cleared up and under cultivation, and his buildings are erected; and in addition to this, roads and bridges are to be built; churches and school houses to be organ- ized, and all the institutions of civilization are to be founded. . But those men who first came here were equal to the task ; each selected his place, put up his rude cabin, went into it with his family and effects, and commenced at once in clearing up his land. Interrupted as the settlement was by the revolutionary war, yet we find by the first grand list which was taken in the spring of 1785, that five hundred and seventy-four acres of land had then been cleared. The personal property put into that grand list was eighty-one cows, forty-seven horses, thirty-six oxen, eighty steers, seventy-three head of other cattle, and twenty-two swine. It is a small grand list when compared with that of the town at the present time, but the wonder is how they could have cleared up
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that amount of land and acquired that amount of stock in so short a time. A large portion of this work had been accomplished in the years of 1782-3 and 1784. My father who was a son of William Frisbie, told me before he died, that when his father's family came here, which we have seen was in 1781, that he could distinctly recollect what had then been done by way of settlement. He was then six years old. He said that Filmore had cleared up three or four acres where the village now is. Morgan had a little more than that cleared, and the two Haskins and Azor Perry had made some progress in their clearing. He told me that according to his recollection, six log houses had been put up within the pres- ent limits of the town, when he came here. Those he gave me as Mr. Morgan's, Filmore's, the two Haskins', Clough's and Azor Perry's. Those were undoubtedly all there were in the town, or within what is now the town in the spring of 1781, except what had been put up on the " McClure road," as it has been called- for it is well known that Isaac Clark (old Riffe) settled there as early as 1779, and that .year he was made town clerk of Ira, and James and thomas McClure settled there, it is believed, the same . year. My father did not know of this, or it had escaped his recollection.
Those facts are now referred to, to show the rapidity of the settlement, and it may be added that but few came in 1781, so that by far the greater portion of what was done prior to the spring of 1785 was performed during the years of 1782, '83 and '84. At this time, (1785) we find at least forty-four freemen in the town-the number of inhabitants might have been three or four hundred, as most of the early settlers had large families. We find they had cleared up five hundred and seventy-four acres of land, and this was in small patches from one to thirty acres in different parts of the town ; they had procured a charter or act of incorporation, and had organized the town. Two churches had been organized, Congregationalist and Baptist, a meeting house had been built, and initiatory steps had been taken to divide the town into school and highway districts. A grist and saw mill had · been erected, and were in active operation, grinding the grain of the settlers, and sawing their lumber. Three framed houses had
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been built in the town, and preparations were being made for building more. Thus we have before us what this band of men with strong hands and resolute hearts accomplished in this short space of time.
But we are to speak of those men individually, and in doing this we shall also in the same connection, speak of their descend- ants. This may not be in proper order, but with my want of ability and experience as a writer, I do not propose to be responsi- ble for any want of order or method in my history, but expect to be responsible for the statement of facts I give.
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