USA > Vermont > Windham County > Marlboro > The history of the town of Marlborough, Windham County, Vermont > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 2695
GENEALOGY 974.302 M34N
THE HISTORY OF MARLBOROUGH VERMONT
1
THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF
MARLBOROUGH WINDHAM COUNTY VERMONT BY THE REVEREND EPHRAIM H. NEWTON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN CLEMENT
MONTPELIER VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY MDCCCCXXX
COPYRIGHTED 1930 BY VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES
OF AMERICA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1135727
List of Illustrations .
xi
Introduction .
1
HISTORY OF MARLBOROUGH
Chapter I-Location, Charters, Proprietors, etc. 21
Chapter II-First Settlement, Stockwell, Whitmore, Phelps, etc. 28
Chapter III-Grave Yards, Public Buildings, Casualties,
Conflagrations, War Achievements
40
Chapter IV-Natural Advantages, Minerals, Streams, Manufactories 53
Chapter V-First Congregational Society, Dr. Lyman 61
Chapter VI-Baptist and Methodist Churches
79
Chapter VII-Town Records, Town Meetings
86
List of Town Officers
96
List of Freemen . 108
List of Marriages 115
Catalogue of Literary Men
125
Genealogical and Biographical Notes
127
Index of Names .
279
General Index
321
.
4.00 - p
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Second Congregational Parsonage
facing page 8
Ephraim H. Newton, the Author
facing page 10
Phelps Family Graveyard .
facing page 42
Marlborough-The Meeting House, Tavern and Town House
facing page 48
Thomas Adams
facing page 127
Oliver Adams facing page 130
Brig. Gen. Phinehas Mather facing page 212
Mrs. Robinson Winchester
facing page 273
[ xi ]
INTRODUCTION
This history of Marlborough was compiled during the Civil War. Its writing and its writer, then a matter of contemporary knowledge, are now a part of history, and because they are an interesting part of the history of Vermont and of Marlborough, merit our attention. The courtesy of the author's granddaughter, Miss Ellen Huldah Newton, has made available the author's manuscript account of his family and himself, together with many other papers and letters. Miss Newton has also permitted the use of the fascinating Memoirs of John M. Newton, her father. Quotations and condensed statements from these sources form this introduction or additional chapter. We have in the author's own words a picture of his background, his life, and his time, with the circumstances of writing the book. There are many little details of life in Vermont, and especially in Marl- borough which show the character of people, and their manner of living, more clearly than volumes of description. One may sense, sometimes more clearly than the author, the rapid develop- ment and prosperity of Vermont in the 1820's and 1830's, and the changes which came with the great migration to the west, and with the coming of railroads, when Marlborough was helping to build a nation, at great loss to itself. Although tinged with pessimism, there is great charm in the author's delineation of himself, at work in and for the Marlborough he knew and loved.
Marshall Newton, of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, grandfather of Ephraim Holland Newton, our author, was a gunsmith. Like most men of some property, he speculated in wild lands, much as people now speculate in stocks and bonds, and among his holdings were several rights in Shoreham and Bridport on the New Hampshire Grants, at a time when those townships were chiefly unbroken wilderness. In 1773 or 1774, he sent his eldest son, Daniel, with team and wagon laden with tools and equipage to settle in Shoreham. This was a six weeks' journey, by way of Worcester, Hartford, Conn., Hudson, N. Y., up the Hudson River, down Wood Creek, to Lake Champlain. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Daniel buried his tools, returned to Shrews- bury, and entered the army. When the war ended, he returned,
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dug up his tools, became a prosperous farmer and was one of the founders of the Newton Academy in Shoreham.
Marshall's daughter, Eunice, married Ephraim Holland, of Boylston, Mass., who had been a Revolutionary soldier. Two sisters of his had married Luke Knowlton and Joshua Morse, "tories, . . . who to escape from the indignation of the whigs fled to Vermont, then called an 'out-law,' for it was not a state, neither did it belong to a state, and took refuge in . . . Newfane where they finally settled." After the close of the war, Ephraim Holland visited his sisters in Newfane, and settled there as a farmer, tavern keeper, and merchant. He was a respected citizen, a town officer, and a colonel of militia.
The third child of Marshall Newton, Marshall Newton, Jr., father of our author, was born in Shrewsbury, Mass., in 1757, and became a blacksmith. In 1775, he entered Washington's army in the "first eight months' service, and served in the right wing commanded by Gen. Ward, at Roxbury and Dorchester, during the siege of Boston." Unlike many of his contemporaries, he became attached to the military service, and reenlisted repeatedly, during seven years of the struggle. He was an artificer, and his travelling forge was part of the army baggage. Dr. Newton writes . . "I used to sit upon the dye tub, in the chimney corner, when a child, and after his hard day's work, hear him talk with the old soldiers (who always found welcome quarters at his house) and narrate with thrilling interest the war scenes of his military career. . . I have heard him speak of Dorchester Heights-the night scene of fortification which so alarmed Gen. Howe that he evacuated Boston . . . I have also heard him speak of being in the battle of Long Island, at the evacuation of New York City, ... in the battle of White Plains, .. . [and] . . . in the 'Jarseys' as he used to call it, with Gen. Washington .. . .. He was in the ranks when the American Army was drawn up in double columns to witness the surrender of Gen. Burgoyne."
After the peace, he returned to Shrewsbury, Mass., and thence, in 1784 or 1785, he followed his elder brother to Shoreham, Vermont, where he and Timothy Fuller Chipman were employed in carrying the chain in surveying the township. In 1785, he visited his sister, Eunice, in Newfane, bought six acres of land, and erected a blacksmith shop. In 1786, he married Lydia
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Newton, of Shrewsbury, Mass., and brought her back, the seventy miles then called a three days' journey to Newfane. He was not only a blacksmith, making and selling all sorts of farm implements; he was a trader, buying and selling or bartering lands, furs, cattle, etc., making his trades while he worked at his forge. He took pelts to Boston each year, exchanging them for iron, steel, tools, groceries, and other necessaries. He brought books for his children-the New England Primer, Cock-Robin, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Children of the Wood, Mother Goose's Melody. Dr. Newton recollected "the high gratification experienced on his return, and the great im- patience and self-denial endured in being under the necessity of going into another room out of sight, and then to the trundle bed until morning to give him an opportunity of bringing his wares into the kitchen and smoking them over the fire as a precautionary measure against the smallpox. Boston was 110 miles from Newfane, and the journey down and back was performed in about twelve days." Marshall Newton, Jr., took a deep interest in the education of his children and in the founding of free schools. Though he was "a tolerable reader, wrote a fair hand, and was sufficiently versed in arithmetic to render him accurate in business, and quite equal to men of his age, still he felt the loss of a better education." According to his son, he called himself a Presbyterian, but supported and attended the Congregational church; accord- ing to his grandson he was ungodly, and had perhaps imbibed the French infidel notions prevalent in the army. Probably both were correct, for after the severity of Jonathan Edwards, there was a very strong deistic movement-called infidel-in the late eighteenth century, followed by a return to the somewhat softened and more varied religion of the early nineteenth century. Politically he was a whig, of the school of Washington, whom he revered almost as a father. He was persevering at his own business, seldom leaving it for an hour, generous to his family, hospitable to strangers, rich or poor. He died in his seventy- seventh year, Dec. 15, 1833, leaving a fortune, considerable for the time, to his family.
Lydia Newton, his wife, was a "hard working woman, and bore her full share of toil and care with my father in providing for the family and in laying up in store for future wants. I well
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remember her hand at the distaff, the wheel and loom, carding, spinning, and weaving . . . for the clothing of the family, the beds, and other domestic uses; also in making butter and cheese, in cooking and doing the house work for a large family, and not neglecting her true devotion to the interests of her little ones. I also remember her loaded tables well enriched with the luxuries of the age in a thanksgiving supper in the true New England style; also the election cake with which to stuff the family and the children of the neighborhood on the fourth Wednesday of May."
Their eldest son, Ephraim Holland Newton, was born June 13, 1787. As there was no opportunity near their home, he was boarded out at the age of four, to attend school, but returned home when a school was established in the vicinity. In his boyhood he raised, purchased, and otherwise aided in setting out fruit trees in the orchard south of his home. When he was not at school, he usually spent his time in the blacksmith shop, learning the trade which his father had ordained for him. "But," writes John M. Newton, he "had determined otherwise, and when he had once made up his mind to a course of action, it was exceedingly hard to turn him from it. He resolved, in his own words, to be something better than a mere pounder of hot iron.
Education was the first thing to be obtained, and the way was rough and difficult."
While he swayed the bellows pole up and down, an open book would rest on the chimney of the forge, and despite the frowns of his father and the rough jeers of his fellow workmen, he mastered Daboll's Arithmetic, a Latin Grammar, and Cornelius Nepos. In 1805, he was employed by Jonathan Smith to take charge of the district school in the southwest corner of the town of Marlborough. "On the 25th day of November, he left home and walked on foot with his bundle in hand fourteen miles over frozen ground to commence his public labors in life." At about the same period he was preparing for college at the Academy, in Newfane, and with the Rev. Alvan Tobey, of Wilmington, a fair classical scholar.
In 1806, he was sent north by his father to buy cattle and drive them home. On his return he stopped over night at Middlebury, and, sitting by the bar-room fire he learned that the examination for entrance to college was to occur the next day. He joined the
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candidates, found the questions surprisingly easy, and was admitted to college. The drove of cattle was sent home with the men who had accompanied him. He had no money, and no other clothes than his dusty drover's suit, but he took a room, borrowed books and began to study; sawing wood and doing chores to pay for his board. His father was furious at this desertion of the blacksmith's trade for education, and threatened to disinherit him, but his mother sent him a huge iron bound chest containing home made clothing, blankets, and nearly a bushel of substantial doughnuts, and later, from time to time, clothes and money. Nevertheless, he had to use every possible economy, taught school in the long winter vacations, and worked in the fields in the summer, earning the high summer wages of about thirty- three cents a day. At any time he would have been welcomed by his father at the forge, but he preferred to struggle for an education, planning to become a physician.
In the autumn of 1809, a revival was held in Middlebury, which brought him and many others into the Congregational Church. Revival of religion occurred throughout the country in this period, wiping out much of the Deism, Rationalism, and in- difference of the late 18th century. In November, of 1809, he was employed during the four months' winter vacation as teacher in a log school house in Shoreham, where he became engaged to Huldah Chipman, daughter of Timothy Fuller Chipman. Among his pupils were boys who later attained prominence, a governor of Vermont, a member of Congress, a president of two colleges who took the tour of Europe, a lawyer, one or more physicians, etc. Returning to college, he decided to join the ministry. This was a severe blow to his father, who had become reconciled gradually to the idea of a physician, and had sent him some money. "To be a parson, a man who could never lay up money or speculate, was too bad."
In August, 1810, he was graduated from Middlebury, and in the following November he entered the Andover Theological Seminary, where he completed his course in September, 1813. In the preceding April he had been licensed to preach by the Haverhill, Massachusetts, Association of Congregational Ministers. After the death of the Rev. Gershom C. Lyman, D.D., he was invited to preach in Marlborough, and was ordained and installed as pastor in March, 1814. In the following January,
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he went to Shoreham. After he had preached his sermon, he descended from the pulpit, walked down the aisle to the pew where Huldah Chipman awaited him, and marched with her to the pulpit, where he was married by the Rev. Mr. Morton, father of Levi P. Morton.
The couple went home to Marlborough, to their little one-and- a-half story frame dwelling. John M. Newton, their son, describes their life there. "Everything was of the simplest and plainest style, with one exception-my mother had a china tea set.
People . . . ordinarily ate from wooden trenchers, and on such occasions as Thanksgiving and marriage feasts, from pewter platters burnished bright as silver, which had been handed down from one generation to another. . . I never saw a napkin at my father's table until I was eighteen years old, and never a silver fork. When my mother first came to Marlborough there was not a carpet in the town, but she . . . determined to have one. The small salary of $300 which my father then received would not allow her to send to Boston for one. .
"Every woman then knew how to spin. Many a time have I seen the light, trim figure of my mother whirling the big wheel and stepping back while she with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand deftly drew out the roll of wool to the required size as it was twisted by the rapidly turning spindle. She . carded and spun the wool, dyed it with brilliant colors, and sent it off to be woven. When it . . . was put down, it produced a great commotion. On Sundays the house was more than usually thronged by the sturdy red-cheeked matrons who would satisfy their curiosity in part by silently gazing on the rainbow beauty of its striped pattern. It would be very wicked to ask or make any allusions to the wonderful web on the Lord's day, but during the week the calls would be incessant.
People would come miles to examine it and ask how it was made."
Mrs. Newton won all hearts by her gentle kindness. "She was the receptacle of all the love affairs that troubled the soft bosoms of the young girls of her husband's church. Her husband's life was different. In his Vermont congregation he ruled not only the consciences but a great part of the worldly affairs of his flock. It is difficult now . . , to conceive how rigid and how thorough was the power of the minister in the old times. My father not only was the spiritual guide, but he directed the town
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affairs. He was town clerk and town treasurer; he told his people whom they should elect to represent them at Montpelier; he advised with his church members in what way they should invest their surplus money, and told the young men and maidens when and whom to marry; he also taught young men the higher branches of study and fitted them for college. He therefore took possession of the children when born and baptised them, gave them when grown their spiritual and mental instruction, directed them in their material relations, guided them through life, and when they were dead conducted them to the grave. This power being almost absolute was rarely ever abused; the impulse was generally given in the right direction towards honesty and self- reliance, education and industry. From the education of such upright despots-and they were thousands-has sprung up a great deal of whatever is good and true in the present New England character. The only way in which I think they erred was in binding down the minds of their people into a too rigid religionism, in believing that man was made for religion instead of religion for man."
"Church goers . " continues John M. Newton, "must have been very sincere, or the pressure of public opinion very strong, to force them to undergo the great hardships consequent on their attendance. It was no trifling matter to go in the cold January or February to the meeting house, perched for the purpose of a watch tower on the summit of the highest hill .
To this place they would come, though the wind chilled them to the marrow, and sit through the long sermons during the fore- noon and afternoon services in the cold church that was never warmed by stoves or any fire. I very well recollect . . . seeing the breath congeal as it issued from my father's mouth, and noticing that he gesticulated more vehemently in such weather than he did when the month was July or August.
"In the winter some of the men who were infirm of health, and nearly all of the women, carried footstoves which imparted warmth to their feet, and everyone wore the thickest, heaviest clothing. At the intermission at noon, which was given for the purpose of luncheon and of feeding the horses which were shelter- ed from the wind in a row of long low sheds, these footstoves would be carried by the men across the street to the tavern, to be refilled with glowing coals from the barroom fire, which was
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kept blazing high all the morning to be in readiness for such requirements. A footstove was a box about a foot square, with holes in the top to let the heat of the coals through. The coals were contained in a sheet iron drawer, . . . securely fastened. As each man entered the barroom he would call for his mug of flip which was made of New England rum or Santa Croix, well sweetened with their only sweetening, maple sugar, flavored daintily with cinnamon or nutmeg, and warmed by the red hot flip iron being plunged hissing into the compound. Then the deacons, sitting before the huge chimney place that roared with a great volume of flame which went blazing up, and sipping the pleasant tipple, would lead off the conversation in the discussion of the points of the sermon they had just heard, and it was in- variably to be noticed that the deeper they got into their pewter mugs, the more foggy and abstruse were their theological ideas. This conversation would continue until the time arrived for the commencement of the afternoon service, when they took their footstoves newly filled with glowing coals and waded back through the snow to the meeting house, to enjoy another hour of solid preaching. The women, during the intermission, would flock over to the parsonage nearby to eat their lunch and talk in much the same manner as their husbands and fathers, but more enlivened by the petty scandal of a small town. The smaller fry of children would accompany their mothers, while the larger boys listened in rapt attention to the words of wisdom that fell from the old men's lips and longed for the time when they as deacons could take the mug of flip and sit before the great crackling fire."
During Dr. Newton's pastorate of twenty years in Marl- borough, the town and the church grew and prospered. One hundred and thirty-three members were received into the congregation, a new parsonage and a new meeting house were erected. On the occasion of the raising of his house, September 13, 1814, the young parson received the following note:
"Sir, you observed you had nothing but whiskey without sugar for drink. Let the circumstances be as they may, I fear that some will take occasion to say, 'our minister is not given to hospitality' if their drink is not better as the general opinion is, the people have been remarkable generous. We will lend you sugar if it will be any accommodation.
ESTHER SMITH"
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THE SECOND CONGREGATIONAL PARSONAGE IN WHICH THE AUTHOR RESIDED
----
Another letter is of some interest:
"Marlborough, November the 25, 1820.
Sir, I Wold Inform you that my belief is Different From yours. Forthermre I am accomadated With preaching much Nearer I think it no more than rite that I Should pay For preaching Ware it best answers my mind. Tharfore I wish you to tack my Name ofe the Covenant that I Sind to pay you as I Shal not Consider my Self holen to pay you anny Longer
yurs With Respect
James Corse Junr
Rev. Ephraim H. Newton."
In his "Common Place Book" Dr. Newton made the following entry :
"June 13, 1826. This day I am 39 years old, and hold the following offices as the gift of my fellow immortals. Viz.
Pastor of the Congregational Church of Christ in Marlborough, Vermont,-and Scribe or Clerk of the same.
Librarian and Clerk of the Social Library Society.
Clerk of School District No. 7, in Marlborough.
Toun Clerk & Register of Deeds of said Marlborough.
President of Gentlemen's Association auxiliary to the A. B. C. F. M.
Vice-President of Windham County Bible Society.
Register of the Consociated Churches of Windham County.
Scribe of the Windham County Association.
Scribe of the Ministers' Meeting of Windham Association.
Member and President of the Corporation of Brattleboro Academy.
Chaplain of the 2d Regt. 1st Brigd., 1st Divn. Vt. Militia. Receiver of Windham Association for Vt. Gen. Convention.
Director of the Vermont Juvenile Missionary Society.
A Manager of the Vermont Sabbath School Union Soc'y.
Life Member of the American Bible Society, the Ladies of Marbº.'
Life Member of the American Tract Society by Ladies of Marlboro.'
Honorary Member of the Society of Alumni Wms. College, Mass. Member of the Society of Alumni Middlebury College, Vt.
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Instructor of a Private school, head of a family, and a Poor man. I am ashamed that I am no better. Resolved to live devoted to God .- E. H. Newton."
In 1832, Dr. Newton resigned his pastorate in Marlborough, and in the following February became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Glens Falls, N. Y. In 1836, he became pastor in Cambridge, N. Y., resigning in 1843 to become Principal of Cambridge Washington Academy, in which he continued with success till 1848. He had a great fondness for the natural sciences, and formed a mineralogical collection of some ten thousand specimens which he presented in 1857, to the Andover Theological Seminary, spending several summers in arrangement and preparation of a catalogue. Later he gave his library of about a thousand volumes to Middlebury College. From Middle- bury he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1859, he made a trip to the newly commenced Hoosac Tunnel, of which he wrote a very interesting account.
After an absence from Marlborough of twenty-seven years, Dr. Newton returned, and during his second pastorate commen- ced the writing of this history. His letters, written chiefly to his daughter, depict his life and his impressions of the town. Extracts in chronological order form almost a journal of in- teresting comment. In the first of these one may behold the tall, spare, dignified and kindly old man of seventy-three, feeling like a veritable Rip Van Winkle.
Aug. 6, 1860. "Yesterday I occupied my old pulpit, but not by any means as it was formerly. The House has been (for certain reasons) removed from its former foundation and meta- morphosed into a single upper room, leaving one half of the house unoccupied. The day was pleasant, and the attendance satis- factory. The people knew me because they expected to see me, but not 20 in the house whom I could name correctly at first sight. The people gathered around me-took me by the hand, and greeted me as a child long absent would greet a father-some wept, and the scene flung me into a flood of tears. The young people of my early ministry whom I joined in joyous wedlock are now decrepit with age. Many of survivors have buried their companions and in some instances married again. This morning I have taken a tramp on foot of several miles over grounds rough, rocky and of steep ascent. I took Alester onto the spot where stood the first jail in the County of Cumberland and State of New York, and to the spot where were held the first
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Ephraim A. Newton
courts in said County, and where they whipped a woman for -: and while at the whipping post where the public had gathered around to gaze upon so delightful a scene, a couple were pub- lished with their intention of marriage, which then the law required. At the whipping post-a singular spot indeed for such an announcement [Alester] expects to take the stage this evening and take his leave of the far-famed Con- necticut valley, the lofty Monadnock which looms up before us, and is seen in the distance from the classic halls of Andover. He bids adieu to all that is lovely upon our proud protuber- ances of earth and the charm of the music of our groves ..
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