USA > Vermont > Early history of Vermont, Vol. II > Part 14
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Sugar for the family use was made from the maple tree. In early spring the farmers bored
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holes in the trees in which they drove spouts through which the sap ran and was caught in troughs dug out from blocks of wood, and wooden buckets. The sap was boiled in large and small iron kettles that were hung upon poles. The writer has seen as many as eight five pail ket- tles hung in double rows, side by side, in which the sap was boiled. The sap would be boiled till it became thick like molasses-this was called "syr- uping off." When a large quantity of syrup had accumulated, a day would be set for "sugaring off," when friends and neighbors were invited in to the sugar orchard to eat sugar, when all would have a merry good time.
Usually the merry gatherings of the young peo- ple were mingled with the necessary labor con- nected with the farm, or household duties. At harvesting-time the corn in large quantities would be gathered into the barns and sheds. Then a large party of young men and maidens, invited to the "husking-bee," would take their seats on milk- ing stools and benches, improvised for the occasion, around the unhusked piles of corn, and strip the husk from the ear for two or three hours. After which a grand supper of baked beans, doughnuts, pumpkin pies, apples and cider would be furnished for the entire company, who would partake of it with much gaiety and mirth. The "paring-bee" was another gathering where work and pleasure were combined. A large company of young peo- ple would be invited to meet at a farm house to pare, quarter, core and string apples for drying. A large quantity of apples would be worked up in
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an evening. The work done, refreshments would be served to the company, and then the floor would be cleared for a country dance that would be kept up into the small hours of the night.
In the early days of Vermont, the only two days of the year that were much regarded as holi- days were the fourth of July, the day of the month on which the national Declaration of Indepen- dence was signed and published to the world, and Thanksgiving Day, appointed by the Governor.
The Fourth of July, yearly, if it did not happen to be on Sunday, was ushered in by the firing of guns and the ringing of bells. Some eloquent speaker, chosen beforehand, would appear before a large concourse of people gathered from many miles around for a celebration, with a prepared ·speech which he would deliver, giving a glowing account of what Washington, Adams and Jeffer- son and the brave soldiers of the Revolution ac- complished. A long and a well loaded table would be spread to satisfy the hunger of all pre- sent ; punch, egg-nog and rum would be their fav. orite drinks. The day would be thoroughly en- joyed by all, men, women and children.
"Thanksgiving" was appointed by the Gov- ernor of the State for a Thursday in the last days of November. At this time harvesting was past, the barns were filled with grain and hay, the cel- lars filled with potatoes, vegetables, apples and cider, the corn husked and placed in the crib or granary, the house banked and everything ready for winter, and the children ready for winter school as soon as Thanksgiving was over. The
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original purpose of the appointment of such a day was to have it observed as a day to thank the Giver of all things for the bountiful harvest and the blessings of life that had come to the people during the year; and it was the unfailing custom for the people in accordance with the request of the Governor in his proclamation, to assemble in the forenoon in the accustomed place of worship and hear a Thanksgiving sermon preached by the minister of the parish. But that which was most prized and thoroughly enjoyed by all, both old and young, was the "Thanksgiving dinner." The days just previous to Thanksgiving were days of preparation. Turkeys and chickens were killed; there was the chopping of meat and apples for mince pies. The chicken pie was the favorite dish ; puddings, cakes, tarts and sauces were fur- nished in great variety to tempt and satisfy the appetite, and drinks of various kinds to quench the thirst. Children and grandchildren (and they were numerous in those days) came to the old home to eat dinner with parents, grandfather and grandmother. Dinner finished-the old folks talked of former days, the great events that were transpiring in the world-the luck and prospects of each other came under discussion; while the children spent their time in playing games. The evening would be spent in eating pop-corn and apples and drinking cider.
Exercises suitable for a Christmas were but lit- tle thought of in those days. There was one day in the year when the men in the early days of Ver- mont assembled for an entirely different purpose-
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that was "June training day." The object of which was to fit men for war and defend the rights of the State and their country.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND TOWN- MEETINGS OF THE EARLY DAYS OF VERMONT.
The study of the early settlements, the rural towns and mountain villages and the forced fru- gal habits of the pioneers of Vermont is exceed- ingly interesting, and many of their ways and in- dustrial habits are worthy of imitation. The in- habitants were in blood and tradition almost en- tirely English, and at the same time completely American so far as they represented political ideas that have obtained prominence and significance in the general work of civilization. There was but little of the feelings and ways of aristocracy in Vermont, and in fact through New England. The finer and poorer houses stood side by side along the streets of the villages, but were not crowded together in blocks as you would have found in the English villages, as there was abundance of land on which to build; each head of the family, as a rule, owned the house and the farm on which it was built. The relation of landlord and tenant was not commonly met with. Social distinction was almost unknown among them, and political privileges were open to all. Each large proprie- tor attended in person to the cultivation of his own land, assisted by his own sons or by neigh-
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bors working for hire when his own estate did not require his labor. The necessary domestic service in the house was performed by the mother and the daughters,
In those days the poor who were unable to support themselves usually were provided for by the overseer of the poor in some family in the town, at the common charge. The people as a rule were honest; the danger from thieves was so slight that it was not regarded necessary to fas- ten the doors of the houses at night; the people were quite generally educated in the common branches, especially in spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and English grammar. Theological questions and doctrines of an ortho- dox nature occupied the attention of the people. the effect of which is still seen and felt among the people. The deep religious sentiment and the hon- est, energetic, brave and independent character of the Vermont men and women have gone out into all the States of the Union as the inhabitants of Vermont and their descendants have made their homes in the different States.
The early settlers of Vermont were to a large extent of a Puritan stock, somewhat narrow in their religious conceptions, but their honesty and sterling character were unquestioned. Their an- cestors from whom the early settlers of Vermont derived these valuable characteristics, gave up pleasant homes in England to avoid persecution. and through many privations and hardships es- tablished their homes in the American wilderness, and this gives us a key to what is best in the his- tory of the Vermont people.
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As the people from the other New England States and to some extent from other States or Colonies gathered into grants of land or towns (usually about six miles square) the requirements of education and of public worship as well as of defense against Indian attacks led them to form small village communities. The 129 towns that were granted by Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, to a large company of persons who became settlers of those townships and own- ers of the land ; so, as the townships began to fill up with settlers each would have its own village. Sometimes two or more villages would grow up in the same township and the roads from one vil- lage to another and from one town to another be- came bordered with homesteads and cultivated fields.
The government of the township was vested in the town meeting which government is said to be peculiar to New England, but other countries had had local self-governing bodies. These meetings were termed "March meetings," as they were us- ually held in the month of March annually, when every male person of adult age within the limits of the township was privileged to be present and ad- dress the meeting and vote upon all measures that came up.
The most primitive self-governing body is said to be the village community of the ancient Teu- tons. John Fisk in his work on "American Politi- cal Ideas," says "In its Teutonic form the primi- tive village community (or rather the spot inhab- ited by it) is known as the Mark-that is, a place
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defined by a boundary-line. One characteristic of the mark community is, that all its free mem- bers are in theory supposed to be related to each other through descent from a common progeni- tor; and in this respect the mark community agrees with the clan. The earliest form of politi- cal union in the world is one which rests, not upon territorial contiguity, but upon blood rela- tionship, either real or assumed through the legal fiction of adoption. In the lowest savagery blood relationship is the only admissible or conceivable ground for sustained common action among groups of men. Among peoples which wander about, supporting themselves either by hunting or at a somewhat more advanced stage of develop- ment by the rearing of flocks and herds, a group of men, thus permanently associated through ties of blood relation is what we call a clan.
"When by the development of agricultural pur- suits the nomadic mode of life is brought to an end, when the clan remains stationary upon some piece of territory, surrounded by a strip of forest- land, or other boundaries natural or artificial. then the clan becomes a mark community. * ** Territorially the old Teutonic mark consisted of three divisions. There was the village mark where the people lived in houses crowded closely together, no doubt for defensive purposes; there was the arable mark, divided into as many lots as there were householders; and there was the com- mon mark, or border-strip of untilled land, wherein all the inhabitants of the village had com- mon rights of pasturage and of cutting fire wood.
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All this land originally was the property not of any one family or individual, but of the commu- nity. The study of the mark carries us back to a time when there may have been private property in weapons, utensils or trinkets, but not in real estate."
The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of many villages was due to the custom of holding land in common as in the mark- community. The origin of the common as found in modern towns is forgotten, but the common it- self survives for the purpose of ornament or pleas- ure ground. In many old towns of New England, the little park now used as play ground, was once the common pasture of the town. It is said that Boston common did not cease to be a grazing-field until 1830. Fisk says, "In Russia and in Hindu- stan the same primitive form of social organiza- tion exist with very little change at the present day. Alike in Hindu and in Russian village-com- munities we find the group of habitations, each despotically ruled by a pater-familias."
As soon as the towns in the territory now called Vermont were granted from time to time and became organized by the election of town offi- cers under its charter, the government of the re- spective towns became vested in the town meet- ing. And from the time that New Hampshire withdrew her claim and authority from all the territory west of Connecticut River in 1764, until the New Hampshire Grants declared the State to be free and independent in 1777, the government of the several towns was as purely democratic as
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any that ever has been seen in the world. As the town governments became perfected they chose a board of selectmen who had a general oversight of the affairs of the town, a town clerk, a town treasurer, listers and assessors, overseers of the poor, constable, surveyors of highways, fence viewers and other officers. The town system in Vermont as well as in all New England at that early day was found in its completeness.
There was one important difference between the clan, tribe or mark and the township system of Vermont. In those primitive communities, we have seen, the bond which kept them together and constituted it a political unit was the bond of blood-ship relation. In the township system in Vermont and in all New England, people with no blood relation-ship, and of different nationality and strangers, freely became citizens of the town with equal right to participate in its political af- fairs. And in the larger political divisions such as cities and counties blood relationship among the people gave no special privileges.
The township system that prevailed in the New Hampshire Grants undoubtedly gave a great im- petus to the prosperity of the settlements, and fos- tered emigration from the Colonies where that sys- tem did not exist. The fact that the inhabitants of the several townships could manage their own affairs, in their own way, stimulated a healthy growth in the several little republics and created a spirit of emulation between the inhabitants of each. But these fortunate results would not have continued a very long time if each township had
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remained separate and acted independent of each other. As long as these separate organizations had a common interest to subserve and did act- ually act together for their common protection and defense, all would be well, but it was not pro- bable that all would have acted in concert for a long term of years, after their common danger had passed unless there had been a common head and a controlling power that each community or town was bound to obey. To prevent the people from the different townships from waring upon one another there must be some authority to which each local organization could appeal for the determination and settlement of disputes that might arise between them. If there is no confeder- ation between continuous small communities, as controversies arise, one community would be con- quered by another, and in time a monarchial form of government would be adopted by the stronger over the whole-a centralized administration destructive to self-government. The several com- munities could establish a confederation and a central government where each division would be represented and preserve their local governments.
The history of the World shows an attempt to form a political organization of a large number of small independent communities so as to secure concerted action among men on a great scale; without the small local governments being repre- sented, has been a failure. If you secure concerted action without representation from the local dis- tricts, it will be with the sacrifice of local indepen- dence. The only true mode of uniting a great
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number of local governments so as to retain the local governing authority is by forming a confed- eracy under the representative system. When the State of Vermont was declared independent and a constitution was adopted and the State govern- ment put into operation, the several townships secured the right of representation in the State leg. islature, and each town had the right, and still have the right, to manage their own affairs inde- pendent of the action of other towns-independent as it well could be under a well constituted State government.
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CHAPTER XIV.
THE NEW YORK VIEW OF THE CONTRO- TERSY BETWEEN THAT STATE AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.
It has been stated in this history that after Governor Wentworth had granted the town of Bennington and many other applications had been made for other grants, and not knowing how far west New Hampshire extended according to the King's commission given to him, desiring to avoid interfering with the government of New York, on November 17, 1749, addressed a letter to Governor Clinton asking him how many miles east of the Hudson River, northward of Massa- chusetts line New York extended. To which Governor Clinton replied that the New York Pro- vince was bounded east by Connecticut River, and basing his claim upon letters patent from King Charles the II to the Duke of York granting all lands from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay.
On April 25, 1750, Governor Wentworth in re- ply to Governor Clinton's claim wrote him that New Hampshire had an equal right to claim as far west as the chartered governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. On June 6, 1750, Gov- ernor Clinton in answering Governor Went- worth's claim, said in substance that Connecti- (200)
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cut's claim was founded upon an agreement with New York in 1684, and afterwards confirmed by King William, and that the lines between those two States were run and boundaries marked in 1725; and that Massachusetts possessed them- selves of the land by intrusion and continued their possession through the negligence of New York, and thought he should be obliged to send a repre- sentation of the matter to his Majesty. Then Governor Wentworth declared that he, too, should represent the matter to his Majesty.
.Governor Clinton to strengthen his position and claim of New York sought to obtain the opin- ion and report on the matter from Richard Brad- ley, Attorney General of New York. He made an . extended and elaborate report to Governor Clin- ton relating to the eastern boundary of New York. He claimed there was no weight in the ar- gument that New Hampshire extended to within twenty miles of Hudson River because Connecti- cut and Massachusetts Bay did; because the west- ern boundary of Connecticut was fixed by agree- ment with New York and confirmed by King Will- . iam; that Massachusetts took possession of the land to within twenty miles of Hudson River without pretence of right; and claimed that the indefinite description of the bounds of Massachu- setts Bay charter would limit the western bound- ary of that State to the eastern boundary of Con- necticut. The western boundary in the Massa- chusetts charter was described as follows; "west- ward as far as our colonies of Rhode Island, Con- necticut and the Narragansett Country."
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The Attorney General contended that this de- scription did not carry Massachusetts as far west as the western boundary of Connecticut; and if it could bear the construction contended for by Massachusetts, it also could bear the construction that Massachusetts only extended west to the eastern boundary of Connecticut; and if the con- struction was doubttul the construction should be taken in a way the most favorable to the Crown, and therefore all land taken possession of westerly of the east line of Connecticut was an intrusion. The attorney general also contended that after the Dutch Conquest in 1673, a grant that was made in 1663 to the Duke of York was confirmed to him, his heirs and assigns in 1674, included all the land between Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, but admits that afterwards the same lands fell back and became the lands of the Cown, and in- sists they were in the hands of the Crown at the time of the grant to Massachusetts in 1793, and that governors were appointed by the King for the province of York without giving any other or any bounds to that province.
This state of things would lead us to inquire that if the construction of the said Massachusetts charter was as favorable to fixing the western , bounds of that province as far west as the west- ern bounds of Connecticut as it was to limiting to the eastern bounds of the latter State, would not the forfeiture of the charter of the province of York leave the Massachusetts construction to prevail? This point the Attorney General did not argue. It appears that King James I
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granted the lands in question to the Council of Devon established at Plymouth and to their suc- cessors and assigns, and that Council in the third year of the reign of King Charles I, granted to Sir Henry Roswell and others, their assigns and their associates forever, certain described land which was claimed to be the lands in question and was confirmed to them by King Charles I in the fourth year of his reign, and though that grant was va- cated in the year 1684, in Chancery, vet, that they were seized of those lands by virtue of that grant at the time of the grant to the Duke of York; and therefore, the Duke of York could not take them by virtue of his grant, and they were, therefore, granted to the Grantees of the . Council of Devon by the charter in 1693.
The Attorney General in reply to this, stated that there was a proviso in the patent or grant to the said Council of Devon that it should not include lands that were actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian Prince or State. And then proceeds to argue that Henry Hudson discovered the country of York about 160S, and soon after sold it to the Dutch who called it New Nether- land, and although it did not clearly appear how far their claim extended, it probably extended as far south as Delaware River and north-easterly as far as Connecticut River.
The Attorney General argued that it was not probable that the Duke of York made a grant of these lands in dispute that he must have known interfered with former grants made to the gran- tees of the Council of Devon. And the Attorney
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General claimed that the disputed lands became vested in the Crown by the conquest made of them from the Dutch by the English under Sir Robert Carr in the year 1660, and surrendered to King Charles the II in 1673, and then granted to the Duke of York in the year 1674, and therefore the lands could not have been granted to the gov -. ernment of Massachusetts Bay so as to give a good title in 1693. If the Council of Devon had a good title from the Crown when the Duke of York took his grant, as the Council of Devon claimed, the right of the latter from whom Massa- chusetts claimed their title must have been supe- rior. It was not claimed that the territory of western Massachusetts and the territory of what is now Vermont was in actual possession of the inhabitants within the grant to the Duke of York, so that if the possession of the Duke of York ex- tended to Connecticut River, it was simply a con- structive possession.
When this disputed territory became settled, it was settled by people from the New England States. The Attorney General admitted that "the abdication of the Crown by the Duke of York in the year 16SS, the government of the Duke became vested in the Crown," and it is not claimed that the Crown had issued a new patent or grant of these lands after the Crown had become rein- vested with these lands, before Massachusetts Bay had taken them under their grant in 1693. In . view of all these facts the Attorney General jumped at the conclusion, "that the government of New Hampshire, which is to extend westward till it
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meets with his Majesty's other governments and no farther, must terminate at that river," but ad- mitted that matters "relating to the eastern bounds of the New York government is very imperfect."
Surveyor General Colden of New York on Octo- ber 14, 1751, gave his observations on Mr. Brad- ley's report to a New York committee in which he said that the several tracts of land eastward of Hudson River for about twenty miles are held by the inhabitants of New York by grant from the governors thereof and paying yearly rents to the Crown, and no claim was made by him that grants were made by that government farther east; but said, "that if his Majesty asserts his right to the soil within his province of New York as far east as Connecticut River against the intru- sion of Massachusetts Bay it would greatly in- crease his revenue."
On August 14, 1752, the Solicitor General said, "there are about 60,000 acres of land on the west side of Connecticut River which were purchased by private persons from the gov- ernment of Connecticut, to whom that land had been laid out by the government of Massachusetts Bay as an equivalent of two or three townships which the Massachusetts Bay purchased from Connecticut government. This tract of land by the determination of the boundary line in 1738, is become a part of New Hampshire." This appears to be a distinct recognition of the fact that New Hampshire extended west of Connecticut River.
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