USA > Vermont > Bennington County > Manchester > Manchester, Vermont : a pleasant land among the mountains, 1761-1961 > Part 3
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One of the old-time roads ran from the Valley or River Road below Wilburton Inn over the hills and across both present golf courses and the brook near Munson's Falls to join U.S. Rte. 7 by way of the present Mountain View Terrace road. This was in 1769. Another road came from the west to form a corners near Munson's Falls. Apparently Peletiah Soper's tavern was on the upper road and there were a number of houses and a couple of marble mills in the area.
The road from Factory Point to Dorset formerly went north past
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the present Lewis West farm, then onto the "Cross Road" past Richardson's, and out what was "The Lane" (now the access road to the dump) to eventually reach South Dorset. An extension of this road by Richardson's went past the Kenneth Stacy house as now, but then went over the hill west to meet the old Beartown road. Sometime in the 1850s the present "Dugway" was built on land part of which was given by John D. Wait. This did away with some hills on the original road.
The Beartown road did not always start where it does now, from the south corner of Three Maple Drive. It first began from the West Road near the Wyman farm, went up the hill past the Dan Wide- awake place, crossed the mountain road from South Dorset and Three Maple Drive making a four corners, and then up into Bear- town. In 1880 the present Beartown road was built to provide a shorter route to the top of Mount Equinox then reached by a now grown-up carriage road from Beartown Gap.
The road to Barnumville may have left U.S. Rte. 7 in the Maple Street section via the Ames farm and gone over the ridge north of the present road to avoid building a bridge over the gulf where the road now runs. It is not known when the original road was changed to its present route. Roads were often laid out toward "Brumley" or Bromley, now Peru. These connected with the Turnpike, which was not located in Manchester, but in Winhall. Manchester men were associated with the company which originally built the road in 1810 for $5,000. It was part of a popular stage route from Boston to Saratoga and was one of the last private turnpikes in Vermont.
As early as March 13, 1906, Marshall Hapgood of Peru agitated for its abolition with a letter to the Manchester Journal attacking the company for its poor maintenance of the road. The turnpike finally became so bad with water bars and roughness that the company was obliged to give it up in 1917, 103 years after it was chartered.
The Flat Road from Factory Point to the Depot was built in 1853. The original road through the Center is said to have been from the bridge past the old gristmill and behind what is now the Combina- tion Cash Store and Opera House. If so, this was used only a short while, as the resurvey of the highway in 1811 from the East Dorset line south shows the highway in approximately its present location. It went, however, from the west end of the park past the cemetery
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to the Campbell house. The link between the park and Campbell's was built in 1811 and this became the main road.
Early highways were organized into districts, which, like school districts, were complete entities. Each district was in charge of a pathmaster or surveyor whose duties apparently were to keep his respective section of road in repair. Some probably performed their tasks better than others, for a town meeting in 1800 voted that the Selectmen settle with Josiah Custis for a horse which he lost through the public bridge by Timothy Mead's. A town meeting in 1838 named the Selectmen as a committee to investigate an injury done to Elijah Collins in falling through a bridge and to settle with him for injuries to his horse. A meeting the next year directed the Select- men to repair the Straight bridge and settle for damage to Thomas Johnson's horse. So it can be seen that though the town left respon- sibility for highway maintenance to the various districts and even refused to provide bridge planking, town meetings did vote to direct Selectmen to adjust damages.
These highway districts changed as need arose. At the March meeting, 1805, it was voted to extend the center highway district to the east end of Straight's bridge. It was also voted that the south highway district on the main road and the south highway district on the middle road be one "intire highway district." On February 28, 1812 it was voted to close the road running between Samuel Strait's and Jabez Hawley's west from the main road.
Roads were worked under the district system by the Selectmen furnishing each surveyor with the names of the men in his district together with their grand list and the amount of tax for which they were liable. This was known as either a Highway Tax Bill or Rate Bill. It was addressed to the surveyor :
BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF VERMONT, you are hereby commanded to levy and collect of the several persons named on the list herewith committed to you, the sum annexed to the name of each person respec- tively and expend the same on the repairs of Highways and Bridges in said District, according to law.
Penalties were then given for refusal of persons to pay the indi- cated sums. The document was signed by the Justice of the Peace.
Men could get credit on their taxes when working on districts
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other than the one in which they lived. The town meeting of March 18, 1798 voted :
Joshua French be appointed ... to call on persons to work on the road that leads over the Mountain from this town to Sandgate, and the work done on that Road by persons who live out of the district may be credited on the Rate Bills in the District where the people belong.
On March 18, 1802 it was voted that any man working on the "Northwest Road" could get credit on the tax of his district pro- vided he presented a certificate from Surveyor Samuel Purdy. Work was limited to two days. In 1883 the town meeting voted that highway labor could be paid in money.
Data on bridge construction is meager. A March 24, 1794 town meeting voted that the town would not be accountable for planks to cover five bridges-those by Timothy Mead's mill; across the river by Samuel Strait's; by Nathaniel Bourn's; and across the river by Barney Boorn's. But times changed. An 1805 meeting voted that the Selectmen build or repair at the town's expense one commonly called "Strait's" bridge. It was then voted to reconsider this article, but it did not appear in subsequent warnings. In 1814 a meeting voted to pay Horatio Walker $4.60 for timbers furnished for bridges.
In the spring of 1884 a substantial iron bridge was constructed across the river near the Colburn House to replace the wooden one fast becoming unsafe. An item in the Manchester Journal on July 10 asked, "Cannot some way be found by which the paths leading to the new iron bridge ... be rendered more safe?" The iron bridge was replaced by the marble bridge dedicated in October 1912. The marble came from Dorset and was worked at the Norcross-West mill at the Depot. The bridge was widened in 1942.
The new cement and steel bridge with a raised sidewalk crossing the West Branch of the Battenkill on Rte. 30 was built in 1942 to re- place the inadequate iron one. The bridge at the Depot on the Richville Road was built in 1954 to replace a wood-planked one of iron known as the Hollister bridge which had been built in 1911 at a cost of $579.63. The next bridge on that road, the Covey bridge over Bourn Brook, was rebuilt in 1929.
The Hard bridge over the Battenkill near the Hard brothers' farm was rebuilt in 1910 at a cost of $1,003.26 to replace a red-
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painted wooden bridge. A small culvert at the end of the Muddy Lane road near the Hards' barn was built in 1923. The new bridge on Rtes. 11-30 near the railroad crossing was constructed in 1955. It replaced a steel-concrete one built in 1913 which in turn had re- placed a plank bridge on steel stringers. The present iron bridge in Barnumville was built in 1911 at a cost of $529.84.
There seems to be little data concerning bridges (1) on the north road recently replaced with a steel culvert; (2) on the road past the Lewis West farm; (3) across Bourn Brook in Hicksville; (4) and across Lye Brook below Richville now replaced with a steel culvert.
Union Street at Manchester Village was opened October 1862. Thus, the original bridge across the Battenkill at the foot of that street may be assumed to have been built about that time. The so- called "Marble Bridge" across the gulf on the Barnumville Road was built in 1903 to replace a wooden structure and to span the track of the Manchester, Dorset, and Granville Railroad to South Dorset. In 1960 that bridge was replaced by an earth fill with a steel culvert at the bottom.
The present layout of roads was completed by the 186os. Then came the construction of more durable surfacing and provision for dust-laying, especially as automobile traffic began to develop. While the dust nuisance was a frequent matter for discussion at Manchester Village, mud, too, claimed attention. On April 19, 1864 the Manchester Journal said:
The road between this Village and Factory Point is the poorest in town, this end being much the worst. The mud to be driven through in going out of the Village that way is unparalleled in quantity and quality. As this road is traveled more than any other, it should be repaired with care proportionate to its importance.
As late as 1905, "sprinkling carts" were relied upon to keep down the dust.
Methods of highway management changed with the years. In 1882 there were seventeen highway districts with an officer elected in each. In 1884 three commissioners of streets and highways were elected. The 1885 town meeting voted that the Selectmen be "street commissioners." Two years later, three street commissioners were elected. The 1891 town meeting elected twelve highway surveyors while Selectmen were to look out for the Rootville Road.
FROM THE HILL NORTHEAST OF THE DEPOT 171-3
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٠٠١٢٧٦٦
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"Marble Bridge" across gulf on the Barnumville Road. It was built in 1903 to span the MD&GRR tracks.
Iron bridge constructed at Manchester Center in 1884. Building with steeple in the background is firehouse in its original location.
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Marble bridge at Manchester Center, which was dedicated in 1912.
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E. B. Smith was elected road commissioner from 1895 to 1897, and in 1909 there was still only one chosen. An article in the 1910 town meeting warning was to see if the town would vote to instruct the Selectmen to appoint one or two road commissioners instead of electing them by ballot. The article was dismissed. The 1912 town meeting voted to elect the commissioner by ballot and, with the ex- ception of 1927, that seems to have been the practice until 1941, when the work of that office was taken over by the town manager. The election of the road commissioner was one of the most hotly contested and it often took several ballots to decide the election as there were usually a number of candidates.
The Manchester Board of Trade through the year 1918 kept de- manding better roads, though wartime economy was a hindrance to any road improvement program. When state aid was provided, the town always availed itself of such monies as the program permitted. During the depression years of the 1930s, W.P.A. work was used to advantage in the Richville area, in the rebuilding of Three Maple Drive, and on the road up the mountain from Barnumville.
The 1914 town meeting voted $500 for permanent highway work; the 1918 meeting, $1,800. Road mileage that year was sixty-four, a figure that has not varied much over the years. A 1918 Manchester Journal praised the fine piece of road being made by the Selectmen from A. B. Marsden's to a point near the Bundy (Richardson) place which "when completed will do away with the usually very muddy stretch from N. Charbonneau's to the bridge." This improvement was not permanent, however. In 1926 the town meeting voted to construct a concrete road from the north village limit to the Center bridge and thence across the Flat Road to pavement at Manchester Depot. The cost was amortized over a five-year period.
In May 1931 a special town meeting voted to build the concrete road through the Center from the bridge to the Barnumville Road, for which an annual tax of sixteen cents on the grand list for six years was provided. A 1938 town meeting voted a special five cent tax for a hard surface road from the Depot toward Richville and the following year the Selectmen were authorized to borrow $3,500 to continue it. A special meeting that year authorized $500 for work on the Beartown road.
In addition to these special projects, $1,000 was voted in various years for permanent highway improvement. In 1930 $6,500 was
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spent for snow removal equipment. For a number of years begin- ning in 1951, there has been an annual voting of $5,000 to match certain state aid funds for a black topping program which has re- sulted in a hard surface for the town's principal roads.
A celebration in Manchester September 20, 1930 marked the dedication of the new U.S. Rte. 7 or Ethan Allen Highway from Pownal to Manchester. A parade of cars and floats with impersona- tions of historical personalities stopped at commemorative points in towns along the route from Pownal. The event ended with exer- cises at the Manchester Fair Grounds. Route 30 north out of Man- chester Center is known as the Seth Warner Memorial Highway. It is designated by a granite marker erected in 1937 near the Bap- tist church by Ormsby Chapter, Daughters of the American Revo- lution.
Division of the town into two municipalities raised a problem as to equitable allocation of highway tax money between the town and Manchester Village. An agreement was made by which the Village receives a portion of the highway funds according to a formula.
Those early surveyors and pathmasters would be astounded at the traffic along the present main roads and at the annual cost of the present highway system of the town. $12,300 was requested for highway maintenance for 1960 from a total of $62,550 asked for public works. Again, as in the past, the main road (U.S. Rte. 7) has become inadequate and plans are afoot to bypass the bottleneck business district at Manchester Center and detour the flow of through-traffic to areas where it can move fast and smoothly.
CHAPTER V
"A Loose Town . .. "
I HE first log house in Manchester is said to have been built by Samuel Rose, the Tory, in 1764 in the southwest section of the town close to Mount Equinox. In 1769 Rose also built the first framed house of the settlement.1 On February 23, 1771 Samuel Purdy, grandson of Daniel Purdy, was born. It was the first male birth in the annals of Manchester.
By 1776 the forest still exceeded cleared lands, and roads were only foot and bridle paths. The first public building, a schoolhouse, had made its appearance, but there was not yet a meeting house or a court. The settlers, then numbering less than 600, often lacked all but the necessities of life. They had nothing but what they "could raise among the stumps, catch in the streams, or bring down with a rifle."2 Grist and sawmills existed, but no village or store. Men and women clad in buckskin and coarse homespun were inured to work, hardship, and danger.
In 1791, when the Republic of Vermont was finally accepted as the fourteenth state, Manchester had 1,276 inhabitants. Despite wolf raids and the proximity of bear, some back districts of the town were more thickly populated than they would be later. Man- chester was "sufficiently advanced in the ways of civilization to number among its institutions, a tailoring establishment and a hat- ter's shop. In hours of leisure, the inhabitants amused themselves by racing horses through the street, scouring the woods in hunting
1. Carl M. Chapin, Manchester in Vermont History (Manchester, Vt., 1932), p. 4.
2. Loveland Munson, The Early History of Manchester (Manchester, Vt., 1876), p. 21.
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parties, or playing at wicket on the village green. The management of the town was still in the hands of the earlier settlers."3
The necessity of building a house of worship, to be used also for town meetings and court trials, was generally acknowledged early in Manchester's existence. However, the place for its location be- came the subject of much controversy. Judge Munson has said that it was evidently felt that the meeting house location would likely determine the site of the future village. The few records available indicate that the town was quite evenly divided between two locali- ties and thus the matter was long in suspense. Prominent citizens on the old road took part in the argument "with a zeal not altogether spiritual."
On November 8, 1778, at a meeting legally warned and held at the dwelling place of Martin Powel, it was voted to build a heavy frame meeting house thirty feet square on such a site as might be selected by an appointed committee of three "indifferent" (impar- tial) people. On June 14, 1779, at a second meeting also held at Powel's, it was voted that the meeting house be built forty feet by thirty-six feet and two stories high. This time it was to be located as near to the dwelling of Christopher Roberts "as the ground and circumstances will permit." Roberts lived on what is now the West Road.
The timbers for the frame were prepared at that spot, but were surreptitiously removed one night by the opposing faction and de- posited on the public common. In November 1779 the town again voted to build the meeting house on such a spot as the committee would select.
A freeman's meeting adjourned to the meeting house on the first Tuesday of September 1784. Thus it would seem, though church history gives the meeting house as being erected in 1780, that Man- chester land records indicate a later date, probably between March and September 1784.4
It was a plain wooden building with galleries and square pews built on ground a little south of the present Congregational church.
It was twenty years and eleven days after the chartering of Man- chester before any decisive measures were adopted for the regular
3. Munson, Manchester, p. 51.
4. Land Records, Manchester, Vermont, vol. 1, p. 68.
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"'A LOOSE TOWN ... "
administration of religious ordinances. Even so, the people were not destitute of gospel preaching. Meetings were held at Soper's tavern at Munson's Falls below the glebe lot and various barns were opened for worship in the summer. In 1781 the Baptists organized at Factory Point. But at the Village a long period of religious neg- lect began. One reason might have been the difficulties arising from conflicting claims of New York and New Hampshire to land under the New Hampshire Grants. Many Manchester people were exposed to "vexations, suits, and executions levied on their farms." They were, therefore, in no mood for religion.
Another reason may have been the conflicting religious, rather than political, loyalties of those who would have fought with the Whigs on the side of independence in the Revolution, but had turned Tory. Though they felt able to break political ties with the King, "those who belonged to the Church of England would not rebel against the head of the church and by the Grace of God, the Defender of their Faith.""" These people were required to offer up daily prayer for the King. Thus it was that in towns where the Church of England was the prevailing faith, the inhabitants were mostly Tories.
These religious and political controversies made progressive movements within the town come slowly. In the area now encom- passed by Manchester Village resided an unusual number of tal- ented men, all Yale graduates. There were several doctors and law- yers. Judge Hitchcock and Colonel Keys had been officers in Shel- don's regiment of dragoons during the Revolution. None of these men, however, was interested in the promotion of religion.
Even those of lesser education seemed to feel no religious need. The Rose family professed no religion and contributed nothing to its support. The Purdys, though moral men, had no interest. Tim- othy Mead was no professor of faith though he aided the cause eventually with his money and influence. Excepting his son, Tru- man, all his children "became intemperate" and the huge Mead properties embracing all Factory Point passed out of that name soon after Timothy's death. Major Gideon Ormsby, foremost in building the meeting house and always liberal in maintaining
5. Judge J. S. Pettibone, "Papers."
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preaching, was not considered religious. Judge Pettibone heard the minister who visited Ormsby in his last illness say that he "believed he was a Christian man." Mrs. Ormsby was one of the few who first united with the Congregational church in Manchester.
War was an unfortunate influence. The leading men of the town had formed the habit of assembling in the taverns. Drinking, gam- bling, and immorality were common. The Rev. Nathan Perkins of West Hartford, Connecticut, who made a journey on horseback through Vermont in 1789, wrote of Manchester in his diary: "A half shire town hemmed in by lofty mountains. A number of houses in ye center, a small metting house, half Baptist, a loose town."
Inhabitants of the south part of Manchester united with Sunder- land people to build a meeting house on the flats east of the Batten- kill. A wealthy society supported it-Isaac Burton, Eli Brownson, Samuel Pettibone, the Sheldons, and even Major Ormsby. Chaun- cey Lee from Connecticut was their pastor until about 1785 when he left Manchester. The society was dissolved.
From 1794 to 1800 a moral change came to the town. It has been attributed to the large number of merchants and professional men who, if not religious, were at least devoted to the development of a good moral and religious community. A warning was given March 25, 1797 for a meeting to see if Manchester freemen would agree on some mode of gospel preaching and its support.
By 1801 three local churches had a good start. Timothy Dwight, Yale's first president, who traveled through Vermont in 1823, wrote:
The inhabitants of Manchester, like those of many other new settlements, are divided in their religious opinions; but with a catholicism, less com- mon than could be wished, have generally agreed to employ successively preachers of the several denominations of religion in the town, when- ever they could find those, against whose character, deportment, and preaching, there could be no reasonable objection.
Emigrants coming to Manchester and liking the climate and beautiful surroundings chose it for their home. One was Richard Skinner of Connecticut, first of that illustrious name in Vermont. He came to Manchester about 1800, riding "up to the hotel on a small active road horse, with capacious saddlebags well filled. He
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"A LOOSE TOWN ... "
was a slender, straight, trim-built young man, courteous in his manners, with very black eyes and hair and dark complexion- dressed in the usual costume of the day, of equestrian travelers-a blue dress coat, light vest, and olive colored velvet cheerivalles over his pants and boots, with spurs."6 By 1856 Skinner was governor of Vermont and the owner of a large estate a few doors south of the Equinox House.
Though the witchcraft delusion had long been over in Massachu- setts, a general belief in the supernatural prevailed. Manchester, too, was not untouched. Captain Isaac Burton married Rachel Harris, stepdaughter of Esquire Powel, who was a "fine, healthy, beautiful girl." Not long after the marriage, she went into a decline and died of consumption. Captain Burton took Huldah, own daughter of Powel, as his second wife. She also was a "healthy, goodlooking girl" but shortly after the wedding she, too, became consumptive. According to Judge Pettibone :
In the last stages a strange infatuation took possession of the minds of . . . the friends of the family and they were induced to believe that if the vitals of the first wife could be consumed by being burned in a charcoal fire, it would effect a cure of the sick wife. Such was the strange delusion that they disinterred the first wife who had been buried nearly three years or more. They took out the liver, heart, and lungs what remained of them and burned them to ashes on the blacksmith's forge of Jacob Mead. Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in this sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the blood of the living wife of Captain Burton. It was in the month of February and good sleighing. Such was the excitement that from five hundred to one thou- sand people were present. This account was furnished me by an eye witness. . . .
This same weird strain was to show itself again not long afterward in Manchester's celebrated Boorn murder mystery. Much has al- ready been published concerning this most famous Vermont legal case. It began in 1812 with the disappearance of partially deranged Russell Colvin and ended in 1819 with his return in time to save Stephen Boorn from hanging.
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