USA > Vermont > Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont > Part 10
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Highland Hall states that Judge Fassett died in Cambridge, but the historian of that place tells of "Dr. John Fassett who came from Bennington in 1784 moving west after he had lived in town about forty years, and when he must have been an octogenarian."
KNOWLTON, LUKE, (or Knoulton, as he wrote the name), councilor, judge, early settler and most influential citizen of New- fane, and holding some anomalous positions in the early controversies, was born at Shrewsbury, Mass., November, 1738. He was a soldier in the French and Indian war, was stationed at Crown Point for a while, and came close to starvation in the march from that point to Charleston, Nov. 4, where his company was obliged to kill its last pack horse for food. He came to Newfane in 1773, the fifteenth family to settle in town, and came under a New York title which he and another man had purchased from a lot of speculators in New York City. Naturally, therefore, he took the New York side in the controversy with the Green Mountain boys, and adhered to it until 1780, when he and Ira Allen came to terms while they were at Philadelphia as agents for the two sides
KNOWLTON.
before Congress. But it is certain, in spite of the accusations of later years, that he was on the patriot side at the opening of the Revolution, and there is no sufficient reason for impugning his patriotism afterwards, for at the time it was done he was acting in concert with the Vermont leaders when his social and personal connections were such as to make him a convenient medium of communication with the British. From June, 1776, to June, 1777, he was a member of the Cumberland county committee of Safety.
May 17, 1774, on the organization of the town of Newfane, he was elected town clerk and held that position sixteen years. In 1772 he had been appointed by New York one of the justices of peace for the county. In September, 1780, the Yorkers of Cum- berland county sent him to Congress as their agent to oppose the pretensions of the new state, and for this service he had a letter of recommendation from Governor Clinton, of New York. It was while on this mission that the arrangement was made with Ira Allen, on a basis, as the latter wrote, that should "be honorable to those who had been in favor of New York." The arrange- ment was to call a convention of delegates of all parties interested, including the New Hampshire towns that wanted to unite with Vermont.
The next month we find Knowlton active as chairman of a Cumberland county com- mittee of thirteen to bring about this con-
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vention, which first met at Walpole, and then called another convention at Charlestown, Jan. 10, 1781. He was present at the latter convention, acting in concert with Allen, who was manipulating it from the outside. The result was the "East union" of thirty five New Hampshire towns with Vermont, and following that the "West union" of that part of New York to the banks of Hudson river, north of Massachusetts line to latitude 45°. Knowlton was evidently satisfied with this, as were most of the New York adherents in Windham county, for he soon appeared among the leaders in Vermont politics.
He was town representative in the General Assembly of the state of Vermont during the years 1784, 1788, 1789, 1792, 1803, and 1806, and a member of the old council from 1790 to 1800; judge of the Supreme Court in 1786, and judge of the Windham county court from 1787 to 1793.
In 1782 while the Haldimand intrigue was at its height and emissaries were passing thick back and forth through Vermont, a dis- patch was intercepted which showed that the British commander in Canada was communi- cating with British agents in New York City by means of letters, exchanged through Mr. Knowlton and Col. Samuel Wells, of Brattle- boro. The thing was of course suspicious, and there is no doubt that Wells was thor- oughly Tory in sympathy ; but it was neces- sary for the Vermont policy at this time that Haldimand should frequently consult the British commander in New York about it, and it had to be done through men in whom both parties had confidence. The discovery was laid before Congress by Washington and the result was an order for the arrest of Wells and Knowlton. Their escape to Canada was aided by the Allens. Knowlton, however, returned within a year, and was at his house in Newfane, November 16, 1783, when a lot of Yorkers but American sympa- thizers broke in and arrested him, and forcibly deported him to Massachusetts. General Fletcher and Colonel Bradley organized a rescuing party, but Mr. Knowlton returned before it became necessary for them to act. It was this case of abduction for which the leader of the rioters, Francis Prouty, was in- dicted for burglary at Westminister, and which resulted in this curious verdict : "The jury find in this case that the prisoner did break and enter the house of Luke Knowlton, Esq., in the night season, and did take- and carry away the said Luke Knowlton, and if that breaking a house and taking and carry- ing away a person as aforesaid amounts to burglary, we say he is guilty ; if not, we say he is not guilty." The judgment of the court on the verdict was not guilty.
John A. Graham, in a series of rambling let- ters descriptive of Vermont scenery, written
KNOWLTON.
and published at the close of the last century, thus speaks of Judge Knowlton : "Newfane owes its consequence in a great measure to Mr. Luke Knowlton, a leading character and a man of great ambition and enterprise, of few words, but possessed of great quickness and perception and an almost intuitive knowledge of human nature, of which he is a perfect judge." "Saint Luke" was the ap- pelation given Mr. Knowlton by his contem- poraries because of his grave and suave man- ners and his decorous deportment even to the point of humility. He was liberal and generous to the poor, entered heartily and zcalonsly into all the public enterprises of the day, gave to the county of Windham the land for a common on Newfanc hill at the time of the removal of the shire from West- minster to Newfane, and contributed largely towards the crection of the first court house and jail in Newfane. Judge Knowlton died at Newfane Nov. 12, 1810, aged seventy-three. His wife, Sarah, daughter of Ephraim Hol- land of Shrewsbury, whom he married Jan. 5, 1760, had died Sept. 1, 1797. Three sons and four daughters were the fruit of the union, nearly all of whom had distinguished careers or connections. Calvin, the eldest, graduated at Dartmouth and was a promis- ing lawyer at Newfane at the time of his death at the age of thirty-nine. Patty, born in 1762, dying in Ohio in 1814, married Daniel Warner and was the grandmother of Hon. Willard Warner, late United States senator from Alabama, and during the civil war a member of General Sherman's staff in his celebrated "march to the sea." Silas, born in 1764, married Lucinda Holbrook at Newfane, Nov. 30, 1786, and died in Canada aged eighty. Sarah, born May 2, 1767, married John Holbrook at Newfane, Nov. 30, 1786. She died March 22, 1851, aged eighty-four. Alice, married Nathan Stone, April 24, 1788. She died Nov. 14, 1865, aged ninety-six. Lucinda, born August 8, 1771, married Samuel Willard. They lived awhile in Sheldon, from thence they moved to Canada, where she died May 4, 1800.
Luke Knowlton, Jr., was born in Newfane, March 24, 1775, died at Broome township, Canada East, Sept. 17, 1855, aged eighty.
Among Judge Knowlton's grandsons, be- sides General Warner, are Paul Holland Knowlton, Broome township, Lower Canada, son of Silas Knowlton, who has occupied distinguished positions in the Province, and was for many years a member of the Canada Parliament ; Rev. John C. Holbrook of Syracuse, N. Y., an eloquent divine, highly esteemed for his piety and learning ; Hon. Geo. W. Knowlton of Watertown, N. Y., and Frederick Holbrook, the war Governor of Vermont.
CLARK.
BAYLEY.
CLARK, NATHAN, of Bennington, was speaker of the first General Assembly after the organization of the state government in 1778. He was also a native of Connecticut, though the place and date of his birth are not known, and came to Bennington as early as 1762 and died there April 8, 1799, at the age of about seventy-four. He was frequently chairman of the several committees and con- ventions of the settlers. He was chairman of the Bennington committee of safety in 1776, and received the thanks of General Gates for his promptness in supplying Ticonderoga with flour. He was also a member of the state council of safety. He represented Ben- nington in 1 778. In manners he is described as mild and gentlemanly, and he was evi- dently very facile as a manager of men and measures. His son, Col. Isaac Clark, known as "Old Rifle," was distinguished as a parti- san leader in the war of 1812.
BOWKER, JOSEPH .- An early settler in Rutland, president of every general conven- tion, except two, in the state's embryonic period, and the first speaker of the General Assembly ; " in a modified sense, the John Hancock of Vermont," as Henry Hall calls him, was born in Sudbury, Mass., or vicinity. The tradition as dug up by Mr. Hall is that he was early left an orphan, brought up in the family of a Mr. Taintor, privately be- throthed to his daughter, Sarah, drafted into the army during the French and Indian war, in the garrison at Ticonderoga one or two years, and then returned with so good a rep- utation that he soon became the son-in-law of his quasi guardian. He appeared in Rut- land about 1773, and participated in the opposition to the New York grant of Social- borough which covered that township.
Yet, although he was the recognized leader of the opponents and much trusted in the town and state throughout the struggle, he was not named in any act of outlawry. He soon became a very general office-holder, member of the committee of safety, town treasurer, selectman, representative, magis- trate, conveyancer, and adviser of citizens. He was one of the four men that built the first saw-mill in town, and all his life "farmed it," though apparently rather shiftlessly. At the first election under the constitution he was elected representative for Rutland, and at the same time received the highest vote cast for any man as councilor. Before the votes for councilor had been canvassed, he was elected speaker of the House, which office and that of representative he of course relinquished on taking his seat in the coun- cil. To that body he was elected seven times, and until his death. He was the first judge of Rutland county court, which office he held till December, 1783 ; also the first
judge of probate, and held that office until his death in 1 784.
He was a superior presiding officer, famil- iar with parliamentary usages, impartial, courteous and quick of apprehension, and must have been a man of marked native ability though of limited education.
A neighbor speaking in after years, says of him : "that Joseph Bowker was greatly looked up to for counsel, much esteemed for his great and excellent qualities, for many years the most considerable man in town, and during the negotiations with Canada he was always resorted to solely for counsel and advice." He seems to have combined with his qualities of leadership, moderation, and generosity, so that he encountered less antagonism than most of his associates in the work of state building.
He died July 11, 1784, just as the little republic he had helped to launch was well upon her remarkable career, and was buried somewhere in the public acre of the ceme- tery at Rutland Center, but the exact spot nobody knows. The date of his marriage is also unknown. He left only two children, daughters, who early left the state and set- tled somewhere in the West. Few indeed are the men who do so useful a work as that of Joseph Bowker and yet of whom the rec- ord is so meagre and unsatisfactory.
BAYLEY, GEN. JACOB .- Washington's most trusted officer in Vermont, who had charge of the protection of the frontier for several years, and who was at different times an advocate of the claims of New York, of the new state, and of New Hampshire to the territory of Vermont, was born at Newbury, Mass., July 2, 1728. He was a captain in the French war in 1736, present at the Fort William Henry massacre in 1757, from which he escaped, and was a colonel under Am- herst in the taking of Crown Point and Ticonderoga in 1759. He came to New- bury, Vt., in October, 1764, was in 1775 elected to the New York Provincial Con- gress, though he did not take his seat, and was one of the most influential men of that part of the state. He was commissioner to administer oaths of office, judge of inferior court of common pleas, and justice of the peace ; August 1, 1776, he was appointed brigadier-general of the militia of Cumber- land and Gloucester counties, and in 1776 he began work on the celebrated Hazen road, afterward completed by General Hazen, which was designed as a military road from the Connecticut river to St. Johns, Canada.
He was, in the early years of the struggle between the settlers and New York, one of the most trusted representatives of the authority of the latter, but suddenly changed
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BASJIS.
MARSH.
his position in 1777, writing to the New York council under date of June 11, acknowl edging the receipt of ordinance for the election of Governor, Senators and Repre- sentatives and saying : "I am apt to think onr people will not choose any member to sit in the state of New York. The people before they saw the constitution were not willing to trouble themselves about a separation from the state of New York, but now almost to a man they are violent for it." He had earlier been chosen by the convention one of the delegates to present Vermont's re- monstrance and petition to the Continental Congress, and he was one of the two repre- sentatives from Newbury in the Windsor convention of July 17, 1777, that framed the constitution. Less than a year and a half afterwards, he was a leader in the scheme of the Connecticut River towns on both sides of the river to join together and form a new state, and was chairman of the committee that issued, Dec. 1, 1778, a long " public defense " of their right to do so. In less than two years from that time he was an emphatic and headlong advocate of New Hampshire's jurisdiction over the whole of Vermont, and Nov. 22, 1780, wrote to l'resi- dent Weare of New Hampshire : "For my part I am determined to fight for New Hampshire and the United States as long as I am alive and have one copper in my hand."
But, notwithstanding his erratic state poli- tics, he was unflinchingly faithful to the con- tinental cause, and his later state flops were largely due to his suspicions of the Allens. He warned Washington repeatedly that there was treason afoot. "We have half a dozen rascals here," he said, and in 1781 he fully believed that Vermont had been sold out to Canada. British emissaries in the state wrote to Haldimand in that year, that he had been employed by Congress at great expense to "counteract underhand whatever is doing for government." He was in 1780 intensely anxious to lead an invasion into Canada- "the harbor for spoils, thieves, and robbers," as he wrote President Weare. He thought then that the patriot cause was "sinking so fast" as to make the attempt a vital necessity whatever the risk. He did important service throughout the war in guarding the ex- tensive frontier of two hundred miles, keep- ing friendship with the Indians, and keeping them employed for the American cause so far as he could. He was in this way con- stantly in confidential communication with Washington to the end of the war. He was repeatedly waylaid while in the performance of his arduous duties, his house rifled and his papers stolen by the bands of both scouts and lawless men that roamed the forests be-
tween the hostile countries. He was a com- missary general during a part of the war.
Ile was a member of the famous Council of Safety in 1777, and the next spring was elected to the Governor's Council. He was at Castleton in military service in 1777, but appears to have been acting under his New York commission. For the next few years the Vermonters had no nse for him, but in 1793 he was again elected councilor by a close margin over John White. He repeat- edly represented his town in the Legislature, and was a judge of Orange county court after that county was organized.
He died at Newbury, March 1, 1816. He was married, Oct. 16, 1745, to Prudence Noyes. They had ten children, and their descendants have been numerous and re- spectable.
MARSH, JOSEPH, the first Lieutenant- Governor of the state, and an- cestor of sever- al of the ablest men that have graced Ver- mont history, was born at Le- banon, Conn., Jan. 12, 1726, the son of Jos- eph Marsh and descended from John Marsh, an early Puritan, and from Dep- uty Governor John Webster. He is, however, said to have had but a single month's school- ing himself. He came to Hartford in 1772 and soon became active and influential in public affairs. He took the New York side in the early part of the controversy over the grants, as did a vast majority of the people on the east side of the mountains in the beginning, because they had their grants from New York, or where they were from New Hampshire, New York had taken pains to secure their friendship against the "Ben- nington mob" by confirming them.
In August, 1775, he was by New York authority appointed lieutenant-colonel of the upper regiment of Cumberland county, and in the January following he was promoted to a full colonelcy. He was also in 1776 ap- pointed by the Cumberland county commit- tee of safety a delegate to the New York Provincial Congress for the sessions begin- ning in February, May, and July ; but he appears to have been present only at the May and a part of the July session, and within a year of that time he was among the leaders of the "new state" men, participat-
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MARSH.
ing in the conventions of June, July, and December of that year, and being their vice- president. The July convention made him chairman of the committee to procure arms for the state. As military commander he did some efficient service that year. General Schuyler ordered him, in February, to enlist every fifth man in his regiment to reinforce the Continental army at Ticonderoga, and he executed the order with remarkable prompt- itude. The Vermont council of safety, in August, ordered him to march half of the regiment to Bennington, and he did so, but apparently not in season to participate in that battle, though the regiment was after- ward in service under his command on the Hudson.
When the new state government was or- ganized in March, 1778, he was, by a narrow margin, elected Lieutenant-Governor, and was re-elected for another term and then was succeeded by Benjamin Carpenter. In 1787, however, he was again elected and successive- ly reelected until 1790. He was almost simul- taneously with his first election as Lieutenant- Governor, made chairman of the court of confiscation for Eastern Vermont and was also during the "East union" chairman of the committee of safety for a section of Ver- mont, including also the annexed territory from New Hampshire and had his head- quarters at Dresden. He represented Hart- ford in the General Assemblies of 1781 and '82, was one of the first council of censors and was from 1787 to 1795 chief judge of the Windsor county court. He died Feb. 9, ISTI.
Colonel Marsh married, Jan. 10, 1750, Dorothy, a descendant of Gen. John Mason, the famous commander of the English forces in the Pequot Indian war, and an aunt of the distinguished jurist Jeremiah Mason of Boston. Among their descend- ants have been Professor and President James Marsh of the University of Vermont, Dr. Leonard Marsh of Burlington, Charles Marsh, congressman and famous lawyer, and greatest of all, George P. Marsh, congress- man, minister to Turkey and Italy, Scandi- navian scholar and a profoundly able author in many lines.
Governor Marsh is described by his grand- son, Hon. Roswell Marsh of Steubenville, Ohio, who was brought up in the former's family, thus : "He excelled in acquiring knowledge from conversations, and his own was exceedingly interesting. His knowl- edge, however acquired, was utilized by a close logical mind. His temper was equable, and children loved him. In politics nothing save remarks disrespectful to President Washington, ever disturbed him, for he was of the pure Washingtonian school, and trained his children in it. He was an
CARPENTER.
earnest Christian, but free from bigotry. In person he was of large stature and well pro- portioned-broad shouldered, large boned, lean and of great muscular power ; in weight over two hundred."
CARPENTER, BENJAMIN .- Colonel in the Revolutionary service, Lieutenant-Gov- ernor, 1779-'81, among the foremost of the early patriots of the state, and a character whose steady strength of principle makes one of the most interesting figures of Thomp- son's romance, was born in Swanzey, Mass., May 17, 1725, the son of Edward and Eliza- beth (Wilson) Carpenter. He had only a common school education, yet he was evi- dently a man of prominence before he came to Vermont, for the famous inscription on his tombstone at Guilford states that he was a magistrate in Rhode Island in 1764. He appeared on the Grants and settled in Guil- ford in 1770, and he was the first delegate from Guilford to a Vermont convention and one of the very few on the east side of the state that had any part in the early struggles against New York. He was in the West- minister convention of April 11, 1775, which condemned the New York government for the Westminster massacre, in the Dorset and Westminster conventions of 1776, and in the Windsor convention that framed the con- stitution of the state. An incident in this connection, given on the authority of the late Rev. Mark Carpenter, shows a creditable freedom on his part from the greed for land speculation which was so mixed up with the Vermont patriotism of those days. The Leg- islature, which consisted largely of the men who had framed the constitution, voted to themselves several townships of land as " compensation for their long and self-sacri- ficing services." Colonel Carpenter voted against the measure, denounced it as detract- ing from the dignity of the work, and to his dying day persisted in never touching what the town voted to him, (Barre), or in taking any compensation for his public services.
In the heated politics of Guilford, going far beyond what was ever known elsewhere in the state, the New York adherents got atop in 1778 and ruled the town for the next thirteen years ; but Colonel Carpenter fought them uncompromisingly and at much risk and sacrifice, as it is recorded that in December, 1783, he was taken prisoner by the Yorkers and carried away " to his great damage."
He was a leader among the patriots as soon as the Revolution broke out, being chairman of the Cumberland county com- mittee of safety Feb. 1, 1776, and by that body was nominated lieutenant-colonel of militia and the appointment confirmed by New York authority. He was a member of
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HASWELL.
PAYNE.
the Council of Safety which managed the 1777 campaign so efficiently, building out of disaster and disorganization the victory at Bennington and the eventual capture of Burgoyne. With pack and cane he went afoot from his Guilford home, thirty miles through the woods by his line of marked trees, to attend the meeting of the Council that took the decisive measures of confiscat- ing Tory estates to raise money, and stimu- lating enlistments by the promise of a township of land for cach company. So important were his services recognized to be, that at the second election of the new state in 1779, he was chosen Lieutenant- Governor and re-elected in 1780. In the later politics of the state he was a staunch Jeffersonian ; in the words on the tombstone : " A public leader of righteousness, an able advocate to his last for Democracy and the equal rights of man." His last office was that in the Council of Censors in 1783.
He was a deacon in the Baptist church, of which he was for fifty years a member, influ- ential throughout the denomination in New England, and occasionally preaching himself.
He died March 29, 1804, at the age of nearly seventy-nine, and leaving one hun- dred and forty-six persons of lineal posterity. His wife was a fourth cousin, Annie, daugh- ter of Abial and Prudence Carpenter, whom he married at Providence, R. I., Oct. 3, 1745.
Colonel Carpenter was a man of impres- sive presence, being over six feet tall and weighing two hundred. Thompson's His- tory of Vermont truly says that he " deserv- edly holds a conspicuous place in the early history of the state."
HASWELL, ANTHONY .- Editor, pub- lisher, and author, the postmaster-general of the state when it was an independent re- public, and in after years one of the victims of the alien and sedition laws, was born at Portsmouth, Eng., April 6, 1756, came to Boston when he was thirteen years old, learned the printer's trade with Isaiah Thomas, afterwards drifted to Vermont and started the Vermont Gazette at Bennington, June 5, 1783. He was for many years one of the public printers of the state, the work being divided between his and the press established at Windsor about the same time. The Legislature in 1784 passed an act establishing postoffices at Bennington, Brat- tleboro, Rutland, Windsor, and Newbury, and made him postmaster-general, and this position he held with extensive powers and increasing business until the state was ad- mitted to the Union in 1791. In national politics he then became an ardent Repub- lican, and when Mathew Lyon was prose- cuted under the sedition law, he criticised the
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