The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier., Part 43

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press
Number of Pages: 1064

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Davis, and adjourned to the second Tues- day of May, 1793, at the house of Col. Jacob Davis, in Montpelier.

May 14, 1793, the proprietors met as per adjournment, when the fourth division was accepted and allotted in 70 equal parts. After allowing the accounts for the same, the meeting adjourned, to meet at the (public) house of David Wing, Jr., in Montpelier, on the 14th of May, 1795.

The adjourned meeting assembled at the time named ; " and there appearing no business before the meeting, Voted, that this meeting be dissolved." This was the last meeting of the proprietors, the land all having been allotted, and the town passed by formal organization under a legal town government.

FIRST SETTLERS.

According to his agreement with the proprietors, made in January, 1786, Col. Jacob Davis with a surveying party en- tered the town that year, and surveyed and laid out the first division of lands, his re- port having been made in January, 1787; but this service did not technically amount to "a settlement," although Col. Davis then undoubtedly determined to settle in the town. In the spring of the same year, 1786, previous to the survey of the first di- vision, Joel Frizzel entered upon the south- west corner lot of the town, on the farm formerly of John Walton, and now of Col. E. P. Jewett, cleared a small part of it, planted corn, erected a small log-house, and resided in it with his wife, a French woman. " This," said Zadock Thompson, " was the first family in town."* In the later edition, he qualified this, by calling it " the first attempt to settle," adding that " the first permanent clearing and settle- ment was not made till the spring after"- that is, the spring of 1787. Daniel P. Thompson concurred with this last state- ment, giving the Davises the honor of first " permanent settlement," and character- izing Frizzel as an occasional sojourner, in his calling as trapper and hunter, in this part of the wilderness, who "squatted on the banks of the river, in the south-west

* Vermont Gazetteer, 1824.

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corner of the township." The Davises need no honor at the expense of Frizzel. They certainly were the leading men in point of everything but the mere date of settlement. Frizzel was officially recog- nized as a settler ; his pitch was confirmed to him ; the charter recognized him as an original proprietor in the right of James Gamble ; and in Jan. 1787, the proprietors appointed him as one of the committee to lay out the second and third divisions. D. P. Thompson conceded that he may have remained "a year or two longer " after the laying out of these divisions, which would give him a residence in the town of about 5 years. The writer does not hesitate to say, on these grounds, that Joel Frizzel was the first actual settler, dating from the spring of 1786. Ina year, however, he was followed by much more enterprising, energetic and valuable men, though without their families until 1788.

May 3, 1787, Col. Jacob Davis, with his cousin Parley Davis, and a hired man, left his family in Brookfield, taking one horse and as large a quantity of provisions as could be carried, and on that day reached the house of Seth Putnam, in Middlesex, whose farm joined the lot in Montpelier which Frizzel then occupied. On the 4th, Col. Davis and party cut a bridle-road from Putnam's along the bank of the Winooski to a hunter's camp in Montpelier, on the ground now occupied by Washington County jail, nearly in the centre of Montpelier village. The hunt- er's hut was a very good one, well roofed, and walled on three sides, and was used until, in 8 or 10 days, a substantial log- house, 32 by 16 feet, was constructed and occupied. At this time two sons of Col. Davis had reached the camp, Jacob, junior, aged 19, and Thomas, aged 15 years. The party immediately made an onslaught on the magnificent maple forest then stand- ing, and cleared the land now bounded by Court street on the North, North Branch on the East, the Winooski on the South, and the State House and depot grounds on the West. This was the first occupancy of Montpelier village with an intention to settle permanently. , This land was cleared

in time to plant it with corn, of which a good crop was realized ; and early in June, Col. Davis left to attend the proprietors' meeting at Arlington on the 11th, and Parley Davis proceeded to survey and lo- cate on a lot of about 300 acres at the centre of the town, which became his home for a long and honorable life.

The work of clearing the land was con- tinued during the summer, and embraced most of the meadow land between the hills and the Winooski as far west as the knoll on which the Parson Wright house stands, now occupied by the widow of the first pastor's son, the late Jonathan Ed- wards Wright. This included the meadow land south of State House hill and west of North Branch, being nearly 50 acres Thompson stated, on the authority of sur- viving contemporaries, that Col. Davis alone felled, trimmed out and cut into log ging lengths, an acre of forest of average growth per day, and continued at this rat for several successive days. There wa time then in that season for other work and it was vigorously used. Col. and Parley Davis having been appointed i: June, a committee to lay out and construc necessary roads, this work was entere upon at once. The first road constructe was from the Union House bridge, no' the entrance to School street, skirting th hill nearly on the present line of Court an High streets to the Winooski at the Parso Wright place, and then following the rive: substantially as the highway still does, t Middlesex line. The second road cut or by the Davises was in Berlin, being th present road from near the crest of Berli hill, passing on the east side through tl Andrew Cummings farm to the Winoosk and then following the river to the Gi works, where the stream was fordable, e cept in high water. This intersected road, or more properly path, which ha been opened through Berlin to the mou of Dog river, and thus made a shorter rou from the older eastern towns to Montpelic Over this road, in fact, most of the ear settlers in Montpelier came.

The food of the sturdy foresters duris the summer and autumn of 1787, w

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mainly of the fish of the streams and the game of the woods ; but these were of the best. The streams were full of trout, some of them weighing 5 pounds ; and the woods with wild game, such as moose, bears in abundance, deer, partridges, etc., and these, with the few condiments brought in by the party, vegetables and corn of the summer's growth, and a little flour from the older settlements, furnished bills of fare tempting even to gourmands, and were amply sufficient for the pioneers of the settlement. All their work that year was preparatory for settlement. The log-house was not furnished with cellar, floor, oven and chimney until autumn, and then, hav- ing secured the fruits of the first harvest, Col. Davis returned with his sons to Brookfield, to prepare his family for mov- ing into the new town and the new house with the first sufficient fall of snow.

The family consisted of Col. Davis and wife, two sons, and four daughters, The sons have already been named. The daughters were Rebecca, who became wife of Hon. Cornelius Lynde of Williamstown ; Hannah, wife of Hon. David Wing, Jr., of Montpelier, Secretary of State ; Polly, wife of Capt. Thomas West of Montpelier ; and Lucy, wife of Capt. Timothy Hubbard of Montpelier. Another daughter was born in Montpelier.

Near the close of December, 1787, Col, Davis dispatched his sons Jacob and Thom- as, with their sisters Rebecca and Polly- all that could be carried at once-to Mont- pelier, intending to complete the removal of the family by a second journey of the team, with which Jacob Davis returned to Brookfield. But a series of heavy snow- storms made the journey impracticable ; and thus the lad Thomas and the two girls were the only tenants of the new homestead until March. "Not another human face," said Thompson, "made its appearance at this lonely, snow-hedged and forest-girt cabin." . Most welcome then was the ad- vent of the remainder of the family in March, 1788.

FIRST THINGS.

The summer work of 1788 comprised the illing of the ground previously cleared ; the

clearing of the remainder of the meadow to the Parson Wright place, and part of that east of North Branch, now occupied by Main Street ; extending the clearing on the west side to the falls on which now stand the works of Lane, Pitkin & Brock ; and the erection of the first dam and saw- mill on those falls.

During the next summer, 1789, Col. Davis erected the first grist-mill on the falls of North Branch ; and thus prepara- tions were made to tempt new settlers with facilities for the erection of dwellings and converting the crops of corn and grain in the neighborhood into bread-stuffs.

Sept. 22, the first birth in town oc- curred, being that of Clarissa Davis, young- est daughter of Col. Jacob Davis, and wife of Hon. George Worthington of Montpe- lier.

Col. Davis employed all the men whose services could be commanded, his house of course being head-quarters, and more- over serving as hotel for all visitors. A larger house was a necessity ; and there- fore, in the summer of 1790, the Colonel erected a large house, of two stories, with four spacious rooms in each story, and an attic that served on occasions as a welcome dormitory. This was the first completed frame house in Montpelier. After Col. Davis left it, this dwelling became the first County jail-house, and was such until 1858, when it was removed to another part of Elm Street, where it is still used as a dwell- ing-house. A frame for a house had been erected a few days before Col. Davis's, but the house was not completed so soon as his. It was on the hill one mile north- east of the village, and was long known as the Silloway house, though it was built by James Hawkins, the first blacksmith in Montpelier, and finished in 1791. About the same time Hawkins also built the third frame house, in which the first store was opened by Dr. Frye, in 1791. This house stood until 1873, and was the first dwelling- house on the west side of Main Street, nearest to the Arch Bridge. These were quickly succeeded, all built by the ener- getic Hawkins, by the first Union House, which was the hotel kept by Houghton,

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Tufts, Cottrill (before taking the Pavilion,) Lamb, Mann, and others in our remem- brance, and was burnt in 1835; and the Cadwell house, near the junction of Main and State Streets, once the finest residence in the village, and the favorite boarding- place of governors and other dignitaries, the wreck of which still stands, to the re- gret of many who would have so eligible a location for business purposes worthily improved.

The first wagon was brought into town in 1789, from Vergennes, by Thomas Da- vis, who had to cut much of his way from Williston to Montpelier, and scale " Rock Bridge," in Moretown, by an ingenious pieee of engineering, which is fully de- scribed by Thompson.

The first notable stranger in Montpelier was Prince Edward of England, Duke of Kent, son of George III. and father of Queen Victoria. He was the guest of Col. Davis for a night in the winter of 1790-'91, coming with an armed retinue of 20 men, to defend him from violence, and serve as "tasters" to try his food and save him from poison. Col. Davis so far assured the prince of personal safety, that he consent- ed to dismiss most of his attendants, who returned to Montreal, and the prince con- tinued his journey to Boston in a more modest and sensible style. *

The first male child born in town was James, son of Solomon Dodge, April 5, 1790. The first marriage recorded is that of Jacob Davis Jr. of Montpelier and Caty Taplin of Berlin, the ceremony being per- formed by the father of the bride, John Taplin Esq., Oct. 3, 1791.

The first school was kept in a log house on the river near Middlesex line, by Jacob Davis, jr., and continued from about 1789 to 1791. In 1791 a school was kept in the village, in Col. Davis' house, by David Wing, jr., who was subsequently Secre- tary of State ; and in 1794, the town was divided into six districts, and schools were regularly maintained thereafter.

The first tavern was built for Col. Davis on Main street, in 1793. It was the origi- nal "Union House," on the site of the

Unitarian church. This tavern was burnt in 1835, rebuilt and again burnt in 1859, and the third Union house was erected on its present site. The second tavern, known as the "Hutchins Tavern," and afterwards the "Shepard Tavern," was built about 1800, opposite the entrance of Barre to Main street. The "Pavilion" was built in preparation for the Legislature in 1808; it was probably the finest hotel in the State then, and indeed for many years, and had a high reputation, specially under THOMAS DAVIS, and MAHLON COTTRILL.

The first physician was Spaulding Pierce, in 1790 ; the first lawyer, Charles Buckley, 1797 ; the first minister, Ziba Woodworth, free will Baptist, and one of the first set- tiers ; and the first mechanics were Col. Larned Lamb, carpenter and mill-wright- James Hawkins, blacksmith, David Tol- man, clothier, Paul Knapp, brick-maker.

The first thanksgiving day observed in the town was Dec. 1, 1791. The first social ball occurred at the house of Col. Davis, on the evening of the next day, Dec. 2; and that was succeeded immediately by the first death noted in the record of the town-thus :

"Theophilus Wilson Brooks, drowned Dec. 3d, 1791."

In fact, however, his death was accom- panied by that of his betrothed, Miss Bet- sey Hobart, daughter of Capt. James Ho- bart, one of the first settlers of Berlin. An account of this unusually sorrowful event, written two days after and printed in a New York City newspaper, Dec. 31, 1791, has recently come into the possession of The Vermont Historical Society. It is as follows :

Extract of a letter from Montpelier, (Vt.,) dated December 5, 1791.

A melancholy accident took place here last Saturday morning, of which the fol- lowing is an account : On Friday, the 2d instant, being the day after Thanksgiving in this State, the young people in this neighborhood assembled to spend the even- ing in dancing. Amongst others, two young gentlemen from this town waited on two Misses Hobart, of Berlin, on the other side of Onion river. After having spent the greater part of the night in merriment,

*Thompson's Montpelier, p. 53.

Mrleowhile

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they parted about two o'clock in the morn- ing. The above-mentioned couples hav- ing to cross the river in a canoe, they four, (together with the ferryman,) imprudently got in all at once, and had not got far from the shore before the canoe overset ; but by the exertions of the ferryman, they righted her, and he, together with a Mr. Putnam, one of the young gentlemen, and one of the girls, got in ; but in helping the other girl in, they unfortunately overset the sec- ond time. They then endeavored for the shore. Mr. Putnam, at the danger of his life, swam ashore with the younger Miss Ho- bart under his arm ; but were both of them so far chilled as to be unable to stand, having swam more than forty rods, as the water was high and the current swift, be- fore they reached the shore. The ferry- man got ashore by the help of the canoe ; the other couple perished in the water. The young gentleman drowned is Mr. The- ophilus Wilson Brooks, son of Deacon Brooks, of Ashford, Connecticut, a val- uable young man, aged 25. The young woman is a daughter of Capt. Hobart, of Berlin, an amiable young woman, about twenty years of age. The body of the young woman was found about a mile be- low, yesterday morning. Mr. Brooks is not yet found.

VITAL STATISTICS.

In this connection, the vital statistics of the town in its earliest years may as well be stated. From the settlement of the first family in the spring of 1786 to the summer of 1799-more than 13 years-the number of deaths recorded was 16. Of these, 3 were accidental, and 9 of diseases incident to infants and children ; and of the 4 remaining, adult cases, 2 were of consumption, I of fever, and I of a disease unknown. The number of births in the ame period is stated by Thompson at 130. The population in 1791 was 113, and in 800, 890 -- Thompson's estimated average or the whole time, 400. The rate of deaths as therefore less than Id per annum, and le percentage five-sixteenths of 1 per cent. er 100 of population. The registration port states the percentage of deaths in e whole State to population, in 1858, to 1.14, which is more than three times eater than in Montpelier for the first 13 ars. The rate of births in Montpelier S I to every 40 persons ; whereas in the ite, in 1858, the rate was only I to

every 49 persons. The difference between

the town and the State in the proportion of births to deaths is most remarkable; in the town the births being more than eight times the number of deaths. while in the State, the number of births, in 1858, was less than twice the number of deaths. It certainly must be conceded that Montpel- ier was, at the start, a remarkably fruitful and healthy town. This is presumed to be true of nearly all Vermont towns at the first settlement-of all that were not ex- posed, by their location, to peculiar mala- rial influences. Few but hardy and en- ergetic men and women would brave the perils and hardships of frontier life, and the labor of converting pathless forests into habitable, traversable and tillable fields ; and such people are proof against most diseases.

Thompson stated other striking facts as to the health of the village of Montpelier, in his chapter on epidemics, which we quote nearly in full. The records of Rev. Mr. Wright, noted by Thompson, were undoubtedly more complete than the town records. The good parson was, from re- ligious principle, as well as from strong sympathy, a visitor to the bedside of all the sick and dying, and his parish then included the entire village.

EPIDEMICS.

FROM D. P. THOMPSON'S HISTORY.

Endemics we have none. From first to last no diseases have made their appear- ance in town which could be discovered to be peculiar to the place, or to have been generated by any standing local causes. Of epidemics, Montpelier has had its share, but still a light share compared, as we believe, with a majority of the towns in the State, only four deserving the name having occurred from the first settlement of the town to the present day.

The first of these was the dysentery, which fatally prevailed throughout the town, in common with most other towns in Vermont, during the summer and fall of 1802. The victims in Montpelier were : Mrs. Sophia Watrous, wife of Erastus Wat- rous, Esq. ; Erastus Hubbard, a younger brother of Timothy Hubbard; John Wig- gins, another young man, and a consider- able number of children.

The second epidemic was the typhus fever, which prevailed to a considerable

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extent in the summer season of 1806, and proved fatal to Montpelier's favorite and most honored citizen, David Wing, Jr., then Secretary of State. Luther Mosely, Esq., another valued citizen, also fell a victim to the same disease, together with a young man by the name of Cutler, a girl by the name of Goodale, and several others.

The third epidemic visiting the town was that fearful disease known by the name of spotted fever, which, to the gen- eral alarm of the inhabitants, suddenly made its appearance in the village in the winter of 18II. The first victim was Sibyl Brown, a bright and beautiful daugh- ter of Amasa Brown, of the age of nine years, who, on Saturday, Jan. 2d, was in school, on the evening of that day sliding with her mates on the ice, and the next morning a corpse. The wife of Aaron Griswold, and the first wife of Jonathan Shepard, were next, and as suddenly de- stroyed by this terrible epidemic, which struck and swept over the village, to which it was mostly confined, like the blast of the simoom, and was gone. There were over 70 cases in this village, and, strange to tell, but three deaths of the disease, which at the same time was nearly decimating the then 400 inhabitants of Moretown, and sweeping off 60 or 70 of the 2,000 inhab- itants of Woodstock. The chief remedy relied on here was the prompt use of the hot bath, made of a hasty decoction of hemlock boughs ; and the pine-board bath- ing vessel, made in the shape of a coffin, was daily seen, during the height of the disease, in the streets, borne on ths shoul- ders of men, rapidly moving from house to house, to serve in turn the multiplying victims. So strange and unexpected were the attacks, and so sudden and terrible were often the fatal terminations of the disease, that it was likened to the Plague of the Old World. Some of its types, in- deed, so closely resembled the Plague, as well to justify men in deeming them one and the same disorder. A bright red spot, attended with acute pain in some in- stances, appeared in one of the limbs of the unwarned victim, and, like the old Plague spot, spread, struck to the vitals and caused his death in a few hours. In other instances, a sort of congestion of the blood, or silent paralysis of all the func- tions of the life, stole unawares over the system of the patient, his pulse faltered and nearly stopped, even before he dream- ed of the approach of the insidious de- stroyer. The late worthy Dr. James Spald- ing once told us, that he was the student of an eminent physician, in Alstead, N. H,, when the epidemic visited that place, that

he frequently went the rounds with his in- structor in his visits to his patients, and that on one of these occasions they made a friendly call on a family in supposed good health, when the master of the house congratulated himself on the prospect that he and his young family were about to es- cape the disease which had been cutting down so many others. Something, how- ever, in the appearance of one or two of the apparently healthy group of children present attracting the attention of the old Doctor, he fell to examining their pulses, when in two of them he found the pulse so feeble as to be scarcely perceptible ; but keeping his apprehensions to himself, he made some general prescriptions for all the children, and left, hoping his fears would not be realized. Within three days both of those children were buried in one grave. The physicians who had charge of these cases in Montpelier were Dr. Lamb, Dr. N. B. Spalding, Dr. Woodbury, and Dr. Lewis, of Moretown. Volumes have been written on the causes of this and similar epidemics, and yet to this day the subject is involved in clouds of mystery.

The fourth epidemic followed soon after the last, and in some instances, assumed some of its peculiar types. This occurred in the winter of 1813, and was here gen- erally called the typhus fever, though it partook more of the characteristics of per- ipneumony, or lung fever, being the same disease which first broke out the fall be- fore, among the U. S. troops at Burling- ton, and by the following mid-winter had become a destructive epidemic in nearly every town in the State, carrying off, ac- cording to the statistics of Dr. Gallup, more than 6,000 persons, or one to every 40 of its whole population. In this whole town, during the year 1813, the number of deaths-most of which were of this dis- ease-was 78, among which were those of Capt. N. Doty, R. Wakefield, C. Hamblin and others, in the prime of life. This great number of deaths in one year was, beyond all comparison, greater than ever occurred before, or has ever occurred since, it is be- lieved, in proportion to the population. which was then about 2,000 ; while the av. erage number of deaths in town per year. about that period, was, as near as can now be ascertained, but a little over 20, and o course but little more than one death il

IO0. In the village, according to record: left by the Rev. Chester Wright, the av erage number of deaths for the five year preceding 1813 was but four per year which must have been considerably les than one to 100 yearly. This seems to b confirmed by another record left by Mı Wright, of the number of deaths occurrin

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each year in the village for the 14 years succeeding 1816, by which it appears that the average number of deaths in the vil- lage, during that whole period, was but I0 yearly, while the population during the last-named period increased from nearly 1,000 in 1816 to nearly 2,000 in 1830; so that the rate of mortality during the whole 19 years, of which we have given the ap- proximate statistics, was, with the excep- tion of 1814, always greatly less than one to every 100 inhabitants ; all going to con- firm what we have before stated respecting the peculiar healthiness of the location of our town, and especially of our village, from the earliest times to the present day.

Notices of Proprietors' Meetings, of taxes, and of Sales of lands for Taxes in Mont- pelier-Compiled by HENRY STEVENS, Senior, from files of the [Windsor ] VER- MONT JOURNAL and the [Bennington] VERMONT GAZETTE. *

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The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier., Part 43

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press Number of Pages: 1064

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press
Number of Pages: 1064