USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 16
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From recommendations given by sundrey Gentlemen in the Neighbouring Goverments who were attached to their Own Intrest, Several persons have been appointed to offices in this County whose princeples are utterly inconsistent with those Sentiments of Honer which you have always Cultivated, and the persons above alluded to have behaved in such a manner in the Provinces they came from as has put it out of their power to return back.
These Grants formerly issued by New York for Lands west-
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
ward of the Green Mountains having been included in some tracts many years after Patened by New Hampshire brought about the Controvercy which occasioned the Establishment of the Eastern Limmits of New York Goverment at the western banks of Connecticut River, and the same reasons it is Con- cevid will Opprate against the Grants passed at New York since the Date of The Patents under New Hampshire; and if the Gentlemen Claming under the New York Grants will con- desend to sell upon easy terms to the grantees or proprietors holding under the prior grants from New Hampshire I flatter myself that I can get them to settle with and buy from the New York Grantees, as also get such persons as are in posses- sion of the Lands so granted by New York anticedent to New Hampshire to purchase or take Leases from the New York Grantees at a price equivallent to the Value of the Lands; and the now possessors of them Lands will then be as firmly attached to the Goverment of New York as they at present are to New Hampshire.
With respect to my own Property I beg leave to observe that previoues to the Establishment of the Limmits of New York at the western banks of Connecticut River I laid out very considerable sums of money in Purchasing the principle part of three Townships (to wit) Windsor, Reading and Rut- land, conceving the New Hampshire Title to be Good and Effectual and upon the arivieal of the Royal order of the 20th of July 1764 I found it necssary to take pattents under New York and accordingly applied to his late Exelencey Sir Henery Moore Barronet for the same who was pleased to direct me in what manner to apply and promised that I should have all my Lands which put me to above £ 100 Expences in collect- ing papres &c. necessary to make out the deduction of my Titles notwithstanding which the most Valuable Tract of the three was advised to be granted to gentlemen at New York without paying any regard to my Claims under New Hamp- shire or the said promise and since that time I have Expended Considerable sums of Money in Settling the said tract-Now Gentlemen what I have to offer is this that if the Goverment of New York will agree that all the Lands formerly granted by New Hampshire westward of the River Connecticut and
1
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THE EARL OF DUNMORE
Settled Cultivated and Improved by the New Hampshire Grantees Should be Confirmed by Patents under New York so as to secure the Quit Rent to the Crown upon paying the officers of Goverment a Quantum Meruit for their services, I have it in my power on Receiving an assurance thereof to get all the Inhabitants on the East and west sides of the Green mountains to Petition that an end may be immediately put to the Controversey that has so long unhappily Subsisted between the Goverments of New York and New Hampshire by their unaminously Praying to Continue and hold under New York, and all the other Lands westward of Connecticut River not Culiveted and Improved to be patented by New York on the usual Terms as I Do not mean to favor the New Hampshire Lands Jobers and only want to Secure those per- sons that have been at Expence in Settling and Improving their Lands as well as myself. The Steps lately taken by both Goverments will I am convinced prolong the Determination of the Controversy so as that a war may Come on before it is Settled which would prevent any farther Steps being taken touching the promises untill the end thereof and Consequent- ley prove Extreemly Detramental to every Land holder in this County.
Should you judge it propper to give me a favorable answer to this reasonable Proposal, and that I can have an oppor- tunity of Communicating my Sentiments freely, I can inform you of Sundry particulares peculiourly advantagious to this Goverment Relative to the said Controversy which at present I cannot in honor or Justice to my Frinds or myself Commu- nicate.
I am Gentlemen your Most Obidant
and Very Humble Servant NATHAN STONE
To the Honorable William Smith Esquire
James Duan & Goldsborow Banyar Esquires.
On October 14, 1770, Benning Wentworth died, leaving the bulk of his large estate to his young widow. It had been the belief of his Wentworth kin that they were to inherit his prop- erty, and their disappointment was great. In Mr. E. A. Bay-
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
ley's admirable memoir of General Jacob Bayley1 it is sug- gested that Governor John Wentworth, who had expected to be the chief beneficiary under his uncle's will, was so affected by not sharing his uncle's property that he utterly changed his policy regarding the New Hampshire Grants and became an upholder of the New York authorities. This theory the writer cannot accept. Not only is it inconsistent with the known character of Sir John Wentworth, but it is contra- dicted by the fact that for more than ten months after his uncle's death Governor John Wentworth still clung to the hope that the Grants would become a part of New Hamp- shire. Indeed, it was not until the happening of other un- favorable events that he gave up all effort to have the New Hampshire Grants brought under the jurisdiction of his Province.
1 Proc. Vt. Hist. Soc. (1917-1918), pp. 67-70.
CHAPTER XXIII THE CENSUS OF 1771
LORD DUNMORE's census of the inhabitants of Cumberland and Gloucester counties is an item of historical interest. Probably it was never reported or printed in full and the original returns were doubtless lost in the Capitol fire in Albany in 1911. In the years 1849 and 1850 Mr. James H. Phelps, of Townshend, having access to the papers of Sheriff Daniel Whipple, found among them the manuscripts or copies of the Cumberland County enumeration with lists of "heads of families" in the several towns. These lists Mr. Phelps transcribed and then caused them to be published in the Brattleboro Semi-weekly Eagle. It is to the files of this news- paper in the Brooks Library at Brattleboro that one must look for the more interesting details of this important census, taken at the order of the Earl of Dunmore in 1771. Mr. B. H. Hall, in his History of Eastern Vermont,1 gives a con- densed statement of this census by towns. So, also, does the Documentary History of New York 2; and Doctor Samuel Wil- liams, in his History of Vermont,3 gives a still more condensed summary.
By this census the population of Cumberland County, according to Doctor Williams, was 3,947, and of Gloucester County 722. Mr. Hall figures the population of Cumberland at 4,024. No separate census of the inhabitants west of the Green Mountains and east of the present New York boun- dary was taken at that time, but Doctor Williams's estimate that they numbered only about one-half the combined popu- lation of Cumberland and Gloucester has not been challenged. Accepting that estimate, we find the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants on the west side of the Green Mountains to have been 2,373, and their entire population to have been 7,119 in the year 1771.
1 History of Eastern Vermont, p. 745. 2 4 Doc. Hist., p. 623.
3 Williams, Hist. of Vermont, 1st ed., p. 411; 2d ed., vol. II, p. 478.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
By Mr. Hall's table Windsor stood but eighth in population among the Cumberland towns and had but 203 inhabitants. The towns of greater size were Westminster 478, Guilford 436, Brattleboro 403, Halifax 329, Putney 301, Rockingham 225 and Norwich 206. Windsor's inhabitants were classified as follows:
White males under sixteen. 50
White males over sixteen and under sixty 57
White males of sixty and upwards 3
White females under sixteen
46
White females over sixteen 46
Black males 0
Black females
1
Total . 203
Among these Windsor people were thirty-five "heads of families," i. e., married men with wife or children or both. These heads of families in Windsor were as follows:
Caleb Benjamin
Joab Hoisington
Zedekiah Stone
Jacob Getchell
William Smead
Andrew Blount1
William Dean
Jacob Hastings
Nathan Stone
Solomon Emmons
Jeremiah Bishop
Elisha Hawley
Jonathan Holden
Israel Curtis
Ebenezer Howard
Joseph Wait
Samuel Seers
Andrew Norton
John Benjamin
David Stone
William Smead, Jr.
Samuel Stone
Hezekiah Thomson
William Dean, Jr.
Asaph Butler
Joseph Patterson
Elnathan Strong
Ebenezer Hoisington
Ebenezer Curtis
Thomas Cooper
Steel Smith
Ebenezer Davis John Amos (Ames or Eames)
Benjamin Wait
Zephaniah Spicer
1 Elsewhere usually given as Andrew Blunt.
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THE CENSUS OF 1771
It is a list of plain and respectable New England names without a German, a Hebrew, an Irishman, or even a French Canadian in the lot. We miss some of the names that have already been mentioned in this history, but their absence does not necessarily mean that their owners were no longer living in Windsor. The list includes only "heads of families." Hence, for example, Willard Dean, being still a bachelor and making his home with his father, was not included. Some, however, had doubtless moved away. The three patriarchs of sixty and upwards were Zedekiah Stone, William Smead, and Caleb Benjamin. What family was then able to keep a female colored servant is unknown, but the family of Israel Curtis is as good a guess as any. Fifty boys and forty-six girls under sixteen years of age indicated generous broods of children in the thirty-five families. Like all new settlements, the male population in Windsor outnumbered the female.
Among these heads of families the most conspicuous, other than the men who have already been commented on in this history, were Ebenezer Curtis and Ebenezer Hoisington. The former was a blacksmith from Warwick in the Province of Massachusetts, an active patriot, a delegate to some of the early conventions, and one of Windsor's representatives to the first Vermont legislature. The latter was a carpenter and farmer from Southington in the Colony of Connecticut, a bit- ter opponent of the New York government, a delegate to the most important of the conventions on the Grants and perhaps the earliest and most outspoken Windsor advocate of the "New State" movement.
Two matters that had a bearing on the history of Windsor developed in the year 1771, viz., the agitation for the removal of the Cumberland County court house and jail from Chester to one of the towns on the Connecticut River, and a represen- tation regarding the New Hampshire Grants controversy made by the Lords of Trade and Plantations to the Privy Council. The former matter aroused the interest of the more alert men of Windsor, since if it did not afford a prospect of Windsor's becoming the county seat it at least might result in bringing the center of county government to a point more convenient for the people of Windsor and far less inaccessible
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
for the county generally than the remote backwoods settle- ment in Chester. Although, as has been seen, Colonel Nathan Stone had made the suggestion, Judge Wells, of Brattleborough, was perhaps the organizer of this movement. Enlisted in the support of the measure we find both Colonel Stone and Captain William Dean. As early in the year as March 11, petitions on this subject came before the Provincial Council of New York. Mr. B. H. Hall, in his History of East- ern Vermont, at pages 173 to 186, gives a very full ac- count of the steps taken to remove the county buildings from Chester.
The court house project was still pending when on June 6, 1771, the Lords of Trade recommended to the King's Privy Council a plan for adjusting the disputed titles on the New Hampshire Grants. At what date a copy of this representation reached New England does not appear, but it is certain that as soon as it was published on the Grants it must have dashed the hopes of those who had desired to see New Hampshire's jurisdiction extended west of the Connecticut River. Briefly, the Lords of Trade advised that the old New York grants, such as the Hoosick and Wallumschaak charters, created titles superior to any other grants in the Vermont country. Next, they recommended as worthy of consideration the actual settlers under the Benning Wentworth grants to the extent that such settlers had improved lands not within these ancient New York charter limits. Of the New Hampshire settlers the Lords of Trade observed: "for however disreputable their titles may be upon the ground of the grants themselves, yet there always has been and we think there always ought to be in the Plantations an attention to actual Settlement and Im- provement." 1
One does not have to read further the recommendations of the Lords of Trade to see that the settlers in Pownal, Ben- nington, and possibly other western townships whose lands were overlapped by the ancient New York grants were to be affected very differently from actual settlers in the Connecti- cut Valley, where no early New York land grants had been made. The limitation which confronted the Windsor settlers
14 Doc. Hist., pp. 435-439.
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THE CENSUS OF 1771
was not that they might lose the farms they had cultivated, but that they would be restricted to such land as they had actually occupied, cultivated, and improved. The representation fur- ther advised that the moderate quitrents named in the Ben- ning Wentworth charters should not be increased on lands actually settled on and improved, but that as to those grant- ees or proprietors who had acquired New Hampshire titles without taking possession of the land and improving it, the best that the Lords of Trade would recommend was an appli- cation on the part of such proprietors to the New York Gov- ernment for confirmation patents at higher prices than even New York had customarily imposed. This startling suggestion was sufficient to show the inhabitants of the Grants that for the future the New York Provincial Government was the only authority to be reckoned with, and that it would be a prudent course for those whose townships were not encumbered by ancient New York grants to secure New York confirmations of their New Hampshire charters on the best terms possible. While the Windsor settlers might retain their homesteads and their cultivated farms, there was a distinctly implied threat that their uncleared land and timber might be lost to them, unless protected by a New York title.
It is plain that the settlers between the Connecticut River and the Green Mountains now had reason to establish amica- ble relations with the New York authorities and had at least a prospect of adjusting the matter of title. It is equally plain that the settlers in the southwestern part of the Grants still had hanging over them the liability of being ejected by those holding title under the Hoosick and Wallumschaak grants. Worse than that, the representation of the Lords of Trade seemed to preclude the chance of finding either sympathy or favor in England. There is no question that from this time, from the force of varying conditions in land titles on the two sides of the Green Mountains, may be traced the divergence of policy between the settlers on the east and west sides of the Mountains; and if we accept the representation of the Lords of Trade as the key to the situation the motives of the settlers and their next moves are reasonably clear. It is the writer's belief that this representation was the chief cause of Gov-
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
ernor John Wentworth's relinquishment of the project to re- cover the Grants for New Hampshire.
Reverting, now, to the project to change the county seat of Cumberland County, we discover that the New York Govern- ment, while professing merely a desire to adjust that question in accordance with the will of the majority of those interested, saw in the situation an opportunity to stimulate a renewal of applications for confirmation charters. The scheme was in- genious. Nothing fairer than a vote by the duly chosen rep- resentatives or supervisors of the several settlements could be suggested for determining the site of the court house and jail, but in the legislative bill providing for this referendum there were various adroitly framed conditions under which each organized township and each "district" should elect not only its supervisor but assessors, collectors, and other officers that were common to incorporated towns within the Province of New York. The bill further provided that previous to the election day the judicial officers of Cumberland County should assemble in Chester and divide into "districts" such of the county as was not included within the limits of organized townships. The ulterior motive of the bill appeared clearly from the language of the fourth section which marked as the areas to be districted such parts of the county "as are not erected into Townships under the Great Seal of this Colony" and provided that such areas should remain as "districts" until erected into townships "by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of this Colony."
At this time it should be remembered that Cumberland County had perhaps but four townships that had been law- fully incorporated or erected under New York authority, viz., Brattleborough, Putney, Chester, and Hertford (Hartland). The inhabitants of these four towns were secure, under the court-house referendum bill, in the right to elect their own town officers without fear that persons who were not residents could vote or be elected. Not so with the inhabitants of Cumber- land County residing on any of the other New Hampshire Grants: they might be districted with one or two or three other of the Wentworth township grants and, therefore, would not be self-governing. Windsor might be districted with
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THE CENSUS OF 1771
Weathersfield, Rockingham, and Westminster, and find itself on the day after election at the mercy of some non-resident tax assessors. The prospect was too unpleasant to be viewed with complacency. If the attitude of Lords of Trade made it advisable to resume friendly relations with the New York Government and to renew the application for a New York township charter, the court house referendum bill bespoke promptness of action along the same lines. This bill became a law March 24, 1772.
Still another consideration which must have weighed with the Windsor settlers at this time was the fact that the Ben- ning Wentworth grant of Windsor provided as its fifth condi- tion that
"Every Proprietor, Settler or Inhabitant shall yield and
pay . . . yearly, and every Year forever, from the twenty-fifth Day of December which will be in the Year of Our Lord 1772 One shilling Proclamation Money for every Hundred Acres he so owns, settles or possesses, and so in Pro- portion for a greater or lesser Tract of the said Land .. " Before defaulting in this matter of the New Hampshire quit- rents it was well to ascertain whether a New York title could be secured. If letters patent from New York could be ob- tained there would be no further occasion to worry over the New Hampshire quitrents.
As if in anticipation of the fact that they would soon be seeking favor from the New York Provincial Government, the Windsor settlers at their March town meeting in 1771 clothed themselves with New York town offices. No intimation of this change of front appeared in the warning which was issued by David Stone as town clerk, with special reference to Wind- sor's New Hampshire charter, and which called for a meet- ing on the regular New Hampshire town-meeting day. In- deed, the town clerk, in warning the inhabitants "to Chuse all Town Officers acording to Law Directed by the Charter" seems to have precluded, so far as he could, any expectation that the meeting would differ from those held in 1769 and 1770. Yet "At a Legal Meeting of the freeholders and In- habatince of the Town of Windsor in the County of Cumber- land in the Govrment of New York, held at the House of Capt.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OG VERMONT
Zedekiah Stone In sd Windsor on the Second Tusday of March 1771," after the choice of Deacon Hezekiah Thomson as mod- erator and David Stone as town clerk, there were elected the following:
Benjamin Wait, Supervisor. Hezekiah Thomson, Thomas Cooper, and Ebenezer Curtis, Trustees.
William Smead, Hezekiah Thomson, and Caleb Benjamin, Overseers of the Poor.
Andrew Norton, John Benjamin, and Jeremiah Bishop, Commissioners.
"Supervisors," "Trustees," and "Commissioners" were offi- cers of New York towns. The "Selectmen," common to New Hampshire and other New England Provinces, were not chosen.
CHAPTER XXIV
COLONEL STONE MAKES UP WITH NEW YORK
IN August, 1771, Governor John Wentworth and a party of friends came up to Hanover to attend the first Commence- ment celebration of Dartmouth College, which had been founded the year before. Whether Colonel Stone took the eighteen-mile trip from Windsor to meet his friend the gov- ernor on that occasion is not known, but it is clear that from the governor he soon received, either directly or indirectly, an important suggestion.
Either on his way to Hanover or else after the Commence- ment festivities were over,1 the governor extended his journey to the northward as far as Newbury, where he visited with Jacob Bayley, who was then and thereafter one of the most sagacious and upright characters on the New Hampshire Grants. Governor Wentworth consulted with Bayley on the prospect of bringing the Grants under the jurisdiction of the Province of New Hampshire, "was very jealous to get the lands on the western side of the Connecticut River," and de- sired Bayley's co-operation. Evidently the representation made on June 6, 1771, by the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations had not yet reached New England.
About two months after the governor's visit to Newbury, which would have brought the time about to the end of Octo- ber, Jacob Bayley to his astonishment received a letter from Governor Wentworth, setting forth that Bayley must make the best terms he could with New York, and that the gov- ernor of the Province of New Hampshire could do no more in the matter. So puzzled was Bayley at the governor's change of front that he immediately proceeded to Portsmouth to ascertain the cause. He got little or no satisfaction. Why the governor was not communicative does not appear. Perhaps
1 Mr. George B. Upham, in his article on "The Province Road" in The Gran- ite Monthly for November, 1920 (vol. LII, p. 439), states that Governor Went- worth visited Haverhill opposite Newbury on his way to Hanover.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
he had received in confidence a copy of the representation of the Lords of Trade, was convinced that the game was up and could not say more. He succeeded in persuading Bayley to that belief, for on November 20 of that year Bayley's New- bury townsmen appointed agents to visit New York and for- mally acknowledge New York's jurisdiction. That Governor John Wentworth had given Jacob Bayley sound advice is abundantly proved by a letter written by the Earl of Hills- borough to the governor of the Province of New York on December 4, 1771, in which it was definitely stated that by the boundary decision of July 20, 1764, "all contests between the two governments in respect to territorial jurisdiction were finally decided." 1
Mr. E. A. Bayley's Memoir of General Bayley,2 from which the foregoing items are mainly taken, proceeds with an account of Jacob Bayley's successful trip to New York City to get a New York township charter for Newbury. His route lay through Windsor and over the Green Mountains through Ben- nington. He doubtless saw Colonel Nathan Stone at Windsor and consulted with him, and there, if he did not start a new movement for a New York charter for Windsor, he at least stimulated a proceeding which was already under way. No Windsor record shows formal action looking towards the sec- ond application for a New York charter until the end of De- cember.
In Bennington Bayley fell in with the Allens and their col- leagues, who urged him to join them in resisting New York by force.3 Bayley would have nothing to do with the pro- posal, and incidentally he formed a low opinion of the leading personages on the west side of the Green Mountains.4 This opinion he retained. Indeed, the strength of his own character and his subsequent respected position as a Revolutionary patriot made his distrust of the Allens and the Fays, and, later, of Governor Chittenden, a complication of grave pro- portions in the affairs of the New Hampshire Grants.
Neither a meeting of the Windsor Proprietors" nor a meet-
18 Lond. Doc., 285. 2 Proc. Vt. Hist. Soc. (1917-1918), pp. 67-68.
3 Id., pp. 68-69.
4 Id., p. 71.
" The Windsor Proprietors held their last meeting in November, 1771.
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