Puggy Lamphere's nephew Scott Bartley, a native of North Springfield, is heading up a project for the Boston-based New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Study to examine Vermont’s roots
By Stephen Mills
CORRESPONDENT | July 07,2015
A drawing of Fort Dummer at Brattleboro, First Permanent Settlement in Vermont, pub. in Vermont: The Green Mountain State, by Walter Crockett (1921)
A new genealogical study promises fascinating insights into the early settlement and development of Vermont.
Early Vermont Settlers to 1784 is a research study project that will help family historians trace ancestors who traveled north on their migration from southern New England.
Vermont was considered to be the last frontier of the fledgling New England region. Much of the early migration to Vermont was primarily farming and military activity that attracted the first settlers.
The study by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, based in Boston, will build dossiers of records — occupational, religious, political, military, educational, probate, birth and death, historical, genealogical, and state — to paint a picture of early life in Vermont.
A comprehensive, searchable database will store “family sketches” that detail the generational links and legacy of “heads-of-households” already included in Donald Alan Smith’s thesis, Legacy of Dissent: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Vermont 1749 to 1784.
Fleshing out the details of the approximately 2,500 Vermont households identified before 1784 is the job of project study director Scott Andrew Bartley — genealogist, former NEHGS librarian, and a Vermont native.
“My own family has lived in the Springfield area since the 1780s,” said Bartley, who currently lives in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, but also owns a home in Tunbridge. “There was another branch of the family in the Milton area by 1790. Some of my family moved west as far as Massena in New York State, and then saw the error of their ways and moved back — however, they were in Massena for 100 years.”
Bartley estimates he will produce about 100 sketches a year, meaning it would take 25 years to complete the entire project, but he hopes to finish sooner.
“The settlement of Vermont doesn’t start in earnest until 1750, and it wasn’t much,” he said. “Basically Vermont, when you consider New England, was the last frontier.”
Bartley explained that as the other southern New England states became more populated and land became scarce, Vermont became an attractive prospect to settle, and boomed for a time.
“At one point, from the 1790s to the early 1800s, Vermont was growing faster than any other part of the country, and it was thought that Vermont might become the most populated state,” he said. “The exodus was so great that the peak population of many Vermont towns was greater in the 1810-1820 Census than it is today… something you wouldn’t expect.
“I mean literally all the towns, except what we now think of as the bigger towns — such as Brattleboro, Bennington and Manchester in the south. Some of the towns near to them have expanded too. Basically all the other towns were more populous in the early 1800s. So, there are 251 towns in Vermont — of those, likely 220 or more were bigger back then.
“This was after the (American) Revolution when there was less conflict with Indians than before. Although Vermont was considered a beautiful state, settlers discovered that its rocky soil really wasn’t the best for farming. Instead, by 1808 they started moving out when New York and Ohio became options because the farming was so much better,” he added.
There were other events in the history of the region and the country that helped spur early migration into Vermont — namely military activity and war.
In 1724, the British built Fort Dummer in Brattleboro, named after William Dummer, acting governor of Massachusetts at the time of the fort’s construction. Built by colonial militia from Massachusetts, it was the first permanent European settlement in Vermont, and consisted of a 180-square foot wooden stockade with 12 guns manned by 55 men (43 English soldiers and 12 Mohawks). Seventy Abenaki Indians attacked Fort Dummer on Oct. 11, 1724, and killed three or four soldiers.
The next military incursion came during the French and Indian War (1756-1763). Also known as the Seven Years’ War, it marked an imperial struggle as France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought conflict with the claim of British colonies. Many of the British colonial forces headed north and west to engage the French traveled along the Crown Point Road connecting the upper Connecticut River valley with Fort Ticonderoga at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. That was a jumping-off point in the campaign against the French in Canada, bringing much needed supplies and troops from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
“Many of those soldiers either stayed on after the war, or returned to Vermont,” said Bartley. “I’m currently focusing on my hometown of Springfield, and maybe 70 percent of its earliest settlers served in the war at Crown Point, traveled through Springfield, and returned to settle there.”
The Westminster Massacre of March 13, 1775, saw the killing of two men by British officers in Westminster, Vermont, then part of the New Hampshire Grants whose control was disputed between its residents and the Province of New York. It polarized Vermonters and helped fill the ranks of the Green Mountain Boys to defend Vermont. It was viewed by some as the first “battle” of the American Revolution (although it actually followed the Boston Massacre five years earlier when a similar altercation between British troops and civilians led to the deaths of five men).
During the American Revolution, the Crown Point Road through Vermont was again used to transport troops and supplies to support the now-American position at Ticonderoga after its capture in 1775 by the Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold. Again, it brought in soldiers who either stayed or later returned to settle in Vermont.
One of the early family profiles Bartley has completed is that of Colonel Ebenezer Allen, a second cousin of Ethan Allen with whom he served at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. Born in Northampton, Mass., Oct. 17, 1743, Ebenezer Allen died in Burlington on March 26, 1806. His detailed sketch shows he was apprenticed briefly to a blacksmith but primarily was a farmer, and moved in 1768 to Bennington, where he lived for three years. In a varied and illustrious career, he also, among other lesser exploits: was among the first to settle Poultney in 1771; became part of Col. Samuel Herrick’s Regiment of Vermont (or Green Mountain) Rangers; fought at the Battle of Bennington and the Battle of Saratoga, New York state, both in 1777; and served as a commander of the fort at Vergennes, and was assigned to guard the northern frontier from attacks from Canada, both in 1778.
To-date, Bartley has completed about 41 sketches, but has another 10-15 near completion.
Bartley said Vermont was also fertile territory for religious and racial freedom: A split in the Newent Church based in Norwich, Conn., saw a large separatist group resettle in Bennington, and other religious groups moved up from the south; and African-Americans fleeing slavery traveled the Underground Railroad through Vermont to Canada.
But for all the settlers who came and stayed for a while, many also departed. “A lot of early settlers came to Vermont, but a big percentage didn’t die here,” said Bartley. “More than 50 percent of those who came here moved out. This study will show the opening up of the near west — New York and Ohio — that attracted a lot of the settlers in Vermont.”
Bartley said Vermont records will also reveal the progress — and stall, during war years — of fledgling towns being chartered (Bennington was the first in 1749). Apart from logging and farming as principal industries, towns would also try to attract other trades such as saw, grist and textile mills to build local economies.
Bartley’s study also traces the early beginnings of the print trade in Vermont, including the first newspapers: The Vermont Gazette, located in Westminster from 1781-83 before moving to Bennington, closely followed by Spooner’s Vermont Journal in Windsor in 1783.
Bartley said his initial pass at Vermont records will begin in his hometown, Springfield.
“I’m focusing on my hometown to start,” said Bartley. “My parents still live in Springfield in the family home on my mother’s side which dates back to 1834, originally built in 1790, and next to it is a cemetery,” said Bartley. “I have six or seven generations buried in that cemetery. My family wasn’t the wandering type. They stayed.”
Praise for the study came from Vermont Historical Society Librarian Paul Carnahan. “I applaud NEHGS for undertaking this research on early family history in Vermont,” he said. “We at the Vermont Historical Society often get inquiries about early Vermont settlers, but the records that are available to most people for that period are very limited, so the search can be very frustrating.
“This information is pretty deep in the record of Vermont towns and it’s not easy to find, so they’re making a big contribution to dig this stuff up. The results of this project will be a welcome addition to the body of information that we have about this early period in Vermont,” Carnahan added.
Online access to the Early Vermont Settlers to 1784 records at the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s library and archive can be found at AmericanAncestors.org
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