Marlborough Windham County Vermont
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THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MARLBOROUGH WINDHAM COUNTY VERMONT BY THE REVEREND EPHRAIM H. NEWTON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN CLEMENT MONTPELIER VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY MDCCCCXXX COPYRIGHTED 1930 BY VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIE,.rY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE HISTORY OF MARLBOROUGH VERMONT TABLE OF CONTENTS . List of Illustrations . Xl Introduction . 1 HISTORY OF MARLBOROUGH Chapter I-Location, Charters, Proprietors, etc. 21 Chapter II-First Settlement, Stockwell, Whitmore, Phelps, etc. 28 Chapter III-Grave Yards, Public Buildings, Casualties, Conflagrations, War Achievements 40 Chapter IV-Natural Advantages, Minerals, Streams, Manufactories 53 Chapter V-First Congregational Society, Dr. Lyman 61 Chapter VI-Baptist and Methodist Churches . 79 Chapter VII-Town Records, Town Meetings . 86 List of Town Officers . 96 List of Freemen . 108 List of Marriages . 115 Catalogue of Literary Men . 125 Genealogical and Biographical Notes . 127 Index of Names . 279 General Index . 321 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Second Congregational Parsonage . facing page 8 Ephraim H. Newton, the Author . facing page 10 Phelps Family Graveyard . facing page 42 Marlborough-The Meeting House, Tavern and Town House . facing page 48 Thomas Adams . facing page 127 Oliver Adams facing page 130 Brig. Gen. Phinehas Mather . facing page 212 Mrs. Robinson Winchester facing page 273 [xi] INTRODUCTION This history of Marlborough was compiled during the Civil War. Its writing and its writer, then a matter of contemporary knowledge, are now a part of history, and because they are an interesting part of the history of Vermont and of Marlborough, merit our attention. The courtesy of the author's granddaughter, Miss Ellen Huldah Newton, has made available the author's manuscript account of his family and himself, together with many other papers and letters. Miss Newton has also permitted the use of the fascinating Memoirs of John M. Newton, her father. Quotations and condensed statements from these sources form this introduction or additional chapter. We have in the author's own words a picture of his background, his life, and his time, with the circumstances of writing the book. There are many little details of life in Vermont, and especially in Marl borough which show the character of people, and their manner of living, more clearly than volumes of description. One may sense, sometimes more clearly than the author, the rapid develop ment and prosperity of Vermont in the 1820's and 1830's, and the changes which came with the great migration to the west, and with the coming of railroads, when Marlborough was helping to build a nation, at great loss to itself. Although tinged with pessimism, there is great charm in the author's delineation of himself, at work in and·for the Marlborough he knew and loved. Marshall Newton, of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, grandfather of Ephraim Holland Newton, our author, was a gunsmith. Like most men of some property, he speculated in wild lands, much as people now speculate in stocks and bonds, and among his holdings were several rights in Shoreham and Bridport on the New Hampshire Grants, at a time when those townships were chiefly unbroken wilderness. In 1773 or 1774, he sent his eldest son, Daniel, with team and wagon laden with tools and equipage to settle in Shoreham. This was a six weeks' journey, by way of Worcester, Hartford, Conn., Hudson, N. Y., up the Hudson River, down Wood Creek, to Lake Champlain. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Daniel buried his tools, returned to Shrews bury, and entered the army. When the war ended, he returned, [ 1 ] dug up his tools, became a prosperous farmer and was one of the founders of the Newton Academy in Shoreham. Marshall's daughter, Eunice, married Ephraim Holland, of Boylston, Mass., who had been a Revolutionary soldier. Two sisters of his had married Luke Knowlton and Joshua Morse, "tories, . who to escape from the indignation of the whigs fled to Vermont, then called an 'out-law,' for it was not a state, neither did it belong to a state, and took refuge in . Newfane . where they finally settled." After the close of the war, Ephraim Holland visited his sisters in Newfane, and settled there as a farmer, tavern keeper, and merchant. He was a respected citizen, a town officer, and a colonel of militia. The third child of Marshall Newton, Marshall Newton, Jr., father of our author, was born in Shrewsbury, Mass., in 17 57, and became a blacksmith. In 1775, he entered Washington's army in the "first eight months' service, and served in the right wing commanded by Gen. Ward, at Roxbury and Dorchester, during the siege of Boston." Unlike many of his contemporanes, he became attached to the military service, and reenlisted repeatedly, during seven years of the struggle. He was an artificer, and his travelling forge was part of the army baggage. Dr. Newton writes . "I used to sit upon the dye tub, in the chimney corner, when a child, and after his hard day's work, hear him talk with the old soldiers (who always found welcome quarters at his house) and narrate with thrilling interest the war scenes of his military career. I have heard him speak of Dorchester Heights-the night scene of fortification which so alarmed Gen. Howe that he evacuated Boston . I have also heard him speak of being in the battle of Long Island, . at the evacuation of New York City, ... in the battle of White Plains, . [and] . in the 'Jarseys' as he used to call it, with Gen. Washington.. He was in the ranks when the American Army was drawn up in double columns to witness the surrender of Gen1. Burgoyne." After the peace, he returned to Shrewsbury, Mass., and thence, in 1784 or 1785, he followed his elder brother to Shoreham, Vermont, where he and Timothy Fuller Chipman were employed in carrying the chain in surveying the township. In 1785, he visited his sister, Eunice, in Newfane, bought six acres of land, and erected a blacksmith shop. In 1786, he married Lydia [ 2 ] Newton, of Shrewsbury, Mass., and brought her back, the seventy miles then called a three days' journey to Newfane. He was not only a blacksmith, making and selling all sorts of farm implements; he was a trader, buying and selling or bartering lands, furs, cattle, etc., making his trades while he worked at his forge. He took pelts to Boston each year, exchanging them for iron, steel, tools, groceries, and other necessaries. He brought books for his children-the New England Primer, Cock-Robin, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Children of the Wood, Mother Goose's Melody. Dr. Newton recollected "the high gratification experienced on his return, and the great im patience and self-denial endured in being under the necessity of going into another room out of sight, and then to the trundle bed until morning to give him an opportunity of bringing his wares into the kitchen and smoking them over the fire as a precautionary measure against the smallpox. Boston was 110 miles from Newfane, and the journey down and back was performed in about twelve days." Marshall Newton, Jr., took a deep interest in the education of his children and in the founding of free schools. Though he was "a tolerable reader, wrote a fair hand, and was sufficiently versed in arithmetic to render him accurate in business, and quite equal to men of his age, still he felt the loss of a better education." According to his son, he called himself a Presbyterian, but supported and attended the Congregational church; accord ing to his grandson he was ungodly, and had perhaps imbibed the French infidel notions prevalent in the army. Probably both were correct, for after the severity of Jonathan Edwards, there was a very strong deistic movement-called infidel-in the late eighteenth century, followed by a return to the somewhat softened and more varied religion of the early nineteenth century. Politically he was a whig, of the school of Washington, whom he revered almost as a father. He was persevering at his own business, seldom leaving it for an hour, generous to his family, hospitable to strangers, rich or poor. He died in his seventy seventh year, Dec. 15, 1833, leaving a fortune, considerable for the time, to his family. Lydia Newton, his wife, was a ."hard working woman, and bore her full share of toil and care with my father in providing for the family and in laying up in store for future wants. I well [ 3 ] remember her hand at the distaff, the wheel and loom, carding, spinning, and weaving . for the clothing of the family, the beds, and other domestic uses; also in making butter and cheese, in cooking and doing the house work for a large family, and not neglecting her true devotion to the interests of her little ones. I also remember her loaded tables well enriched with the luxuries of the age in a thanksgiving supper in the true New England style; also the election cake with which to stuff the family and the children of the neighborhood on the fourth Wednesday of May." Their eldest son, Ephraim Holland Newton, was born June 13, 1787. As there was no opportunity near their home, he was boarded out at the age of four, to attend school, but returned home when a school was established in the vicinity. In his boyhood he raised, purchased, and otherwise aided in setting out fruit trees in the orchard south of his home. When he was not at school, he usually spent his time in the blacksmith shop, learning the trade which his father had ordained for him.