EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT.

CHAPTER I.

SETTLEMENT OF VERMONT AND CONFLICTING CLAIMS TO ITS TERRITORY.

1609-16 65.

Approach of civilized men The Dutch, the French and the New England Puritans-Fort Dummer-Territorial claims of Massachusetts-Boundary dispute of that province with New Hampshire - Lands granted by Governor Wentworth - French war- - Settlements under New Hampshire Transfer of jurisdiction to New York-Lands regranted by New York, and under what claim.

THE state of Vermont, as an independent commonwealth, strug

gled into existence through a double revolution. The early inhabitants of the state revolted against the province of New York, to which the territory had been annexed by the arbitrary will of the king, and they united with their brethren of the other colonies in their armed resistance to the demands of the mother country. It is my purpose to inquire into and state the causes which produced the former revolution, and to take some notice of its progress, from its commencement to its final consummation in the acknowledgment of the independence of the state by New York, and its consequent admission as a member of the federal union.

At the close of the French war which terminated in the conquest of Canada in 1760, the territory now the state of Vermont, with a trifling exception, was an uninhabited wilderness. Civilization, however, had long been gradually, though slowly, approaching it.

In 1609, Henry Hudson had sailed up the river which bears his name, and as early as about the year 1620, the Dutch had established themselves at Albany. That place had, however, been occupied principally as a post for carrying on trade with the western Indians, and so tardy had been the progress of settlement, that at the end of one hundred and forty years the northern frontier of the province

of New York, east of the Hudson, was along the banks of the Hoosick river, within about thirty miles of that city.

Simultaneously with the first visit of the Dutch to Hudson's river, Champlain the French governor at Quebec, had ascended the St. Lawrence and Sorel into the lake which bears his name, and as early as 1646, the French Jesuits had discovered that beautiful body of water now known as Lake George, and had given it the name of St. Sacrament. In 1730, a few individuals or families, came up the lake from Canada, and established themselves at Chimney point in the present township of Addison, and built a block house and wind mill. The next year troops were sent out who erected on the opposite side of the lake Fort Frederick, afterwards known as Crown Point. At a later date the French built a fort at Ticonderoga. They claimed that the territory of New France, by rights of discovery and exploration, included both lake St. Sacrament and Champlain, and the governors of Canada made extensive grants of land along both shores of the latter lake. It does not, however, appear that settlement, for purposes of cultivation were made by the French other than in the vicinity of those forts. They were not very extensive and were abandoned on the approach of the English under General Amherst in 1759.1

Southerly and easterly of the territory of Vermont were the Puritan settlements of New England. As early as 1636, these enterprising pioneers had commenced a settlement at Springfield on the Connecticut river; eighteen years later they had begun a town at Northhampton; by the year 1670 had founded Deerfield; and in 1714, a previous settlement which had been made at Northfield and broken up by the Indians, was permanently renewed. Northfield embraced both sides of Connecticut river, and bordered on the present states of New Hampshire and Vermont.

Westerly from Springfield the progress of the Massachusetts emigrants had been less rapid. Although they had founded Westfield, ten miles west of Connecticut river by the year 1666, it was as late as 1730, that they had crossed the range of mountains and established themselves in the valley of the Housatonic at Sheffield, and Stockbridge, near the western border of the province. In the year 1744, the government of Massachusetts had erected a fort on the Hoosick river between the present villages of North Adams and Williamstown, called Fort Massachusetts, and sometimes Hoosick fort, and before the close of the French war in 1760, some progress

1Swift's, History of Addison County, chap. IV.

had been made in the settlements of Pittsfield and Lanesborough, and perhaps of one or two other towns in the northerly part of the present county of Berkshire. 1

The first permanent occupation of any of the territory of Vermont by civilized men was in 1724, when a block-house, named Fort Dummer, was built on the Connecticut river at Brattleboro. It was erected by the colony of Massachusetts for the better protection of the settlers at Northfield and its vicinity against the incursions of the French and Indians from Canada, and garrisoned by a few men, their number varying from five to thirty or more, as the proper security of that section of the province seemed from time to time to demand. It was supported principally, if not wholly, by Massachusetts, and was occupied as a military post during the continuance of the Indian and French wars.

The government of Massachusetts had always claimed that the province extended much further north than the present limits of that state, and included a large portion of the territory now in New Hampshire and Vermont; and, in accordance with that claim, had early in the eighteenth century made grants of land on both sides of Connecticut river within such territory. In 1715 a tract of about forty-four thousand acres, covering a portion of the present Vermont townships of Putney, Dummerston and Brattleboro, had been granted to the colony of Connecticut, as an equivalent for lands which had been previously granted by Massachusetts, and which on running the line between the two provinces were found to fall within the limits of Connecticut, which "equivalent lands," as they were called, were, the succeeding year, sold and transferred by Connecticut to Wm. Dummer, afterwards lieut. governor of Massachusetts, Anthony Stoddard, Wm. Brattle and John White. On the 19th of Nov., 1736, in pursuance of a vote of the general court of Massachusetts, a township, designated as number one, was laid out between the great falls and the equivalent lands, comprising the present township of Westminster. Vernon, which formed a portion of Hinsdale, and also Guilford, and perhaps other townships, were likewise granted by Massachusetts, at an early day."

In 1740, a long pending controversy between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, about their respective limits, was decided by the crown in favor of the latter, by the establishment of the present

1Holland's History of Western Massachusetts.

2 Hall's Eastern Vermont, chap. 1. Statistics of the American Association, vol. I, p. 13-21.

northern line of Massachusetts, as the boundary between them; of which controversy and decision, a more full account will be given hereafter. The next year Benning Wentworth was appointed governor of New Hampshire, and in his commission from the king, his province was declared to extend westerly until it should meet his majesty's other governments.1

2

The western boundary of New York had always, both in England and America, been generally understood to be a line running from the western limits of the colony of Connecticut on Long Island sound, northerly to Lake Champlain; and upon the determination of the boundary controversy before mentioned, it was not doubted in New England, that New Hampshire, as well as Massachusetts, was bounded westerly by that line, and that the former thus included the territory now Vermont. In accordance with this understanding Governor Wentworth, in 1749, granted the township of Bennington six miles square situated six miles North of Massachusetts line, and twenty miles east of Hudson's river; and he subsequently, from time to time, made other similar grants west of Connecticut river up to the year 1764, when the whole number of townships which had been. granted by him was about one hundred and thirty. But the exposure of the territory to Indian depredations had prevented very extensive settlements until after the conclusion of the French war, which terminated in the month of September, 1760, by the capture of Montreal and the formal surrender of the province of New France to the English arms. With the exception, indeed, of a few small tracts which had been cleared and partially cultivated, under the immediate protection of Fort Dummer at Brattleboro and of some private block houses on the banks of the Connecticut in the towns of Hinsdale (now Vernon), Putney and Westminister, the territory still remained an unbroken forest. It had, however, been frequently traversed by the men of New England in their expedi tions to the theatre of war in the vicinity of Lakes George and Champlain, and the fertility of its soil had become familiarly and favorably known to them. No sooner, therefore, was the territory opened for safe occupation by the conquest of Canada, than a strong desire pervaded the New England colonies to emigrate to it. Several townships were accordingly occupied under the New Hampshire charters, in the spring of 1761, and settlements continued thereafter to be rapidly made.

1

1 Belknap, Farmer's Edition, p. 257. American Statistics, vol. 1, p. 26. Iowa of Cang, Oct. 8, 1787. Doc. Hist. New York, vol. 4, p. 532.

2

Slades' Vermont State Papers, p. 13.

1

On the 20th of July, 1764, the king by an order in council placed the settlers under the government of New York, by declaring "the western bank of the river Connecticut, from where it enters the province of Massachusetts bay, as far north as the forty-fifth degree of northern latitude, to be the boundary line between the two provinces of New Hampshire and New York." This change of jurisdiction, which had been made without the consent or knowledge of the settlers, though not pleasing to them, would no doubt have been quietly submitted to, if nothing further had been demanded. But the lieutenant governor of New York and his council held that the king's order, not only conferred on them the powers of government as far eastward as Connecticut river, but was in effect a declaration of the crown that such had always been the rightful extent of their jurisdiction. As a consequence of this retrospective interpretation of the order in council, they declared that all the grants which had been made by Wentworth, as governor of New Hampshire, having been of lands not within his province, were absolutely null and void. They thereupon treated the settlers as trespassers upon the king's domain, and the lieutenant governor proceeded to grant the lands anew to others. This conduct of the New York government towards the settlers and claimants under New Hampshire, was the sole cause of the long and bitter controversy which followed, and which ended in the separation of the territory from that province. The grounds, therfore, on which the rulers of New York sought to justify their measures against the settlers, will deserve a particular and careful examination.

That the words "to be the boundary," in the connexion in which they were used in the king's order, were designed to have any further meaning, than that such should be the boundary from that time forward, must at best be very doubtful. Indeed, the construction that would limit the operation of the order to the future, would seem to be the most natural. But its true construction could be of very small importance, for the declaration, even of the king, could not alter the fact of history, whatever it might have been. The New York rulers did not in truth appear to place much reliance upon their critical exposition of the words "to be," but asserted an earlier title to the territory, under the charter of King Charles the second to the Duke of York, in 1664, which title they declared tò be "clear and undoubted." A particular examination of the character of this charter claim, will therefore be necessary, and the subject will be pursued in a future chapter.

1 Doc. Hist. N. Y., vol. 4, p. 574, Appendix, No 4.