All these cool, pure, mountain streams were then found swarmiing with trout, in their highest condition of flavor and richness as an esculent. And the forest was richly stocked, in every di. Jacob Davis, the elder of the two sons of Colonel Davis, whom we have mentioned as soon following their father to his new encampment, informed us, during his life time, that the next morning after he and his brother arrived at the camp, he took a fish-line and hook he had brought with him, some raw pork for bait, with a half-bushel basket to hold the fish, and went down to the nearest bank of the Branch, a few rods distant, when he cut a pole, tied on his line, baited, and threw in towards the middle of the stream to await the result.
The instant the bait struck the water, he said, the trout, in astonishing numbers, darted forward from every direction, and like a flock of hungry chickens, commenced a keen tussle for the unwonted prize thus suddenly dropped among them.
He then had no lack of business for the next half hour, at the expiration of which, though he had thrown back into the water all the little ones as fast as he hooked them against his will, he yet had filled his basket with trout of the weight of a half pound and upwards to two pounds, when he returned to camp to cook and enjoy, with his company, the luscious breakfast he had so easily supplied.
Thomas Davis, the younger of the two. He would bite at nothing, till tearing from my waist a bit of my red flannel shirt, I put it on to my hook, threw in, and the next moment laid him floundering on the bank. Bears were nearly as plenty in those times as woodchucks are at the present day, and quite as fearless, too, of the approach of man.
As Thomas Davis, who, being the youngest, was made the errand-boy of the party, was, one evening just at dark, during the summer of which we have been speaking, returning on horseback from Putnam's, with the usual number of loaves of bread the good wife had baked for them, he encountered one of these animals on the road near the place now occupied by William S.
Smith's Butchery. There was then a deep, muddy brook which made out of the hills and crossed the road at that place, so large that they had been compelled to build a pole bridge over it before they could get along with a horse.
As young Davis came up. And Mrs. Marsh, whose husband, the late William Marsh, settled on their farm, a mile up the Branch, in a few years after Col. Davis came, has told us that, in the absence of the men folks, she was sometimes compelled to sally out, with club and outcry, to prevent the bears from seizing their hogs or young cattle. Moose also were quite plenty. This gigantic animal of the deer family was much hunted by the early settlers, for its highly relished and valuable meat, which furnished them with an excellent substitute for beef.
Colonel Davis shot one in a place afterwards known as Eames' Beaver Meadow, about two miles northerly of Montpelier Centre, and, with the help of his sons, backed it home, a distance of nearly five miles, all the way through the pathless forest.
They were often slain in all parts of this and neighboring townships. But the most singular capture of this animal, mentioned in those times, was that of the taking of a large one, on the shore of Berlin Pond, by Jacob Fowler, who settled on what is now a part of the Martin farm, on Dog River, about a half mile from its mouth, and who made hunting his main business.
He borrowed a large bear trap, weighing thirty pounds, with teeth an inch long, of one of the Davis boys, and having set it in a path where the moose came down to the pond to drink or crop the wild grass, and chained it securely to a sapling, went there the next day, and found he had caught a monster. The long, murderous teeth of the trap had clinched by each other right through the fetlock of one of the animal's feet, and held him so fast that he was easily knocked on the head and slain.
The mode of preserving the meat of the moose, when slain at too great a distance from home, or when the snow was too deep for transportation, as was often the case, was quite unique and curious, as the following instance will exemplify.
During the first or second winter the Davis family passed here, two men, coming from Waterbury over Worcester mountain, when the snow was four or five feet deep, struck on to a yard of five moose that were so completely shut in by the impassable crusted snow walls that the whole were easily slain.
The men brought down to the Davis family as much as they could travel with on their snow shoes, and told the boys they might have the rest by going and securing it; whereupon Thomas Davis. Deer do not appear to have been very numerous in this section during the first years of the settlement, nor so much so as they were afterwards. This seems to confirm what has been said by old hunters, that deer are rarely found in any considerable numbers in any locality much frequented by the moose, but that as the latter recede before the approach of civilization, the former, for a time, take their place.
Of the strictly ravenous wild animals, wolves were the most numerous, and the most destructive to the cattle and sheep, that for years could beonly safely protected from their ravages by being yarded, at night, in strong and very high log enclosures near the house. The panther, the largest and most dangerous, but fortunately the least numerous, of all the wild cat family, were occasionally encountered here, as they were everywhere else by the first settlers of all these northern latitudes.
And when one of these much dreaded animals was encountered and slain, the adventure always formed an exciting theme for fireside recital. A singular story of an adventure with a panther, within the limits of this very village, is told of Jacob Fowler, which must have occurred on one of that hunter's excursions to this part of the wilderness, some time before he came here for permanent settlement. Fowler, as he used to relate the story, was one day passing along up the banks of the Little North Branch, and when he had arrived at a point near the upper end of our old grave yard, and a few rods below a small sand island which had been thrown up in the middle of the stream, and which remained there within the memory of many of our oldest inhabitants, his attention was suddenly arrested by the noise of some heavy animal rapidly making for the stream a short distance above him.
Quickly concealing himself in a covert near the edge of the water, he peered out up stream, and beheld an old bear rush furiously down the bank, dash through the water, and fall to digging, with hot haste, a hole in the sand on the island. When she had excavated a hole sufficiently large to receive her body, she threw herself on her back within it, leaving her strong, fending paws stiffly projecting upward above the surface.
Scarcely had this been effected before a large panther, following hard on the trail,. For a minute or two the sand flew so as nearly to conceal from view the terrific struggle, and the woods rang with the mingling yells and roars of the combatants. Shortly, however, the exertions of the panther relaxed, and then he soon feebly crawled off on to the sand, completely disembowelled, when the hunter's bullet finished him on the spot, while the bear jumped up, apparently unharmed, and quickly made off into the forest.
If this story is true, and it appears to have been believed to be so by' the old settlers to whom it was imparted, it shows a remarkable instinct for self-preservation in the bear against the attacks of its formidable natural enemy.
For a while after hearing the story related we were much disposed to doubt its truth, but subsequent enquiries of old woodsmen and hunters, or of those who have often listened to their experiencies, have led us to conclude that the incident might have occurred as related.
They say that the bear, whenever beset by the panther, always seeks the best hollow place it can make or find, in the permitted time and place, and throws itself on its back to receive its assailant, that being the only way it can successfully defend itself in the encounter, though it is not often its good fortune to be able to reach in time a sand bank, out of which to make so good a citadel as did the fortunate bear whose feat we have been describing.
AFTER Colonel Davis had harvested his first crops, and as the autumn was drawing to a close, he again turned his attention to his imperfectly finished house, and commenced fitting it up in the best manner the circumstances would permit, to make it a more comfortable receptacle for his family, the whole of whom he intended removing into it, from Brookfield, the following winter. An oven was to be built, a cellar to be dug or otherwise constructed, the chimney to be topped out, and some kind of floors to be contrived and supplied to the house.
In building the oven, a stone platform was laid up against the house outside, to the. A cellar was constructed by setting a low, log frame-work a foot or two into the ground, placed also against the outside wall of the house, opening into the kitchen in the same manner as the oven, and made impervious to the frost by deeply banking the whole frame-work over with earth.
The chimney was topped out by building it up with split sticks of the required length, laid in clay mortar, and so laid and plastered as to prevent any of their surfaces from exposure to the accidental blaze, or the sparks of the fire, when ascending the flue of the structure. To provide floors for the two rooms of the house was a more difficult undertaking, for, there being no saw-mills yet built within twenty miles of the place, the use of boards or plank for the purpose was, at this time, entirely out of the question; but a substitute for the latter was soon found in the free-splitting basswood.
Long, straight-grained trees were selected, felled, cut into lengths corresponding to the width of the rooms, carefully split, with a series of wedges through the whole length and breadth, into pieces of the thickness of bridging plank, evened and straightend with the axe, brought in, laid on sleepers, and so fitted in their places as to make a tight, smooth, white floor, of a uniform surface, and of a very neat general appearance.
Having accomplished all this to his mind, Colonel Davis gave up work for the season, and, with his sons, returned to Brookfield, for the purpose of getting the family in readiness for removal, and then removing them all, with their goods, with the fall of the first snow of a depth sufficient to make passable sledding. The Colonel's family consisted, at this time, of himself, his vigorous and provident wife, his two sons already named, and four very fair and promising daughters, who, as might be expected from their worth and personal attractions, as well as from the influential position of their father, were destined soon to become the wives of the leading men of the now rapidly increasing settlements in this section of the country.
Rebecca, the eldest, married the Hon. Cornelius Lynde, of Williamstown; Hannah, the second, married the Hon. George Worthington, of Montpelier,-all of whom,.
A snow sufficiently deep for their purposes having fallen the last of December, Jacob and Thomas Davis, with two of their sisters, Rebecca and Polly Davis, and with as much of their furniture as could be brought at one load, came over, and were all left here, except Jacob who returned with the team for the rest of the family.
But before the latter were prepared to start, there commenced such a series of blocking snow-storms as to prevent their removal until the following March, Thomas and his two sisters having remained here the whole intervening time, during which not another human face made its appearance at their lonely, snow-hedged and forest-girt cabin. At length, however, the anxious trio, weary of waiting and watching, were relieved of their loneliness by the welcome arrival of the rest of the family.
The appearance of Colonel Davis in the settlement was, as everywhere else where he appeared in those days, the signal for active business. Previously engaged hired laborers soon followed him from Brookfield, while every transient man, or new coming settler, that could be enlisted, was drawn in to swell the laboring force, which amounted sometimes, it is said, to nearly twenty men; when the efforts of all were variously directed to the accomplishment of the contemplated enterprises of the season.
These enterprises were the felling and clearing of further tracts of forest on the different pieces of bottom land adjoining the domicile, and the building of a saw-mill. And so vigorously were they prosecuted that, besides the planting and harvesting of the greatly increased crops of that summer, most of the remainder of the lower, or State Streel meadow, was cleared, considerble inroad made on the forest on the easterly side of the Branch, and the meadow on the westerly side mainly cleared up to and around the first falls on that stream, a good saw-mill built on those falls and got to running; and all accomplished before the end of the working season of that busy year.
Early the next spring-that of Colonel Davis commenced, and during the summer completed the construction of a grist-mill at the same falls, which, considering the distance and the extremely rough roads over which the mill-stones and heavy gearing had to be transported, was an enterprize, at that day, of no ordinary magnitude to be accomplished in one season.
The sun had now been let in on forty or fifty acres of land, which was now yielding crops not only sufficient for home consumption, but affording considerable surplus for those not yet able to raise their own. But another want was by this time experienced by Colonel Davis and his family-that was, the want of a larger and more convenient house. The family proper now consisted of nine persons.
In all the working season, at least, he kept many hired men, while his house, at all seasons, was almost continually thronged by land lookers and freshly arriving new settlers, who had already begun to flock into this and the other adjoining townships, and who evidently regarded this central establishment as a sort of head-quarters, wheie accommodations for the traveller could be found, land purchased of the Colonel, or information obtained from him where and how it could be purchased of others.
And it is difficult to conceive, at this day of domestic comforts and strangely altered customs of living, how so many variously assorted people could be accommodated, in any manner, in one log house, with only two rooms and a low attic chamber. To obviate these inconveniences, Colonel Davis therefore decided on the immediate erection of a large frame house. And accordingly, early in the spring of , the timber for the frame was got out, boards sawed, shingles made, a brickyard opened.
As soon as the materials could be collected, carpenters were put in requisition, and a frame thrown up calculated for four spacious square rooms on the ground floor, the same number in the second story above, and a large attic extending over the whole.
And without being suffered to rest here, the business was prosecuted with so much spirit that before the next cold weather the whole structure was completed and occupied by the family. This building was what has long since been known as the old Jail House, which in , to make room for the new brick Jail House, was removed to the bank of the Branch some distance above, where it may still be found, in wondrous strength of frame, and in a remarkable state of preservation.
This was the first frame house ever built throughout in Montpelier. The bare frame of a large one story dwelling house had, however, been got out, and raised a few days before that of the Davis house, located about a mile from the village, on the road leading by Mr.
Henry Nutt's, and afterwards known as the old Silloway house. But the work was not immediately prosecuted, and the Colonel's was the first frame house ever finished in town. The house on the hill, which was built by James Hawkins, the first Blacksmith of the town, and finished the next year, was the second frame house built in the town; while the old house still standing near the paper mill and Arch Bridge, and formerly known as the Frye house, and also built by Haw7.
From this time the settlement proceeded apace. During the years , and , over twenty families had moved into town; so that at the taking of the first U. Census, in , the population of the town numbered one hundred and thirteen persons, including twenty-seven legally voting freemen; while additional numbers were constantly arriving to increase this now fully established and prosperous settlement.
Thus far we have almost wholly connected our descriptions of the early settlement of the town with the action and movements of Colonel Davis and his family. This we have done because, for the first two years after he came, his was the only permanently resident family here, and his history consequently became the history of the town during those two first important years of its existence; and also because by his energy and judicious calculation was the first great impetus given to the settlement, and its rapid subsequent progress insured; while his opinions and examples continued, it is evident, long and largely to operate on cotemporary and succeding settlers, in imbuing them with his own qualities, in giving a healthy tone to coming society in regard to frugality, industry and perseverance, and in keeping up in it those invaluable traits and that spirit of enterprise which made the town what it subsequently became in individual thrift and general prosperity.
But the town had now become sufficiently populous to warrant, and even require, a municipal organization, which, by the consent of all, was about to be effected. Individual description and accounts will, therefore, henceforth mainly be merged in the general history of the settlement, and of the town in its corporate capacity.
Before proceeding with this, however, we should relate several characteristic or noted incidents which occurred at different periods during the first four years of the settlement, and without the relation of which our picture of the times would hardly be complete; and having heretofore found no convenient place for them, we will here introduce them, as properly constituting the closing part of this chapter.
We have noted the construction of the first frame house as constituting a marked era in the progress of the settlement. But of scarcely less practical importance, perhaps, was the event of the introduction of the first wheel carriage, which was effected, in the face of what would now be considered insurmountable difficulties, during the second summer after Colonel Davis made.
The Colonel, in a journey to the other side of the mountain-probably a journey to attend one of the Proprietors' meeting at Arlington-had heard of, and purchased, a stout wagon at Vergennes; but the question was how it could be got home to Montpelier, from which, down the river to Williston, none other than a bridle path, or at best a rough, winter sled road had, as yet, been opened.
Thomas Davis, however, then a strong, resolute boy of sixteen, volunteered to enter alone on the arduous undertaking. Accordingly, taking a horse, some kind of a harness and an axe, he repaired to Vergennes, fitted in a rude pair of thills, and commenced his slow journey homeward. He found but little difficulty in getting along to Governor Chittenden's at Williston; but dubious enough appeared the prospect of working his way through from that place up to Montpelier.
By frequently stopping to cut away logs and trees to make the path wide enough to permit the passage of the wagon, he at length, however, made out to reach the then formidable rocky pass, or rather precipice, afterwards known as Rock Bridge, on the old turnpike, about a mile above Waterbury bridge, on the Moretown side of the Winooski. This pass, on the subsequent opening of the road, and especially on the construction of the turnpike, was blasted down, and the gulf on the east side filled up as much as possible, without incurring enorinous expenses.
And, even at that, it was far the most precipi tous and dangerous part of the whole road from Montpelier to Burlington. It was then a high, steep, rough ledge, around or above which, winding among the rocks and fallen trees, a path had been blocked out barely passable for a single horse. But the persevering lad was not to be balked in his purpose even at this difficulty. Having first taken out and led his horse doJwn round to the flat below, and rolled up the wagon to the brink of the ledge, he contrived, by means of a pole and withes, to fasten or connect it to the top of a young tree, and then, by the momentumn of the wagon and his own exertions, he bent forward the tree and thus let down the wagon fifteen or twenty feet.
Here he secured it on the side of the ledge, by shoring it up with poles or rocks, as he best could, released the first tree and fastened to another, by which he let down the wagon another space, and so proceeded till he had got the ponderous vehicle to the bottom of the precipice; when he again put in his horse, made his way up the river, forded it below the mouth of Mad River, crossed over into the better road in Middlesex, and at last reached home in safety.
There were no extraordinary floods during the first few years of the settlement; but there had evidently been one not long. When Colonel Davis and his men were felling the trees on the spot where the Pavilion Hotel now stands, which was a knoll mnny feet higher than any part of the meadow lying south and east of it, and which has never since been overflowed, they found the sand in the moss on the northern side of the trunks, at the height at which they wished to make their incisions, so thick that, even on that knoll, they had to clear away the moss to save their axes from dulling.
This sand had obviously been lodged there by the water, and as obviously marked the height to which that great flood attained. This was confirmed by a living withest of both that flood and the great flood of , which last, by most people, was said to be the highest that ever occurred.
That witness was Judge Seth Putnam, of Middlesex, who, being alive in , affirmed that the first year he came into that town, about two years before the coming of Colonel Davis, there was a remarkable flood, which reached to a certain tree or rock on his farm, and which, by comparison, was found to be considerably higher than the highest water mark of the flood of But though there were probably few gcreat floods in those early times, the streams were yet, when compared with those of the present day, almost continually very flush of water.
The evaporation from forest lands is comparatively small; while their thick nosses, leaves, rotting wood and loose soil take up the heavy rains like a sponge, and leave them to drain off slowly; so that, through the operation of both these causes, the streams, admitting the yearly fall of water to be the same, would be far less liable to sudden and great fluctuations, but would be, at the same time, generally kept flush and full, as they were almost invariably found to be while the country was covered with forests.
Indeed, there can be but little doubt that the average quantity of water then discharged by our rivers was very nearly double that discharged by them now. But still it is to the rivers of a cleared country that we are to look for the highest and most dangerous floods. It must have been indeed a tremendous rain that produced the great flood we have just noticed as occurring here about the year Such an one now would convert the whole site of Montpelier into a lake deep enough to be navigated by a light draft steamboat.
And the same causes that so equalized the water in summer, probably had considerable effect in modifying and equalizing the temperature in winter, admitting of fewer thaws, but, at the same time, of fewer days of intense coldness. At any rate, the snows commenced early, covered the ground continuously through the winter, but gradually melting away in.
The absence of thaws of course left the snows to accumulate steadily through the winter, and often to become piled up to an enormous depth before spring. This, on account of turning out, rendered travelling inconvenient on all the roads, while on the unfrequented roads it was often wholly discontinued. This difficulty of the turning out of meeting sleighs was pleasantly illustrated in an incident which occurred to two of the early settlers of this region, and which, as it not only serves our present purpose, but shows the peculiarly strong traits of one who afterwards became one of the most noted characters of this part of the country, we will take the liberty here to relate: While the settlements of this and the neighboring towns were yet in their infancy, Josiah Benjamin, Esq.
Benjamin, from whose lips, in his lifetime, we had the account, " was, at that time, quite solid, and nearly five feet deep on the level, making it utterly impossible to turn out, unless we were lucky enough to hit on some place wthere the snow had been beaten down for that purpose. In going through Brookfield, and while in one of the worst places, we met a team loaded with salt; when, finding there was no possibility of getting by each other, except by unloading all our sleighs and then turning them up sideways on each side of the snow-walled path, and so running them by each other empty, we all fell to, unloaded the three sleighs, run the man's sleigh past ours,, and, as it happened, first loaded up his sleigh and got him ready to start.
Judge Paine and myself then turned back for the purpose of loading up our own teams, expecting, of course, that. But the next instant we heard the loud crack of his whip, when looking round, we saw the fellow mounted on his sleigh and lashing his horses into a run, to escape and leave us to do our own work.
The Judge looked after the pitiful fugitive an instant, with eyes that fairly flashed fire; when, suddenly dashing off his hat and great-coat, he gave chase on foot, running as I think I never saw any one run before, till he overtook the team, leaped like a tiger upon the load, seized the shrinking puppy by the collar and made a flying leap.
He then drew his prisoner into the road and led him back to our loads; when, giving him a mighty significant push towards our bags of wheat, still lying untouched on the snow, he coolly, and with that sort of curt, dignified politeness which, even in moments of anger, rarely ever forsook him, observed-' There, friend, if you will take hold of those bags, and load up both of our sleighs, we will be much obliged to you-very much obliged to you, sir.
But the greatest feat of female racket travelling ever told us was accomplished by a young girl of the neighboring town of Waterbury, on a mournful occasion, which, as it was connected with the fortunes of one of our early settlers, it may not perhaps be out of place here to relate, as well as the remarkable feat we have just mentioned.
James Marsh, who was the first settler of Waterbury, undertook, in the month of March, , —the winter season after he removed to that town, with a wife and eight children,-to go to mill on rackets, with a bag of grain on his back, to Jericho, through the then unpathed forest, a distance of about twenty miles.
After getting his grist ground, and coming with it two or three miles up the river homeward, he crossed over the stream on the ice, to a settler's house on the west side, for the purpose of running some pewter spoons for the use of his family, in the spoon mould the settler was known to have.
When he had run his spoons, and borrowed or bought a brass kettle which he found he could obtain of the settler, to do his sugaring with, he attempted to recross the river, with the kettle swung over his head or neck, but broke through the ice into an undetected, thinly covered glade in the stream, and, incumbered as he was with his grist, kettle and rackets, was unable to extricate himself, and after beating out an open place a dozen rods down the glade, in his terrible struggles for life, was swept under the ice before.
His body was soon recovered, but, as it was so difficult to get it home, it was decided to bury him in that neighborhood; and his oldest daughter, the only member of his family which circumstances would permit of attending, went seventeen miles on rackets to the funeral, on the morning of the day of his burial. His widow, an unusually smart and intelligent old lady, from whose lips we recently obtained the particulars of the incident above related, is now residing with one of her sons in this village.
An event occurred during the first winter after Colonel Davis moved into his new house, which afforded the settlers the unexpected opportunity of setting their eyes on embodied royalty, in the person of Prince Edward, on the occasion of his passage through this part of the country from Montreal to Boston.
Three ships of the U. Navy have borne the name Montpelier, and the city has a USS Montpelier museum to commemorate their exploits. Montpelier is home to Vermont College, the first campus in the nation dedicated entirely to brief-residency programs. It is affiliated with Union Institute and University. This lack of evidence is probably due to intensive development in highly sensitive areas, past flooding which wiped out remains, and the fact that little investigation has been undertaken.
The earliest settlement lies west of the North Branch along Elm Street, where a Colonel Davis built a log cabin in or ' Although much of earliest Montpelier has been replaced, significant evidence of our early settlement remains, though much of it is buried and waiting to be discovered.
The City of Montpelier was originally chartered in as a grant to settlers from Massachusetts. The first settlement was established along the North Branch in , during the time Vermont was an independent republic.
Original grantors envisioned the main portion of the town growing on high ground around Montpelier Center, but the availability of transportation routes and mill sites attracted early settlement along the riverbanks. By the time statehood was achieved and the settlement was organized as a town, Montpelier had a population of The early years of the community saw rapid growth with an influx of settlers who built saw and grist mills, roads, schools, churches and inns.
By the town had a population of In that year the State Legislature sought a permanent home. Montpelier was selected because of its central location, and because local residents provided land and money.
A humble statehouse was constructed on State Street. This first legislative home was replaced in by a statehouse designed by Ammi B.
Young, largely at the community's expense. The Winooski River flows west along the south edge of downtown village and is fed by several smaller tributaries that cut through residential districts. Montpelier is subject to periodic flooding in the flat city center, with two major floods occurring and On its borders are the towns of Middlesex to the west, Berlin to the south, and East Montpelier to the north and east.
Montpelier lies near the geographic center of the state. From January to July, daily means range from Snow is also frequent and remains on the ground for long stretches throughout the winter, though thaws are by no means infrequent. Average annual snowfall is Along with Barre , the city forms a small micropolitan area in the center of the state; together they are known as the twin cities.
As of the census of , there were 7, people, 3, households, and 1, families residing in the city. The population density was There were 3, housing units at an average density of The racial makeup of the city was Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. There were 3, households out of which The average household size was 2. In the city, the population was spread out with
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