The
following timeline for Cavendish, Vermont was initially developed for the
town’s 250th anniversary by the Cavendish Historical Society. For
more information about the timeline, please call 802-226-7807 or e-mail
margoc@tds.net
1761:
Cavendish Charter signed by King George III of England on Oct. 12. The area of
land includes what is today, Cavendish and Proctorsville villages and
Baltimore, VT.
1769: John and Susanna Coffeen and their
children are the first settlers in Cavendish. Their home was located on the
Cavendish Reading Road, close to Brook Road. Not long after Coffeen settled in
Cavendish, he and his wife set out for Charlestown, NH for supplies and
grinding their grist. Due to a snow storm, the parents did not return for six
weeks. During this time, one of the Coffeen children became ill and died. The
other children kept the body in the house until the parents return, at which
time, due to heavy snow, the body was buried across the road from the house.
Coffeen decided that this would be the family’s cemetery. Coffeens, Baldwins
and at least four Revolutionary soldiers are buried there.
1775-1783:
American Revolutionary War.
In a new settlement like Cavendish, one of the first order
of business would be to establish a militia for self-defense. Every
able-bodied man would be a member, with
one elected as Captain. These groups were also called “training bands.” John
Coffeen was captain of the first Cavendish Militia and during the Revolution
was at the head of a troop of Rangers.
When the Revolution came, these military
companies were called into action. Oliver Tarbell was captain of one of the
“train bands” and the company met at the Tarbell farm. In addition there were
“alarm-lists,” which enumerated all the men between 14 and 65 years of age, who
were liable to be called upon in an emergency. Up until 1847, all able-bodied
men between 18 and 45 years of age, by law, were enrolled in the militia and
were required to do military duty. Every man was required to keep arms and
equipment as needed for actual service, and for so doing, his poll was exempt
from taxation.
Susanna Coffeen was the only woman to remain in
Cavendish through the entire Revolutionary War period.
1777:
Capt. Coffeen’s grain and grass fields,
as well as fledgling young orchard,
were destroyed when 300 New England troops were stationed on his farm,
while working on the Crown Point Road. Later in the year, after the surrender
of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, militia, whose terms had expired or were
discharged for misconduct, again encamped at Coffeen’s as they made their way
home. The tavern house, which Coffeen had established, was immediately filled
to overflowing. Those who could not get lodging inside, built fires with the
boards that Capt. Coffeen had procured for building a large barn and house.
They stripped his home of nearly everything it contained and then turned their
horses into his grain. They justified their actions by declaring that the enemy
would do it themselves within 48 hours. Capt. Coffeen sent his family to relatives
in Rindge, NH. For the remainder of the summer, his house became a camp for the
vagrant soldiery, several of whom died under his roof.
• Coffeen was chosen to represent Vermont
at the Windsor Convention to form a Constitution for the new State of Vermont
in June of that year.
1778:
The earliest burial in town was that of Henry Proctor in the Old Revolutionary
Cemetery, located off of Brook Rd in Cavendish. The 1760 Crown Point Road
passes to the right (north) of this cemetery.
1782: Capt. Leonard Proctor, a Revolutionary War
veteran, moved his family to Vermont. With his two sons (Jabez and John) he
built a “shunpike” to the village of Gassetts in nearby Chester to avoid paying
the tolls of the Green Mountain Turnpike. Salmon Dutton, helped to build the
Green Mountain Turnpike, which ran from Bellows Falls to Rutland, bringing
Boston coaches north up the Duttonsville Gulf to the village and then west
along the present RT 131 (Main Street) through Proctorsville. The “shunpike”
being toll free resulted in North bound traffic from Boston coming directly to
Proctorsville and bypassing Duttonsville.
Because
of the road, the Dutton and Proctor families, as well as the villages of Duttonsville
and Proctorsville, feuded for 75 years. Proctor is buried in the Proctor
Cemetery off of Main Street in Proctorsville.
• There
were 35 “freeman” and their families living in Cavendish
1787: First physician in Cavendish, Asaph
Fletcher, settled nearProctorsville.
1790: Cavendish population 491
First
burial in the Cavendish Village cemetery on High Street. The land originally
belonged to Salmon Dutton, but the town bought the land from several local
people.
1792: The Cavendish Academy (corner of
High Street and Main Street Cavendish)
was incorporated as the first Academy to be chartered in the State of
Vermont. The first Academy school was kept in Salmon Dutton Jr’s tavern
building until 1812, when a two-storied building was erected. In 1833, there
were 70 students enrolled. The Academy was given up in 1853 and the building
was converted to a store. Today it houses RDB Marketing.
1793: Samuel Hutchinson Sr, who gave the
land for The Twenty Mile Stream Cemetery in Proctorsville, buried the first
person there, his wife Abigail.
1793: The Southeastern corner of Cavendish,
containing about 3,000 acres of land, was incorporated separately into a new
township , Baltimore.
1795: Cavendish. Center Road School on
the corner of Town Farm Road and Center Road adjacent to the Center Road
Cemetery. From 1795 to present day, there have been 13
public schools in Cavendish. Students were assigned to the school closest to
where they lived. In addition to Center Rd school, which was closed in 1955,
schools included: Proctorsville Village School (closed 1959); Duttonsville
(closed 1972); Coffeen (Densmore) School (burned in 1922); Hudson School
(burned down in 1901); Stockin School (half in Weathersfield); Parker School
(closed 1911); Rumke School (closed 1923); Tarbell Hill School (closed 1955);
Bailey Hill (unorganized district); Gilchrist School (closed 1947); Wheeler
School (closed 1955); and Fittonsville School (Spring Mill). The town now has
one school Cavendish Town Elementary School, for grades K-6, located in
Proctorsville on what was once the Proctorsville School site. Middle school and high school students attend
Green Mountain Union High School in Chester.
1800:
Cavendish population 920
1810:
Cavendish population 1,295
1811-1815:
Spotted fever epidemic. Many of the early settlers died, particularly the young
and the old. The Pesthouse Cemetery, located on the upper end of Town-Farm Road
was a place to bury those who died from contagious disease such as small pox.
The only marker in this cemetery is for Jotham Wheelock b 8-26-1763 d
4-27-1831.
1805:
The Mount Union, Center Road Cemetery, had its first burial. The land was
obtained from several local citizens.
1816:
First burial in the Proctor Cemetery, which is located off of Main Street, in
Proctorsville. The land was donated by the Proctors and contains the graves of
this family.
1820:
Cavendish population 1,551 people
1828:
Hillcrest Cemetery, located on Bailey Hill Rd in Proctorsville, had its first
burial. The land was obtained from the Proctors. The tomb was built in 1897.
Just before entering the Hillcrest Cemetery, there used to be a “potter’s
field.” During the Depression (1930’s), this area was plowed and used for
planting potatoes. Only three graves remain in this area of the cemetery.
1830:
Cavendish population 1,498
Cavendish was dotted with farms, corn and wheat
fields and pastures for sheep. The raising of hops was carried on for many
years on some of the farms, until a disease destroyed a great deal of it.
1832: Black River Canal and
Manufacturing Company built
in Cavendish. By 1842, they employed 175 workers making broadcloth. The
building burned in 1873. Gay Brothers Woolen Mills eventually built on this property.
1833: Fire District #1 is formed in
Proctorsville and is staffed by volunteers.
1834: Second Baptist Church built in Cavendish.
Extensive renovations were made to the brick structure in 1875, but the
building was destroyed by fire. The Baptist Church decided to relocate and the
building was sold to the town. Now the home of the Cavendish Historical Society
Museum, the building served as town office, community and recreation center at
various times.
1835: Proctorsville Woolen Manufacturing
Company, started by Jabez Proctor, employed 35 workers, making cassimere cloth
by 1842.
• The Cavendish Green Marble Quarry established
in America for extraction of the green serpentine rock known in the stone
industry as Verde Antique. The first site was quarried in approximately 1835 by
the Black River Marble and Soapstone Mfg company. The original quarry was located on the Black
River, near Winery Road at a place formerly called Hart’s Bend. It was moved up
to its present location in 1931. The Moriglioni family owned and operated the
Quarry during this period. Marble was quarried from the late 1930’s through the
early 1950’s. The marble on the floors and interior columns of the main
entrance of the National Gallery of Art in Washington (which opened in 1941)
comes the Proctorsville Quarry. In 1989 the Ruby brothers, from Fair Haven,
attempted to open the quarry but did not have the equipment to do so. In late
1990’s the Vermont Marble Company (owned by an Italian company) bought a 20
year lease to remove stone. The quarry was worked for 3-4 years and then work
ceased. During this time, stone was
shipped for cutting to Italy, Spain and Brazil.
1836: The Proctorsville
Woolen Mill started. Failed in the panic of 1873-74 and was not used for three
years. It was reopened with new owners in 1877 and became known as the Crescent
Woolen Mill.
1840: Cavendish population
1,427
1848: Phineas Gage, a
foreman, was working with his crew excavating rocks in preparing the bed for
the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Cavendish. An accidental explosion of a charge
he had set blew his tamping iron through his head. It
entered under the left cheekbone and exited through the top of the head. His
recovery from this injury and the impact on his life was the first
well-documented case of traumatic brain injury in the medical literature. It
was also the first understanding that different parts of the brain have
different functions and effects on personality. With this knowledge, the first
brain tumor removal operation became possible in 1885.
1848: The Rutland Railroad runs through
both villages, connecting Burlington and Boston.
1850: Cavendish population
1,576
1857:
John Brown visits Proctorsville. Henry Bridge Atherton wrote to John Brown’s
autobiographer about this visit in 1882. Proctorsville, VT Mary 9th,
1882
James
Redparth Esq
I have sometimes thought the day would come where your
publishers would issue another edition of your “Public Life of John Brown,”
which was 1st published at Boston in 1860 by Thayer and Eldridge 11
St and 116 Washington St. I have been recently reading that book, and it occurs
to me that, inview of the events following the execution of the old hero-the
man-the freedom of the slave, the political results of the execution-and the
history of our country in the past quarter of a century-you might perhaps to
write that book and, if so, I would want a copy to side by side with the copy I
now have in my library. John Brown and his son, Owen, I think it was, came here
in the last days of Dec. 1856 or in the early part of January 1857- and spent
some time on those days at my office-boarding at the Village Hotel. At that
time I held the office of Secretary of the VT Senate- and our Governor-Hon.
Ryland Fletcher, a brother of the late Hon. Richard Fletcher, of Boston, and
Judge of Mass. Sup. Court- now my new neighbor. Our Legislature at the previous
Oct. Session at Montpelier had passed an
act authroising Gov. Fletcher, in his discretion to furnish funds to an amount
not exceeding twenty thousand dollars -$20,000-for the relief of the suffering
citizens of Kansas-as you will find by reference to the session laws of 1856 in
the Library-Our state casual care of __
General Gundry of Vergennes, VT had on hand quite an amount of guns-out of date
& useless to our State. Gundry was authorized to sell or dispose of them. In
some way John Brown had learned of these facts—and came here to examine the
laws-and to confer with Gov. Fletcher. The Old man told us that the generosity
of the people had so supplied the citizens of
Kansas with food and clothing as none of this __ appropriation would be thus needed,
least be thought possibly the Gov. might
be authorized to let him have some of the old guns from the state Arsenal-He
became satisfied on looking at the law, that Gov. Fletcher could not
appropriate guns for the Defense of Freedom in the direction indicated. The Old
man told us his objectives to enlist young men-pious and patriotic determined
young men-not wild and profane ones
in his service and that he proposed to rendezvous at Tabor in Iowa-just over
the boarders from Kansas and await events. He showed me the enlistment papers
as drawn up by him and most neatly executed. He said he expected on the return
of Spring in 1857- the Missourians-becoming supplied themselves with a new
stock of whiskey, would again invade Kansas-and he wishes to be ready to repel
them. He said that courage of those invaders depended very much on the amount
of whiskey they had. He was very conscientious-writing at my office table many
letters in the time he was here. I offered him paper, envelopes—postage
stamps-and he always left the dimes in the box to pay for them. The son was a
light complexioned and sandy haired youth as compared with the father-they had
the chains with them-that the borders….
1858: Emily Dutton marries Redfield Proctor,
ending a 75-year feud between the villages of Cavendish and Proctorsville. The
merger of these families proved to be important to Vermont, since three
governors and a United States Senator issued from this Dutton-Proctor line.
• The Proctorsville Library Association formed.
Redfield Proctor elected librarian and clerk. The Hon. Richard Fletcher, of Boston
Mass made a donation of books the following year.
Additional Time lines
Additional Time lines
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