Brattleboro History

William St. John, my father, compiled the "Historical References to Brattleboro"---completed in April 1992. This reflects his interests in local maps, old houses, highways, land records, and genealogy. The first systematic indexing of the old Vermont Phoenix and Semi-Weekly Eagle newspapers are in his work.

Shortly after his death, I began indexing all the available old Brattleboro newspapers, as a way of continuing the work of William St. John. Turning the volume pages one by one, I recorded any article, notice, advertisement, or photograph that I thought might have any conceivable interest.

The major newspapers researched for this website---Federal Galaxy, Brattleboro Reporter, Brattleboro Messenger, Green Mountain Democrat, Independent Inquirer, Vermont Phoenix, Semi-Weekly Eagle, Vermont Record And Farmer, Windham County Reformer.

This project took twelve years. The articles presented on this website represent only a small fraction of my newspaper index. A considerable proportion of the material presented here has never been seen since its original publication---between one and two hundred years ago.

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I have made every effort to recover and to document the names of those witnesses, researchers, and honest writers who created Brattleboro history. Historical sources are printed here as they were seen originally---with no cropping or "editing" to suit any political imposition or any destructive academic fashion.

My historical notes appear throughout the entire website. These notes are kept as simple, brief, and as painless as possible. They are intended only to identify places, families, fashions, or social setting---all by way of needed clarification.

Proving the location for the discovery of the fossil Mammoth Tusk took three weeks in research. The "smoking gun" was a reference in the land records to "Blake's pasture", and the presence of white quartz intrusions in the blue limestone on the site north of Western Avenue.

Brattleboro's very telling neglect of any local events following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln is clearly revealing---an untoward disregard! All readers are welcome to attend the Service For Abraham Lincoln given at the Centre Congregational Church by Rev. George Palmer Tyler.

Civil War Hospital contains over one hundred sixty pages of articles which have not been seen since the War of the Rebellion.

Here are the barracks, the first winter's mutiny, the preventative in the soup, the patient lists, the womens' soldier relief, and the military exhibition at the Town Hall.

Not to forget, the Flat Street women and finer encounters, the accidents, the pest house, the backgammon board, the medicinal cherry rum brandy recipe, the postal service, the chapel, the library, the sword presentation to the surgeons, drawings, maps, soldiers' and officers' records and speeches.

Find out how the soldiers and invalids conducted themselves when they were not sunning themselves on the long wooden benches on the Brattleboro common, and know the splendidly intelligent acts which yielded the great achievements displayed on "Hospital Hill".

Rev. Jedediah Stark, the long-time serving pastor for the First Congregational Church in West Brattleboro, spoke with his congregation throughout the 1820's. His entirely forgotten history of the early settlement of Brattleboro begins in 1768 with the description of an Indian dance ring, poles, and fireplaces at a location near Cedar Street.

Seth Smith's 1768 House describes that familiar landmark on Western Avenue, as well as the grist mill, and the first road and bridge across the Whetstone Brook there. Seth Smith was a Minute Man during the Revolution and a Yorkist afterwards.

His niece was Chloe Smith, Mrs. Rutherford Hayes, the grandmother of President Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Seth Smith's grandson was Jedediah Smith, the famed mountain man and explorer in the West, who was killed by Comanche lances on May 27, 1831.

East Village Society Law Suit is a letter written by a legal authority for the March 29, 1834 Independent Inquirer newspaper, detailing the four Vermont Supreme Court precedents which were brought against the Church on the Common---removing completely and forever all church claim to the Brattleboro Common.

Professional violinists will appreciate the collection of articles concerning that master craftsman who lived on Canal Street for so long at his labor, William A. Conant.

The early bedrock Brattleboro farms are not neglected here. The John Thomas Farm stands along the Putney Road. Good English malt brewed here two hundred years ago---

Out the turnpike road toward Marlboro stands the Rutherford Hayes Tavern, mine hostess Chloe Smith Hayes and Polly her daughter.

Rattlesnakes On Wantastiquet presents the reptiles and their rocks and rattles and oil for medicinal application, and Charles C. Frost's discourse on Chesterfield Mountain.

Henry Burnham, the finest all-around Brattleboro historian, known for his "Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont. Early History, with Biographical Sketches of some of its Citizens" (Brattleboro: Published By D. Leonard, 1880) is represented here by his forgotten series of twelve articles entitled Reminiscences, published in the Vermont Phoenix starting in March 1866.

This neglected work lies half way between Burnham's first lecture in February 1858 for the benefit of the Episcopal Church fund, and the final book twenty-two years later.

These twelve articles concern---the Elliot Street riot; Eastman Sanborn; the Lottery; Connecticut river steamboating; Whigs; "Old Blind Johnson"; the district school system; reflections on July Fourth; Rev. Dr. William Wells; mechanic-inventor John Gore; merchant Francis Goodhue; the Rev. Jonathan McGee.

Appearing from Dummerston, Vermont is a fine shaggy dog story from about 1840 which concerns the troubles encountered by several men while trying to stock with honey the shelves in the Asa Knight Store.

My own original writing which concerns Brattleboro is also presented on this website. Nathaniel Hawthorne created two famous literary villains, both modelled upon two very prominent men resident in Brattleboro---

Judge Royall Tyler became the corrupt and cruel Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables. Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft became the evil figure in the tale "Rappaccini's Daughter".

Elizabeth Hunt Palmer, who lived and died here in Brattleboro with her daughter Mary Palmer Tyler, was the model for Nathaniel Hawthorne's character Hepzibah Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables.

Una Hawthorne visited Brattleboro in the springtime May of 1868 when she was engaged to Storrow Higginson. She wrote her love a fantastical description of her walk in Brown's Woods, following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, to the pond on Chestnut Hill.

The entries concerning Dr. John Wilson, and the research concerning the Emily Dickinson Daguerreotype and her poem 1083 "We learn it in the Retreating" are also my own.

The sermon Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God concerns a particularly lurid and instructive event in colonial slave life from New York City in 1741.

Anne Dempsey's Black History In Brattleboro was published as a "Special to the Reformer" in six parts during February, Black History Month, in 1994. Here are the forgotten black residents---the first black landowner, fugitive slaves, barbers, the women, the soldiers. There is an array of enjoyable research here.

The Old Shoe Peg Factory is researched and written by Marjorie Valliere Howe.

Tom Hoffman has contributed the Diary of Henry E. Brewster and his April 30, 1850 drawing of the house of Nathan B. Williston, which stood one door north of the Williston Block. Henry E. Brewster was the adopted nephew of Caroline Brewster, Mrs. Nathan Birdseye Williston. The diary covers the years from 1850-1851.

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"Seekingthephoenix" reflects my years of seeking through the old Vermont Phoenix newspaper. This name is not inspired by any pagan impulse, nor by any esoteric romanticism.

When the proprietors and editors of the fledgling Vermont Phoenix newspaper moved into their Main Street offices in 1834, they named their enterprise after the building's former residents---the Phoenix Lottery.

The name of the Phoenix Lottery came from the notion that if you hit the lottery, then your splendid new life would rise from the ashes of your old life---just like the fabled phoenix rises anew every five hundred years from its own nested pyre, fretted with rue and cinnabar.

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In May 1856 John L. Lovell took an ambrotype glassplate view of Brattleboro from a position on Wantastiquet. This ambrotype was engraved by J. H. Bufford, Lithography, 313 Washington Street, in Boston. John Batchelder of Boston published this lithograph for sale in August 1856.

The website banner is a detail from this lithograph's view along Main Street.

John Lovell's ambrotype here shows the Centre Congregational Church with its chapel built in 1854 and its horse sheds in back, with its steeple still placed within the church, ten years before the tempest that toppled it. Also seen is the Universalist Church, and the Central School.

The Asahel Clapp house, the Connecticut River boathouse, and the narrow track that became Grove Street, are all captured by the lens and the long glassplate exposure which ambrotype required in 1856.

Credit is required, by name, for the real historians of Brattleboro. This list is partial, and mindful for those not present---

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John Burnham made brass pumps for the new-fangled windmills, and fashioned coin silver spoons from Spanish-milled dollars---six dollars to the spoon. From a nugget discovered in Williamsville in Newfane, Burnham cast a gold ring.

The shadows on the front of the building show that the sun is almost directly overhead on a summer day. Had Caleb Howe capped the lens five minutes later, the shadow falling from the roof eave would have dropped, to reveal the words painted on the lower part of the board.

There are countless useful surprises and treasures here---the best that hard work and common sense, courage, time, and pure luck can yield. You are welcome to spend your time here, scroll down these links for the beauty that was Brattleboro---

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