886 VERMONT
HISTORICAL MAGAZINE.
UNDERHILL.
BY GAY H. NARAMORE, ESQ.
This township originally contained 36 square miles, but in
1839 one-third (i. e. 12 square miles) of the town of
1765, June 8, the town was chartered by the governor of
Underhill was named after two brothers who held shares
under the original charter. The first survey was made in 1785, and it is
supposed that one Darius Post, in the same year, settled within the limits of
this town, on the site of the present
The first permanent settlement was made by Moses Benedict
and Abner Eaton about 1786. The last named lived for a number of years on the
old post road, about half way between Underhill Flats and Cambridgeboro'. Here,
five miles from any neighbor, he built a log house, and commenced clearing up
the woods. This was a, desirable location at that time, on account of the
beaver meadows which covered some 50 acres on either side of a small branch of
the Lamoille. Sufficient wild grass and hay for the support of a yoke of oxen
and a cow were readily obtained here without waiting the slow destruction of
the forest and the growth of tame grasses, hence the choice of this remote and
comparatively sterile farm in preference to the rich bottom lands of
Burlington, Essex, and Jericho, which then could have been bought at the same
price.
The warning for the first town meeting was made by
Jonathan Castle, Esq., justice of the peace, of
—————
* Joseph Sackett, Jr., James H. First, Peter First, Joseph
First, Edward Earle, Marmaduke Earle, James Jameson, Cornelius Low, Jr. Esq., Jona.
UNDERHILL. 887
Barney; constable, Caleb Sheldon , selectmen, A. Eaton,
Archibald Dixon and Cyrus Stevens. The first born child was Polly Dixon,
daughter of Archibald Dixon, Esq. The first death of adult person was the wife
of the aforenamed Caleb Sheldon, Esq., about the year 1800.
Underhill lies on the western slope of the Green
Mountains;
The first school-house was built of logs in Dist. No. 1 (
No state criminals, and only five college graduates, viz.:
Elon Olds Martin, afterwards settled as Presbyterian minister in Lowndes
county, Ala.; Charles Parker, who is at present a Congregational minister in
Vermont; William Richmond, late principal of St. Albans high school, St.
Albans; Henry Thorp, now in the state of Oregon; and Gay H. Naramore. These are
all that graduated in due course, and yet there is another name that should
have a prominent place in this connection,—Joseph S. Gilley, lately removed to
Williston academy, Williston, but for a long period prineipal of select
schools and academies both at Underhill Flats and Underhill Center, has done
more for the educational interest of the town than any other man. Truly an
earnest, devoted, successful teacher, and a noble man. In all the states, from
The manufactures of Underhill are very limited. In 1825
Tower & Oaks built a starch factory, with a steam engine of ten horse
power. From that time to 1850 they manufactured large quantities of starch, and
a number of other mills were built, but they have since all gone to decay.
There are some four saw-mills in the eastern valley, at the base of the
mountains, which do a fair business. Spruce is the chief lumber. There is also
a flouring-mill at
The first church was built in 1804 or '05, on the highest
point of land on the highway within the town.
A certain Mr. Campbell, about this time, opened a store
near the church.
By the meeting-house was also that important place called
the parade ground, which, if not so large as the New York Central Park, was at
the least 12 rods wide by 50 long, and had a very majestic whipping-post at the
south end, near the church porch.
On one side of the above mentioned green or parade ground,
in 1826, Cyrus Birge kept his store, and was appointed P. M., having the first
postoffice in town. Here, then, was the first of everything in this large and
important township, but alas for the wisdom of man! Time has upset all the
cherished plans of our ancestors. The meeting-house has long since vanished
without leaving so much as a trace of ruins, the whipping-post is hopelessly
uprooted, and the green—the pride of patriotic lads and happy lasses—has been
relentlessly fenced in for a plough-field. Nought remains as it was planned by
our good fathers, save the old first Congregational church burying ground, as
it is usually called.
"The deed rest there alone."
Underhill had her share of Revolutionary worthies, if the
record is true. George Olds, Caleb Sheldon, Barnard Ward, David Birge, Oliver
Wells and Chauncey Graves were for a long time pensioners.
Elijah Birge was captain of a militia company which was
called into service during the war of 1812.
Underhill took no part in the Canada rebellion.
Lawyers have never thrived in this locality. Cheese
making or horse raising is usually esteemed more honorable as well as
lucrative.
In the year 1821, however, a young man by the name of
Bacon tried to practice law here for a. short time, but gave it up soon and has
not been heard of since. A. firm of Sawyer & Beardsley staid longer, but
were not successful.
888 VERMONT
HISTORICAL MAGAZINE.
Physicians have succeeded better, so that the town has
supported one or more of these dignitaries since the commencement of this
century. Doctors Benedict and Burdick at present prevail. The latter is, I
believe, a graduate of the medical department of the University of Vermont.
Sublime scenery abounds, and yet the good inhabitants have
usually managed to keep their poetic ardor within bound, so that it should not
cause an inky overflow. One exception, however; for tradition says that
sometime between 1805 and '10, a certain Fisk, M. D. (who was also the first
practicing physician) threw off a comic poem entitled "The Enchanted
Vale." I think there is no fragment of it extant, and I cannot find as it
was ever published.
Underhill does not seem to be more than moderately
healthy. 100 years, which is often attained in a milder climate, is never known
here. Being mountainous, the wintry winds are very severe in exposed situations.
Besides this, physiology and the laws of health and nature seem to be things of
the smallest consequence, so that they are the very last things considered.
The oldest person living (1861) is Theophilus Haniford,
born in 1767. Oldest person deceased, George Olds, who died in 1844, aged 97
years.
Underhill supports a fine academy in each village, only
about two miles apart. The population scarcely gains at all of late years,
owing to the continual exodus to California, the South and the
"West." The Irish element is continually gaining on the American, so
that it is safe to calculate that it will soon predominate.
Pasturage, the dairy and stock employ nearly all the
capital as well as labor of the town.
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN UNDERHILL.
COMMUNICATED BY REV. SIMEON PARMELEE.
UNDERHILL, March 4, 1861.
The Congregational Church was organized in this town on
the 29th of December, 1801, by Rev. Ebenezer Kingsbury of Jericho. The
following individuals constituted the original company of which it was composed:
MALES.—"Adam Hurlburt, James Dixon, George Olds,
Carey Mead, Herman Prior, John Coleman, Daniel Clark.
FEMALES.—Elenor Dixon, Judith Mead, Abigail Birge, Rachel
Ward, Lidia Dixon, Permit Prior, Veelea Mead.
Rev. James Parker was the first settled minister in this
town. His ordination occurred probably in November, 1803. I can find no record
of the ordination, but I find a committee appointed to agree with Mr. Parker on
conditions of settlement. In November and the first of January there is found
the record of business done that showed that Mr. Parker had been ordained, but
I find no date of the ordination. Mr. Parker was a man of substantial integrity
and living piety. His education was limited, but his ministry was blessed while
here and he was truly a devoted man, a spiritual preacher, and a devoted
Christian. He was companionable, and rendered himself acceptable in every
place, but especially in the pulpit.
There was a vein of humor that enlivened the conversation
of Mr. Parker, and often something of the kind would make its appearance in
the pulpit. But still he always kept himself under, and held forth Christ and
his religion as the great lesson to be taught. He was truly a faithful servant
of the Most High God, who preached Christ and lived Him, and left behind him an
honorable name, which is better than precious ointment.
I am now preaching to the church which is a continuation
of the one over which he was ordained. The most of those who were then active
members are gone the long journey, but those that live still revere the name of
their first pastor.
Mr. Parker had two sons that were settled in the ministry.
One was settled in Lower Canada, and the other in Maine. The former was named
Ami, and the latter Benjamin Wooster. The former is a pioneer in Canada, and
stands as a pillar in that land. I do not know that the other one is living.
THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH IS UNDERHILL.
FROM BISHOP GOESBRIAND.
The church edifice of Underhill Center was built in 1856,
and dedicated to God under the patronage of St. Thomas. It has been enlarged
this year by the care of Rev. P. O. Carroll of Richmond. Its dimensions are 32
by 90. The congregation numbers
UNDERHILL. 889
about 90 families. They are attended twice in the month on
Sunday from Richmond by Rev. P. O. Carroll.
A
SKETCH OF MANSFIELD.
An extract from "Mountaineering," by GAY H.
NARAMORE.*
Mansfield, so called from its contour resemblance to the
face of humanity, is the highest land in Vermont, and a little more than half
as high as the cap-stone of New England, Mount Washington. For all our early
start the clouds were up before us, and looked frowningly down, you may
imagine, as we toiled our weary way beneath; but they scattered before the
fiercer sunbeams, and left each towering crag and "thunder-splintered
pinnacle" as grand, and lone, and terribly sublime as ever. On the
north-east woody hills banked upon hills loomed far away to the hidden sources
of the Connecticut. On the south-east small clearings were visible—mere
gardens in the wilderness, and, glittering in the sun, the largest one the tiny
village of Stowe. Sleeping in listless beauty in the west, with its fair, young
isles kissing the bright waves, and drinking in the sunbeams, lay the old
Champlain, and beyond, as if wedged between its waters and the deep sky, and
drowned in misty beauty, peered the Essex Mountains of New York. And nearer to
our feet, away this side of these, leaning up against the beetling cliffs with
rugged, careless ease was our old school-home, the (about-to-be) classic
Underhill,— and Westford, and that paradise of felicity, Cambridge-borough, and
Fairfax, and Milton, and seven more. Stephensville, composed partly of
"houses and all the rest barns," where they have a "grist-mill
to make shingles," and a peck measure factory, is not thought of in the
above computation.
Mansfield's forehead is not very intellectual—his chin,
like that of many others, being the highest. He has a regular cave of a mouth,
but terribly twisted, and opens far down on the north-east side, yawning and
awful, with a breath that strikes a blight like that of angry winter. A hundred
feet overhead trembles a vast rock of tuns weight, which seems each moment as
if just ready to fall; yet it has probably hung there for thousands of years.
We go about three rods on an antediluvian bank of ice and snow, and arrive at
the well, or more properly, throat. We throw in stones; they go down, and down,
and down—whack, whack, whack for some time, and then splash in deep waters.
It seems strange that this has never been explored, though
probably the threatening rocks and stone above have deterred adventurers.
The nose is not Roman, as H. observed, but a right Yankee
sneezer three hundred feet high. Our camp was at the foot of this, in right
Indian style—rocks on three sides, boughs under and over us, with a huge spruce
fire in the corner.
Twelve of us staid all night. What a glorious sunset. It
was worth an age of toil and heart-sickness and woe, to behold just once that
changing, deepening, glowing twilight heaven.
MANSFIELD.
It was midnight by the shadows
That o'er Brown's wild fountains lie,
As we climbed the Mansfield mountains
Where they throne the deepest sky.
O, the rapture of that moment,
When we crowned the rock-built fane,
And looked down upon the lifeless
Shores and waves of Lake Champlain.
We the only lords in being—
But the next thought brought refrain,
For our journey lay before us;
Should we ever meet again?
Then the past came up before us,
All the varied scenes of years,
All our boyish sports together,
All our frolics, all our tears,—
All our Burnside, moonlight rambles
Where the Brown's wild waters fly,
All our bright plans for the future,
Friendships that could never die
We parted when the morrow
First lit up thy waves, Champlain;
For life's journey lay before us,
And we never met again!
DECEMBER
AT UNDERHILL.
BY GAY H. NARAMORE.
Sadder and sadder the sad hours grow,
Fiercer and fiercer the frost-winds blew,
Deeper and deeper the dark nights flow
Over the pulseless world below;
And pallid spectres do ever go
Through the shades, singing wild songs of woe,
As they sow
And their pitiless laughter is oft heard–ah, wo
And all through the long nights they hasten, we know,
To scatter their storm-seed of hail and snow!
And still nights grow longer and deeper starred,
And longer old Mansfield's shadows are cast;
Later and later the sun is barred,
Till morning's smiles are all o'ercast;
And then, in a veil of frost and hail—
Say, dear Don, must it not be drear
To watch the very sun grow pale,
And O Sorrow, hear
No songs but dirges for the dead year,
And see no flowers but through death's veil!
No, oh! no, dear Den. Though it may seem queer,
To you, nestling there Midst orange bowers,
—————
* Mr. Naramore has published two volumes at least of his
poems. The first is very handsomely represented in the Poets and Poetry of
Vermont. The latter volume was issued by a New York press—Carlton, we think—the
past winter. But his own graphic, fresh, glowing style will best praise
him.—Ed.
890 VERMONT
HISTORICAL MAGAZINE.
These cold dark days are not at all drear,
Nor nights long
hours.
No, our farmers do never weep at all
At the wailing lays of the dying fall,
Nor that
Winter's frowns in dismal showers
Are o'er them cast;
To our farmer ears what says the blast?
Nothing sad at all. Not at all drear;
Though to
Southern ear
It might whistle
queer
Such songs as would make all tingle to hear,
Yet what care the sons of old Underhill?
To them Winter's form is not strange nor drear,
For he sleeps in their mountain caves all the year
So the jolly farmer but laughs to know
The winds are at play with the drifting snow,
And so he does nothing at all but laugh,
As he fans from the golden grain the chaff,
At the dirges
so drear
For the old
dead year.
Does nothing but laugh as he blows the chaff,
Does nothing
but laugh as the shadows rise,
Does nothing but laugh as the shadows fall,
Does nothing
but laugh at the stars in the skies,
And tell long stories of war withal,—
How wild hunters ambushed beneath wild trees—
All of savage
men and wildernesses,
Until each gaping youngster sees
Hung in the
dark the scalp's red tresses,
And on the earth, dark gory seas;
And our
old-thoughted grandam blesses
Her soul and mine, that, thanks! at last,
Those dreary, cruel days are past,
Does nothing but laugh as the hours fly fast,
Unless it be to
talk of the times
And the timely tension of truth, called news,
Of Southworth's
stories and Richmond's rhymes;
And how old Frank Pierce had the blues
When he told his soldiers to "push on the battle,
For he was sick"—(of the cannon's rattle!);
Unless to pile wood on the climbing fire,
And crack jokes and nuts as the flames climb higher;
Unless it be to pass hugest bowls
Of luscious apples and sparkling cider,
And wing bravest songs from bravest souls,
That each night grew braver and deeper and wider,
As the nights grew darker and snows more deep,
Does nothing at all but laugh and—sleep!
And so, Don,
why should I
Do nothing but weep?
O no, dear Don, my blithesome lad,
Though the world does weep, I'm not oft sad,
Though Time, with his sythe,
Draws nearer and nearer
As the wintry winds whistle drearer and drearer,
Why my laughing
fire
But grows dearer and dearer;
And so, (after walking abroad to see
How the snow-birds joy in the storm's company.
How the wily fox, awake before day,
In his rocky caves mocks the bloodhound's bay,
Till the skating school-boys from glassy pool
Are called by the morning bell to school,)
With my mind tuned anew to nature's thought,
I turn to my cozy room again,
And pore o'er my books till my task is all wrought,
And stern Sir Coke smiles at Kent and Montaigne,
And early night
comes down amain
With an uncivil
frown at my civil train.
There, don't go to sleep, but listen a minute
(For the muse
that's so hoarse now
May sing like a linnet).
Yes. The work is done. We can chat and laugh now;
No, don't say I'm old, that time's blanched my brow;
Don't lead me
back to the past so lone,
For the heart will ache as it loiters where
Some rosebud of
bliss was wantonly strown!
And the way seems so long where no light enchoers,
O'er what an ocean of sighs and tears,
Through what a journey of ages of years,
Of rough wild years—
And o'er what mountains of hopes and fears
Since the restless strife of life began
Why scan?
If the past is not fair Why wander there?
If day's labors are past,
If life's duties are done
And their guerdon won,
Why longer
aghast?
For night's
blest hours are flying fast, fast—
The hours so sacred to love and dreams.
No, I'm not
lone now—
Say, dost see those bright gleams
Of golden light
o'er our mountain's brow,
Where the
"pearly gates" are opening now
And heaven is
smiling on earth below?
There are forms of beauty and forms of light
That smile on
our poet's soul from each cloud
Which veils the beaming eyes of night;
While angels
crowd
The tremulous air to whisper delight;—
So you see it matters not how lone
The winds seem to moan,
How can your poet-heart be lone!
———————————————
WESTFORD.
BY REV. J. H. WOODWARD.
Westford is in the second tier of towns east of Lake
Champlain, reclining on the western slope of the Green Mountains. It is bounded
N. by Fairfax, E. by Underhill, S. by Essex, and W. by Milton. Its center is 16
miles N. E. of Burlington, and 16 miles S. E. of St. Albans. The town lies in a
regular form, containing 36 square miles, and was chartered by Gov. Wentworth
of New Hampshire, in 1763. The grantees were 65 in number. Its surface is
broken, ledges cropping out here and there, and the whole diversified with
luxuriant valleys and verdant mountain ridges. No part of it, however, is so
rough or precipitous as to be uninhabitable, and the whole is well adapted to
grazing purposes. Like other mountainous districts it is well watered. Its
pastures are sweet, and its meadows and corn lands productive; nor is there any
great amount of waste territory, although to a stranger it