American Revolution - Brattleboro Historical Society

William French and the Westminster Massacre

William French lived on Old Ferry Road. He was born in 1753 and died in 1775, 8 days shy of his 22nd birthday. His early death arrived in a hail of gunfire at the Westminster courthouse. His body was struck by five bullets fired by his neighbors. How does a community get to the point where neighbor will shoot neighbor? The early days of Brattleborough were contentious. Some settlers were loyal to New York, some to New Hampshire, some liked British rule, and some despised it. In those first years, those loyal to New York and the King of England controlled town government. Land speculation was a driving influence along the Connecticut River. In 1764 the King’s Council gave control of all land west of the Connecticut River to the colony of New York. Under Massachusetts and New Hampshire oversight, settlers had been in the area since the 1720’s but now, forty years later, Great […]

Thomas Akeley (Revolutionary War)

Akley (Akeley) is a name that has been part of Brattleboro and Guilford since before the Revolutionary War. According to historical records, Francis Akeley Jr. moved to Guilford from the Boston area before the war began. He had been an indentured servant to the Houghton family. The Houghton family moved to Guilford in 1773. Francis was twenty two years old when the Houghton’s moved to Vermont. It is unclear whether he was still working for the Houghton’s or if he followed them to Guilford to start a life of his own. This story will focus on Francis’ younger brother, Thomas. A few months ago we came upon Thomas’ grave in West Brattleboro’s Mather Road Cemetery. The stone is faded and hard to read but the gravesite has a Revolutionary War marker beside it. The plaque that has fallen from the stone says, “Thomas Akeley…A Soldier of the Revolutionary War…served 5 months 9 days 1775”. This […]

The Great Cow Wars

The Arms Tavern was located where the Retreat Farmhouse is now. In January, 1784 the tavern was surrounded by armed men who fired musket balls and buckshot into the building. Two men inside the tavern were wounded from the attack. This was one of many military actions that took place during the Great Cow Wars and was the catalyst for finally bringing the conflict to a close. You may not have heard of them, but the Great Cow Wars were a series of local confrontations that partially overlapped with the larger American Revolution. From 1779 to 1784 this region of the Connecticut River Valley was in constant conflict. Many landowners were not interested in becoming citizens or taxpayers of the newly declared Vermont Republic. Settlers who had moved into this area during the previous twenty years were faced with the choice of declaring loyalty to New York, Vermont, Great Britain and/or the United States. Whichever […]

Stephen Greenleaf and the Revolution

In April, 1772, Stephen Greenleaf was appointed Justice of the Peace for Cumberland County in the Province of New York. He had recently moved from Boston with his family and purchased 800 acres of land and a saw mill from Samuel Wells. The 800 acres would become the most valuable land in Brattleboro, but 250 years ago the two room home that the Greenleaf family moved into was the only building in the area now known as Main Street. The 800 acres purchased from Wells had originally been the land set aside for New Hampshire’s Governor Wentworth when the town was chartered in 1753. In 1766, after the King of England had declared that Brattleboro was really a part of the province of New York, Samuel Wells traveled to Albany and obtained New York title to the land. In the 1770’s the Great River Road, now Main Street, ran from Fort Dummer to the Wells […]

Stephen Bradley comes to Vermont 1779

If you are interested in early Vermont history then you should become acquainted with Stephen R. Bradley. He moved to Westminster, Vermont in 1779 and quickly became an important figure in the economic and political establishment of the state. He was born in Connecticut, but we know little of his early life. Bradley graduated from Yale in 1775 and joined the Connecticut Militia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He became an officer in the militia and also trained to be a lawyer. In early 1779 he resigned from the Connecticut Militia and moved to the newly established region of Vermont. Towns from the area had met in 1777 and declared their independence from New York and Great Britain. Vermont operated as its own state but New York still claimed the land as theirs. Bradley’s first Vermont court case placed him in the middle of another kind of battle. In May of 1779, while […]

Stephen Bradley and Vermont Statehood 1784-1791

In 1784 the southeastern corner of Vermont was in great turmoil. Two hundred and forty years ago, residents loyal to New York were in revolt against the Vermont government. At the time, the Attorney General of Vermont was Stephen R. Bradley. On January 10th he issued a document addressed to those residents refusing to comply with Vermont laws. He said that the Vermont government was willing to forget past transgressions if those refusing to follow Vermont laws would pledge allegiance to the state. This offer was not accepted by the Yorkers. Stephen R. Bradley was also a colonel in the Vermont Militia and reported the following event to the Vermont Journal publication. We have paraphrased his reporting to make it more easily understood. On Saturday morning, January 17th, I received a report that the night before a group of twenty armed men had marched from Guilford to Brattleboro and arrived at the Arms Tavern around […]

Samuel Wells and British Spies in the Revolution

This week we tell the story of an early local Brattleborough resident who was described by the United States Congress as a “perfidious man”. In 1730 Samuel Wells was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts. That’s about 25 miles south of here. He was a tavern keeper in Deerfield and also served in the Massachusetts militia during the French and Indian War. Like many war veterans, as the conflict was winding down, Wells decided to move into the northern frontier territory that had recently been part of the war between the Abenaki, French and British. In 1762 British colonists began to build homes and successfully claim land north of Fort Dummer. Both British colonies, New York and New Hampshire, claimed the area. The Abenaki had been fighting to remain on the land for at least 100 years but, with the end of the war, their French allies withdrew from the region and the Abenaki found it more […]

Samuel Gale (1775)

This week in Brattleboro History the topic will be freedom of the press versus the needs of government. In 1776 British born Samuel Gale was living under house arrest in New York City. He had been held in jail in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York for a year and a half because of his loyalty to Great Britain and the desire of the infant US government to suppress his voice. In 1773 Samuel Gale had moved to Brattleboro as a New York land surveyor and clerk of the local court. During the years leading to the American Revolution he was loyal to Great Britain and married Rebecca Wells, from a prominent Brattleboro Tory family. He was also a writer with outspoken views supporting the British government and it is thought that he brought the first printing press to Vermont during this time. In 1775, as the clerk of the court in Westminster, Samuel Gale […]

Gardiner Chandler and the Birth of Vermont.

On March 4, 1791 Vermont officially became the 14th state. How did that happen? There were a few steps involved before Vermont could join the United States. First, New York laid claim to Vermont and opposed Vermont’s petition to join the union. Westminster’s Stephen R. Bradley was one of six negotiators who met with New York’s delegation to resolve conflicts between the two governments. New York demanded compensation for its legal claim on Vermont, and also wanted clear boundaries established between the two states. These negotiations went on for ten months and ended when Vermont agreed to pay New York $30,000 for its land claim. Boundary disputes were also settled and New York negotiators signed a document relinquishing any claim to the lands of Vermont on October 7, 1790. Second, the Congress of the United States met in Philadelphia to consider Vermont’s admission to the union. In order for this to happen, Vermont needed to […]

Early local government (1753-1803)

The town of Brattleboro was chartered as part of the New Hampshire Grants in 1753. European settlement took hold in the region after French Indian War hostilities ceased around 1760. Then, in 1764, the King of England fixed the boundary between NH and NY at the Connecticut River and the grants of land established by the New Hampshire colony came into question. As a result, twenty settlers in the area petitioned the New York colony for township recognition. New York Governor Moore granted the township of Brattleboro and this area began to function as part of the British colony of New York. To complicate matters, in 1767 the King of England ruled that New York authorities could not harass people who produced a valid land deed from the NH government. This meant that deeds granted by both NY and NH were considered valid, even if they were in conflict with one another. People on the […]

Burlington and the Allen’s (1760’s-1770’s)

In the 1760’s the Burling family purchased land from New Hampshire governor Benning Wentworth. The Burling’s were land speculators and had hoped to make money by re-selling the land to others who were interested in settling in the recently established New Hampshire Grants. Unfortunately for the Burling’s, the King of England ruled that New Hampshire did not have the right to sell any land west of the Connecticut River, so the Burling’s were worried that their large land investments were illegal and worthless. The Burling’s sent representatives to England in hopes of convincing the King that he should reconsider and recognize the New Hampshire Grant land titles. However, the King did not agree with the Burling’s. This meant it was unclear as to who really owned the land east of Lake Champlain and west of the Connecticut River. Was the land New York’s or New Hampshire’s to sell? The Burling’s were worried that they would […]

Battle of Bennington Revised History (1843)

In 1843 the local paper, The Vermont Phoenix, published a revised history of Vermont’s influence during the Revolutionary War. The events in the Revolutionary War that were up for reinterpretation concerned Brattleboro and the Battle of Bennington. In 1843 the War for Independence had been over for 77 years and people thought they knew what had happened. History books had written about the reasons and outcomes of the war but new information was coming to light from sources that had not previously been represented in the documentation concerning the Revolutionary War. History books had long established that the Battle of Bennington, between the British and the Americans, was one of the turning points of the war. The Americans won the battle capturing, killing and wounding almost 1000 British soldiers. The British objective of the battle had been to seize as many supplies…including food, horses, cattle, wagon and oxen from the Vermonters as possible. The British […]