Micah Townshend - Brattleboro Historical Society

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 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 […]