CHAPTER V.

COUNTIES.

The first county erected on Vermont territory was organized by New York, July 3, 1766, and named Cumberland, possibly after the Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George II. On its northern border were the townships of Linfield (Royalton), Sharon, and Norwich. The King declared this act void. June 26, 1767, as it was contrary to his orders regarding claims to the land in dispute between New York and New Hampshire. There was, however, an urgent demand for some county organization where courts could be held and cases tried, and the county was re-established by Letters Patent, Mar. 19, 1768.

A Court of Common Pleas had been established before the annulling act was known, and provision had been made for the erection of county buildings at an expenditure not exceeding two hundred pounds. Supervisors and other officers were ordered to be elected, and the supervisors were to meet and choose a shire town, and levy the tax for erecting the necessary buildings. Chester was selected as the county seat, and a Court of General Sessions of the Peace was established, to meet twice a year at the same time as the Court of Common Pleas.

When the county was re-organized in 1768, the people were allowed to erect county buildings at their own expense. There was some opposition to the selection of Chester, as there was a strong feeling there antagonistic to New York, and it was far from the Connecticut river, along which were the most advanced settlements. Thomas Chandler, the first judge, came to the support of Chester by volunteering to erect a suitable court house and jail at his own expense.

Mr. Child in his Gazetteer of Windsor County gives a description of the jail, which was found in an old chancery document. It states that the jail was in a corner of a hut, "the walls of which house were made of small hackmatac poles locked together at the corners by cutting notches into the poles." The cracks between pole and pole were filled with tow, moss, or clay. This primitive, loosely constructed affair afforded small security against the escape of prisoners. Chandler's court house was no

more pleasing to the county than his jail, though he planned a building thirty feet by sixteen, which would be convenient when "finished," and he had it partly erected in 1771, the year the first settler came into Royalton.

Notice was given that on the third Tuesday in May, 1772, each town should elect one supervisor, two assessors, two collectors, two overseers of the poor, three highway commissioners, as many surveyors as each town thought necessary, two fence viewers, and four constables. The supervisors were directed to meet at Chester at the "Court House, and select a place for a court house and a jail. After a struggle Westminster was selected on May 26th of that year, and the proper buildings were erected there. The population of Cumberland county in 1771 was but 3947, which was divided among several towns. In some of the towns there could hardly have been voters enough to go around in the distribution of offices.

In the meantime Gloucester county had been chartered, Mar. 7, 1770, by the Provincial Congress of New York, and Newbury was selected as the shire town. This included all the territory north of Cumberland and east of the Green mountains. Both counties were sparsely settled. The census taken by the authority of New York in 1771 showed that in May of that year Gloucester had 762 inhabitants. Charlotte county was formed in 1772, its southern boundary being Sunderland and Arlington. It included the territory west of the mountains on both sides of Lake Champlain to the Hudson river. The part of Vermont on the west side of the mountains south of Charlotte county was included in Albany county.

The first Cumberland County Convention met at Westminster Oct. 19, 1774, and occupied the new "County Hall." Stirring times were witnessed there, both before and after the memorable massacre, in which the first blood of the Revolution was shed, as many Vermonters claim.

This was the status of the counties when Vermont declared her independence in 1777. The next year, Mar. 17, the General Assembly divided the entire state into two counties, Bennington west of the mountains, and Unity east of them. A few days later "Unity" was discarded for the old name, Cumberland, and the next year a line of division was established. The next change occurred in October, 1780, under an act to establish county lines, and Cumberland was divided into Cumberland and Gloucester, the division between the two running on the north line of Windsor county about as it is today. The two counties east of the mountains were now nearly the same as they had been under New York. Of course New York retained the original names, and therefore much confusion in the names of counties is found

in old deeds. Sometimes Royalton is in Cumberland county, New York, again in Cumberland county, Vermont, and a third time in Gloucester county, New York, and so on, with other variations.

In February, 1781, the population of the state had so far increased that a new division was decided upon, and Cumberland county as it was in 1778 was divided into Windham, Windsor, and Orange counties, and the old names finally disappeared. All north of Windsor county was called Orange. Various changes have been made in the boundaries of Windsor and Windham counties, but space forbids a further account, except to say, that on March 2, 1797, the state was divided into eleven counties, which number was later increased to fourteen by the organization of Grand Isle, Washington, and Lamoille, the last and youngest being incorporated in 1835.

The boundaries given to Windsor county in 1797 have remained unchanged, though efforts have been made to effect a division. The county includes twenty-four towns, is forty-eight miles long by thirty wide, and contains 900 square miles. Windsor was designated as the shire town of the county by act of the legislature October, 1781. Legislative sessions had been held there in the early part of the year, and members favored that location, though the later settled town of Woodstock was ambitious to secure the county seat. This led to attempts to have the county divided into two shires, of one of which Windsor should be the county seat, and Woodstock of the other. The matter came up in the Assembly as early as June, 1781, when they voted not to divide the county. The selection of Windsor did not put an end to the rivalry between the two towns. The next step was to get an expression of opinion from the inhabitants of the county, as to the best place for the county buildings, which had not yet been erected. A meeting called by the authority of the county was held at Windsor in March, 1784, but not enough were interested to make a quorum. At this juncture some of the public spirited citizens of Windsor subscribed about $500 towards building a court house fifty feet by thirty-four, and at once began its erection.

Woodstock was not thus to be baffled. The Hon. Benjamin Emmons, the representative from Woodstock, declined the honor of an appointment to a vacancy in the Council, that he might fight for his home town in the Assembly, and had the satisfaction of winning a victory, when the bill for establishing Woodstock as the shire town was approved, Oct. 27, 1786. Now the proprietors of "Windsor Court House" began to be busy. What was to become of their new building, if Woodstock was to be the shire town? Petitions besieged the legislature, and the mat

ter was compromised, according to the account of Mr. Child, by legislative enactment in 1787, directing the courts to be held. at Windsor till the inhabitants of Woodstock should build a satisfactory court house.

The act of the legislature dividing Windsor county into two half shires was approved Oct. 27, 1790. The court houses were to be finished by the respective towns without any expense to the county, and ready for occupancy before the next term of court. The news of this action was hardly announced to the residents of the county, before an opposing element appeared, and secured the introduction into the House of an act to repeal this act of division. The House voted to repeal, Jan. 17, 1791, refused to refer to the next session, and sent it to the Governor and Council, who promptly refused to approve it, after hearing the attorneys of both parties, and sent it back for amendments. Amended, it ordered the two shires to remain in force three years, after which Woodstock was to be the shire town. This lively rivalry between Windsor and Woodstock resulted in lessening the rate of taxation for the county, as each town subscribed liberally in erecting the required buildings.

There seemed to have been a mania for burning court houses in 1790, so much so that the legislature passed an act in 1791 recommending the governor to take effectual measures to "suppress the recent villany of burning court houses." Woodstock lost her building by fire, October 24, 1791, possibly due to the warm controversy over the county seat. Mr. Henry Swan Dana in his History of Woodstock says that a negro was suspected of setting fire to the building, but the evidence was not strong enough to hold him. A new building was erected in 1793, which in turn was burned July 4, 1854, having caught fire from firecrackers thrown on the roof. Another court house was erected the same year.

Before Woodstock was declared to be the shire town of Windsor county, regular sessions of the court were held at Windsor, but special sessions were itinerant like a hand-organ. When the cases were ground out in one town, the court moved on to another. This was true also of probate courts for some years, so that Royalton had its probate court sittings from time to time.

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How much ground there was for the charges of a correspondent of the Woodstock Observer in the issue of August 7, 1827, cannot be affirmed. "For some time," he writes, a few restless and aspiring individuals on White River have been brooding over a scheme for dividing the county of Windsor, and raising Royalton to the peerage. The magnets of the north

assembled in that snug little village be expedient and advantageous

and determined it to and drew up a petition

to the legislature for a division of our ancient and honorable county, which they have since been circulating in the disaffected district for signatures." He adds that Orange, Caledonia, and Essex are to feel the knife, and "poor Essex is to be literally cut up and extinguished." He complains that, if the project succeeds, the money spent on the jail and court house will be literally thrown away, "all to gratify the whims of a few conceited county-makers in Royalton.

The Observer squarely charged, that efforts were making to constitute Royalton and Windsor shire towns. Another short article in the same paper stated, that a meeting was held the preceding Saturday at Royalton to see how much those interested would put up for a "stone jug and court house." Mr. Spooner, who was then editing the Advocate in Royalton, in his next issue denied that any petition for a division of the county had been circulated, but owned that the matter had been discussed. He made light of the charges of the Observer, which fails to convince one that there was no such meeting.

Jacob Collamer was the town representative that year, and it is likely that he was one of the "magnets" referred to by the editor of the Observer. Certain it is, that he did present the petition of Elias Stevens and others for a division of the county to the next session of the Assembly, and ably advocated it, but it was postponed to the next session. This petition came before the Governor and Council Oct. 17, 1829, having enjoyed a lethargic retirement for two years. It was referred to a committee raised on a bill for establishing a new county by the name of Cumberland. It seems to have relapsed into a state of insensibility from which it never recovered. The aspirations of Royalton were not realized, and she has ever since allowed Woodstock to enjoy the prestige of being the shire town unmolested.