Northfield Vermont
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In 1790, when the United States
government established its first census, it recorded forty-four persons
(fifteen adults and twenty-nine children) living in the tiny and isolated
Town of Northfield. Amos Robinson, the first to arrive, was a proprietor of
the town chartered in 1781, and was actually the only original proprietor to
make his home here.
Elijah Paine, son of an influential
family, Harvard graduate, Revolutionary soldier, lawyer, friend of George
Washington and a proprietor of Northfield and nearby Williamstown, had
cleared land on Northfield's Mill Hill. He built a grist and saw mill which
soon became the center of business and social activity for the settlement.
On March 12, 1794, the first town meeting
was held at Dr. Nathaniel Robinson's home on East Hill. As more settlers
came to town, they abandoned the hilltops and built their homes westward
down Mill Hill, until by the early 19th century, a small hamlet (today's
South Village) had grown up along Sunny Brook and the Dog River. The
village, known as Slab City because of the saw mills established there, also
contained potash and grist mills.
In 1799 Elijah Paine built the famous
Paine Turnpike which ran from Brookfield, through northern Northfield, to
Montpelier, opening up trade and travel on this Boston-Montreal route.
By the 1840s the settlement had crept
northward from South Village to land along the Dog River, known then and now
as the Center. What is today's "downtown" was originally a heavily
forested swampy area. In the early 1800s Elijah Paine acquired this land,
cleared it, built a dam on the Dog River and erected a woolen mill. The last
to be settled was the "Falls," north of Factory Village, which
was, and still is, a small closely knit settlement.
In 1848 these four small villages began
to flourish, thanks to their leading citizen, Charles Paine. Like his father
Elijah, Charles was well educated, shrewd and personable. He was governor of
Vermont from 1841 to 1843, and in 1845 became president of the newly
chartered Vermont Central Railroad. He built the headquarters in Northfield,
much to the disappointment of Barre and Montpelier. In its extensive yard,
the railroad built and repaired engines and cars. The many Irish who poured
into town to work on the railroad became permanent residents.
In 1853 the Vermont Central Railroad went
into bankruptcy due to over expansion and, in some cases, mismanagement, and
bit by bit hard times came to Northfield. The railroad, placed under
receivership and renamed the Central Vermont Railroad, had its headquarters
moved to St. Albans.
In the 1870s, the slate industry,
although short-lived, eased Northfield's economic depression. Welsh workmen,
skilled in cutting and splitting slate, arrived in town and contributed to
its development.
The granite industry, particularly under
the business acumen of five Cross brothers, brought new life to the town in
the 1890s and early 1900s. Their stone sheds, plus those of the Ellis
Company, the Pelaggi Company, Phillips & Slack Inc., and others,
employed hundreds of workers, many of them newly arrived Italians, Spaniards
and Scots. Gradually the Northfield granite industry drifted to the great
granite center in nearby Barre.
By the 1950s and 1960s, other industry
rejuvenated Northfield. The old Nantanna Mill under Bernard Goldfine's
ownership produced fine woolen goods. The Rabbit hollow Knitting Mill; the
Wood Products Co.; the Northfield Telephone Co. and its later outgrowth,
Trans-Video Cable Television; Cetrangolo's granite finishing works; and a
new shopping center brought much-needed employment.
Today the largest industry in town is
unquestionably norwich University which was started in 1869 and remained a
small college for several decades. This venerable military university
employs
hundreds of people, adds property support
to the town, and spends millions of dollars each year in supplies and
services in Central Vermont. In 1950, Major General Ernest Harmon became
President of norwich where he spent fifteen years and brought enrollment
from 300 cadets to well over 1,300. In 1972 Norwich merged with Vermont
College in Montpelier, thus giving the university two campuses. Today with
an enrollment of 1,750 men and women, plus a program of adult education that
is national in scope, norwich University can boast a solid basis of
operation.
In spite of many changes, Northfield
still retains many characteristics of its old-time four villages - the South
Village with its Red Mill; the Center, home of norwich University;
Northfield Village, the business center of the town; and Northfield Falls,
once called Gouldsville in honor of Gould Mill, now a small community.
Norwich
University
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