Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1920-09-22


British troops there created mar
ket especially for beef cattle, and not
a few people in the border towns en-
i gagged in clandestine trade. The
smugglers had regular trails or roads
through the woods. A certain resi-
dent of Bloomington furnished funds
for a company of men in lrasburg to
engage in smuggling, and his broth
er-in-law moved from Stanstead to
Barton in order to smuggle cattle
across the line. There was a corral
on the late Ira Sturtevant farm up
the river, where cattle en- route for
Canada could be kept.
/ Officers were stationed at various
points in the different towns and en-
counters between the government
party and the illicit traders were not
infrequent. One occasion of this
kind occurred on the hill near the
cemetery east of our village. In
March, 1914, the customs officers re-
ceived word that a party of SNUG
glers had crossed the line. Securing
help from Irasburg and Barton, they
met the invaders on Willoughby hill
and a sharp fight took place. But
the smugglers proved too strong for
the officers of the law, and drove on
through Barton and nearly to Shelf
field Meeting one of their scouts
who informed them that force there
was ready to receive them, they
turned back to Barton Mills, where
two of them were arrested and placed
in custody. They were housed for
the night at Robinson's Inn. The
next day man drove into the yard
and went into the house without
hitching his horse. The two SNUG
| glers rushed out, leaped into the
sleigh, and made good their escape
over the boundary.
After the cessation of war anoth-
er wave of settlement made itself ap-
parent throughout the northern
towns In the original allotment of
land in the town of Barton, made
October Id, 1871, Ira Allen had Lot
IL, Range /. According to map IN
the town clerks office, this is the hot
on which the village of Barton Land
ing was situated John Paul Jones
had Lot 10, Range 3, on which i
Judge the old Fair Ground to have
been partially if not wholly located.
In 1913 Herman Allen, who had ac-
quired Ira Aliens allotment, sold all
his Barton land to Roger Enos for
$4,000, and in 1920 Enos built saw
mill at the falls near where we are
now assembled. The Enos mill is re-
ferred to in many early deeds and
u
ready here they must have been built
shortly after, for the man who ran
the sawmill lived somewhere, and a
log cabin is mentioned later as stand
| ing in the widow Drew's yard.
| In 1712 a road was surveyed and
! laid out down the river past the Enos
mill, to Coventry and to the Brown
incton road, Roger Enos himself be-
in one of the committee appointed to
| lay out and survey this road. His
ownership of the mill and of the adj
joining lands furnished abundant
reasons for his desire to pro-
mote a settlement. B. T. D. Car
penter, in his excellent history of
Barton Landing, says the river road
from Barton was put through to the
Landing in 1881 and the first bridge
across the river was built in the
same year. But / find, however, on
/ the Town Records, that two orders
were drawn as early as 1927 for the
repairing of bridge at the Land
ing;" also that in 1924 road was
surveyed from the Enos mill to the
county road near Lemuel Sturte-
wants. The description of the steep
hill TO the foot of which this road ran
makes it clear that it came down
from the vicinity of the old fair
ground through what used to be the
/ Willis pasture. The west end of Cot
| tage street probably followed this old
road coming toward the Enos mill.
The bridge itself was near the mill.
| i find also in 1926 a road surveyed
''from or near the Enos sawmilP' to
the old county road from Danville to
Stanstead, beginning at a large pine
stump near the northwesterly end of
the bridge which crosses the stream
above Roger Enos' sawmill to the
county road near Lemuel Sturte-
wants, so that we may question
whether the road laid out in 1924 was
actually constructed before, but we
] have positive evidence of the bridge
being in existence as early as 1926.
| Tradition says that the Major Rog-
er Enos mill stood where the Dwinell
shop now stands. Tradition also as
serts that Paul McNeal in 1927, or
earlier, came to the Landing" and
built log cabin on the land where
the 0. w. Locke house stands. But
the Town Records show that the lot
which Joseph Owen sold June s., 1927,
to Paul and David McNeal, was Lot
/ IL, Range 2, and not Lot IL, Range
1. Paul bought the westerly half of
the lot and David the easterly half
The very next year, 1928, Paul Nc
Neal sold part of his newly acquired
Iaiu W JOSidu lean. DuC CnlS SAFE
included only So acres and 81 rods,
and lay mainly east of the Willough-
by river. Only five acres lay west of
the falls of the Willoughby. It is
some where on these five acres that
one would suppose the partially COM
pleted house acquired by Josiah Dean
stood.
/ If some one interested in the his
tory of Orleans could locate in the
present village the original line be-
tween Range 1 and Range 2, he
would assist greatly in clearing up
the uncertainty regarding the loca-
ton of the earliest houses between
the two rivers.
The tax list of this town did not
count cabins as houses, and for many
years after settlement there were
more people living in log than in
frame or plank dwellings,. There is
therefore sufficient reason to assume
that there were in this vicinity nu-
me~ous log houses before 1880, and
at least one contemporary with the
sawmill built in 1920.
In 1929 the Enos mill was run by
Eben Devereaux, who made spinning
| wheels and bedsteads Evadapt1y