The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1921-12-19


return to the waterways for industrial
privileges. and the road, bridge, inn, store.
church. scholarships OF Il progressive
civilization
Possibly it is true. as Miss Cabot says,
that little in distinction may be related
of the general course of action by which
these benefits were Effected" and that
the place Brattleboro has held in the
interest and esteem Of the world is due to
the variety of interesting personalities
who have left here rich human tradi-
TONS Yet wholly outside the lives of
Of the towns famous sons and daughters
there is much to stir the imagination in
the story of Brattleboro's early days a
Miss Cabot tells it. One can picture for
example. the natural beauties that the
heavily wooded shores of the Connecticut
must have presented to the sturdy pion-
GERS who in 1857 took deed from the
Squakeag Indians to land which ell
bodied approximately three-ffths of the
present township-land that later was
exchanged for Connecticut holdings t
rcctify the boundary between that state
and Massachusetts, and in 1716 at Hart
ford, Conn. was sold at public auctiou
for the benefit of Yale college.
Tic establishment in 1924 of Fort
drummer, whose site is now a portion of
the submerged Hunt meadows. and IT.
maintenance through the bloody days of
Indian warfare also furnish wonderful
material for imaginative establishment.
ThiS must have been beautiful, for all
all dangerous, country in the days that
preceded the charter Of the town in 1853
virgin pine forest. we are told, except
for POO acres adjacent to the fort that had
been cleared By Oliver Willard. The main
highway" Of that day-in reality no.
thing but a trail-was by way of the old
Royal Wood place over Prospect hill to
a bridge across the Milestone about
where the present bridge stands, thence
through woods near the site of the Ameri-
can building and farther east than the
present Main Street, around a low place
near the present site Of the library. Their
along the line of Linden street and the
Retreat meadow to a ford across West
river somewhere in the neighborhood Of
the present pumping station plant. Try
to compare that stretch of wilderness
pathway with what it is today.
= Il,
lullt on Whetstone brook in 1862. JUS
above the falls. which Miss Cabot tells u
was the beginning of Brattleboro village
Certainly the picture it presented mus
have been one of rugged beauty. and /
is safe to say that the little buiIdin.
which Governor Wentworth had erected
to encourage settlers in this locality stoo,
near stream which bore little resem
blan"e to the one that now squirms it
wa" between Uttered shores. One Nigh
go on almost indefinitely trying to visual
iza succeeding scenes in the growth @
Brattlcboro as Miss Cabot's story dc
scribcS them-the early settlements SUI
Rounding the church on Meeting Hous
Hill. the conflicting emotions of the town
pioneers during the years when Ne1
Hampshire and New York were conten,
ing for jurisdiction over the New HAM
shire Grants, their passive part in til
birth of the state itself. the activities {
the days when industry was develope
by water transportation. and so on. 1t
best. however, to leave this picture NAL