page_title: Brattleboro, Vermont
section_title: Frontier fort
hierarchical_section_title: Brattleboro, Vermont / History / Frontier fort
caption_attribution_description: The Brattleboro Retreat, founded in 1834, is a facility for the treatment of mental health disorders and drug addiction. It is located in Bratteboro, Vermont on a site of over 1000 acres on the Retreat Meadows inlet of the West River. Brattleboro Retreat was "the first facility for the care of the mentally ill in Vermont, and one of the first ten private psychiatric hospitals in the United States". (Source: "Mission &amp; History" on the Brattleboro Retreat website)
context_page_description: Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The most populous municipality abutting Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River, Brattleboro is located about 10 miles north of the Massachusetts state line, at the confluence of Vermont's West River and the Connecticut. In 2010, Brattleboro's population was 12,046.
  Marlboro College Center for Graduate and Professional Studies and SIT Graduate Institute are located in the town. There are satellite campuses of three colleges as well: Community College of Vermont, Union Institute and University, and Vermont Technical College. The town is home to the New England Center for Circus Arts and the Vermont Jazz Center.
  The Brattleboro Retreat, a not-for-profit mental health and addictions psychiatric hospital, is also located in the town.
context_section_description: To defend the Massachusetts Bay Colony against Chief Gray Lock and others during Dummer's War, the Massachusetts General Court voted on December 27, 1723 to build a blockhouse and stockade on the Connecticut River near the site of what would later become known as Brattleboro. Lieutenant-governor William Dummer signed the measure, and construction of Fort Dummer began on February 3, 1724. It was completed before summer. On October 11 of that year, the French attacked the fort and killed some soldiers. In 1725, Dummer's War ended.
  By 1728, and in subsequent peaceful periods, the fort served as a trading post for commerce among the colonial settlers and the Indians. But violence flared up from time to time throughout the first half of the 18th century. In 1744, what became known as King George's War broke out, lasting until 1748. During this period a small body of British colonial troops were posted at the fort, but after 1750 this was considered unnecessary.
  Although the area was originally part of the Equivalent Lands, the township became one of the New Hampshire grants, and was chartered (founded) as such on December 26, 1753, by Governor Benning Wentworth. It was named Brattleborough, after Colonel William Brattle, Jr. of Boston, a principal proprietor. Ironically there is no record that Brattle ever visited the locality, and settlement activities remained tentative until after the 1763 Treaty of Paris, when France abandoned their claims to Vermont, part of the region which they had called New France.
  Hostilities having ceased, Brattleboro developed quickly in peacetime, and soon was second to no other settlement in the state for business and wealth. In 1771, Stephen Greenleaf opened Vermont's first store in the east village, and in 1784, a post office was established. A bridge was built across the Connecticut River to Hinsdale, New Hampshire in 1804.
  In 1834, the Brattleboro Retreat, then called the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, was established through a generous bequest by Anna Marsh of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In 1844, the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment was opened by Robert Wesselhoeft; this was the third "water cure" establishment in the country, utilizing waters from a spring near the current downtown fire station. Until the water cure closed in 1871, the town was widely known as a curative health resort.
  Other industries began to appear in the town under the initiation of the businessman John Holbrook, who initiated firms like the Brattleboro Typographic Company. These businesses initiated a decade of very successful printing industry in the town.
caption: The Brattleboro Retreat has been treating mental health disorders and drug addiction since it was established as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane in 1834
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