As we continue our search for JMC’s roots I thought a Monday: Map Day! post might be useful, helping us get a sense of the geography and history of settlement of early northern Vermont, especially the parts adjacent to Stanstead and the other newly-surveyed Eastern Townships of Lower Canada.¹

Vermont has a long and complicated history, and I won’t try to summarize it here. Among other fun facts, you should note that Vermont was not one of the original 13 American colonies and was, for a number of years prior to statehood in 1791, an independent republic. For an introduction to Vermont’s fascinating past, a fine place to start are the Wikipedia articles on Vermont: history and the Vermont Republic.

Today’s map was published in 1796, five years after Vermont’s admission to the Union, and four years after one Josiah Sawyer organized the gathering of would-be land purchasing “associates” in Rutland, Vermont, on April 3rd, 1792, at which time the initial petition for the prayed-for township of Stanstead was signed. Many, perhaps most, of the petition signers were Vermonters. Let’s look at our map and see what we can discover about Vermont—and its relationship to Lower Canada settlement—in those early years.

As always, click each image to open a larger, higher-resolution copy of the image in a new window.

A Correct Map of the State of Vermont

Today’s map is by James Whitelaw and Amos Doolittle and titled A correct map of the state of Vermont: exhibiting the county and town lines, rivers, lakes, ponds, mountains, meetinghouses, mills, public roads &c. [New Haven, Conn.: Amos Doolittle, 1796] from the map collection of the Library of Congress.

That title and publication information may be found in the lower right corner of the map, accompanied by a charming engraved vignette depicting an idealized version of a Vermont farm at harvest time. Grain has been cut and is drying in stacks of sheaves in the fields. A four-horse wagon is heading home, piled with hay, and pairs of sheep and cattle decorate the right foreground. Two farmers, a man and a woman, follow the hay wagon with rakes in hand, and another man and woman ride on top of the hay pile on the wagon. The farm house appears to the right, behind some trees. The house, by the way, looks quite similar—in a general way—to our 1848 Jonathan Clark House.

Map key

The map key is labeled Characters, and includes symbols for many of the typical features found in 19th-century maps.

Counties and townships

There are many interesting historic maps of Vermont online. I chose this map, in part, because it manages a nice balance between precise detail and not being too visually cluttered. It shows all the county and township names and boundaries and, as the map key notes, “The dates of the [land] Grants are inserted in most of the Townships.” Along with the dates of the grants, most townships include the number of acres in the original grant, as well as the names of the original grantee(s) or other notable settlers or landowners.

On this map the county lines are made more visible with contrasting color shading along each county line. County boundaries are important for historical and genealogical research as many land, court and vital records are kept and indexed at the county level. Given Vermont’s complicated political history, it is no surprise that Vermont county boundaries went through many changes over the years. Researchers must be aware of when as well as where a Vermont record was created in order to determine where that record might currently be archived.

Keeping track of shifting county lines can be daunting. Fortunately for modern researchers, Chicago’s Newberry Library has created a fabulous, free, online tool, the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries (here’s the link to the Vermont page). The Atlas is easy and intuitive to use; play around with it, and don’t miss the Interactive Map tool.²

Rutland county and township, Vermont

The 1792 Stanstead associates petition was signed in Rutland township, Rutland county, Vermont. Rutland county is in the southwest part of the state, less than 30 miles east of Whitehall, New York, via Fairhaven and Castleton. In the map detail (below), Rutland county is outlined in faded yellow shading; near its center, Rutland township is outlined in bright red.

The town of Rutland is in the southern part of the state. By modern roads it is some 135-150 miles from Stanstead. Why hold the Stanstead associates meeting and petition signing in Rutland? As the good folks at the Rutland Historical Society explain:

From 1784 Rutland was the county seat of Rutland County. In 1792, shortly after statehood, Rutland built a new Courthouse which became the county court and the U.S. Federal District Court of Vermont. For the decade of the 1790s, Rutland alternated with Windsor to host the meetings of the state legislature.

In the 1790s southern Vermont was much more populous than Vermont’s sparsely-settled north. Rutland was a legislative and judicial center, known and traveled to by many Vermonters. It would be easier to gather the needed signatures for a Leaders and Associates petition in Rutland that in most parts of the new state.

Orleans County, Vermont

Orleans County, Vermont, was created from Chittenden and Orange counties in 1792. Its northern boundary is the 45th parallel, the international boundary with Lower Canada.³ Orleans county is adjacent to all or part of four of Lower Canada’s Eastern Townships: Sutton and Potton to the west of Lake Memphremagog, and Stanstead and Barnston to the east. On the this detail from our map, Orleans county is outlined with a faded yellow highlight.

Derby and Stanstead townships

If we zoom in further, we clearly see how the neighboring townships of Stanstead, Lower Canada, and Derby, Vermont, are closely linked by geography, especially the vital water transportation routes and fresh water resources of Lake Memphremagog. We can also see that the initial land grant for Derby was not made until 1787. Derby, like most of Vermont’s northern townships, was not surveyed and settled until several decades after the initial grants were awarded for Vermont’s southern townships.

One other item to note on this detail of the Derby area is the name of “Capt. Hinman.” Captain Timothy Hinman (1762-1850) served in the in the Revolutionary War and then migrated to the then-wilderness of Derby, Vermont. Timothy Hinman played an important, and sometimes controversial, role in the development of Derby.

Interestingly, in 1842 one of Timothy Hinman’s nephews, William Hinman, married a woman named Persis Clark (or Clarke) at the Methodist church in Stanstead. “Persis” is not a common name in North America, but it is very similar to Persie, the equally-uncommon name of Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark’s fourth child. And William Hinman’s wife is not the only Persis to be found in Stanstead area documents from the early decades of settlement.

Was Persis (Clark) Hinman related to Jonathan Clark? Was the Stanstead area’s higher-than-usual concentration of women named Persis some kind of clue to Jonathan Clark’s family origins? We will look into all these questions in more depth in future posts.

Until next time, be well. And stay tuned for more Clark House history.

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1. I realize this “Monday: Map Day!” post is not going live until Tuesday morning. In my defense, I (1) finished it on Monday and (2), somehow “Tuesday: Map Day!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. So we’re sticking with “Monday: Map Day!” and that’s all I have to say about that.
   
   
2. FYI, for future easy access, I have added the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries to the More Info collection of links in the blog’s sidebar.
   
   
3. The exact physical location of the 45th parallel was a matter of greater or lesser dispute between the U.S. and Québec/Lower Canada for many years. The disputed or changed location of the 45th parallel is clearly shown on some of the maps made in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The confusion over the exact boundary location might go a long ways toward explaining and understanding Jonathan M. Clark’s conflicting sworn statements about his birthplace (i.e., Derby vs. Stanstead). See O!…Canada? History Mystery! No. 3 for details. And we’ll have more on this in a future post or two.