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Old Photos in the University of Vermont Archives
A Sense of Place in
Marshfield
Early History
The independent
Republic
of Vermont chartered the Town of
Marshfield
in 1790 and named it for Isaac Marsh, one year before Vermont became the
14th state to join the United States of America. Located in
the northeast part of Washington County, the 44 square mile town of
Marshfield
is bisected by the fertile valley of the Winooski River on its 88-mile
run to
Lake Champlain.
The Abenaki were the aboriginal inhabitants of the land that came to be
known as Marshfield. From their seasonal camps, small family bands
hunted game, fished, and gathered food in the Winooski River Valley and
the surrounding hills. The forced northern retreat of the Abenaki
opened the area to settlement by English families from southern
New England.
Colonial land controversies between
New
Hampshire
and New York, the French and Indian War, and
the onset of the American Revolution had kept the number of actual
settlers coming into
Vermont
low. While their numbers were few, the first Yankee settlers from
Connecticut,
New Hampshire and
Massachusetts traveled upcountry to this northern frontier to develop
small farms in the 1790s. There were only 172 people in 20 families
when the first
Marshfield
town meeting was organized in 1800. Initially trees were the land’s
primary resource, and the old-growth rock-laden forests were cleared for
four interrelated purposes: farmland, fuelwood, potash and lumber.
Today’s roads in Marshfield generally follow the same migration trails
that were cut from the mountains during the settlement period.
The River and the Village
The Winooski River has always been an important factor in the
development of Marshfield. The name Winooski derives from the Abenaki
word meaning ‘onion place’, and the river was known in the earliest days
of settlement as the
Onion
River. Several small streams join the winding Winooski River as it
flows southwest through the township in a fertile and picturesque
valley. Today the course of the river, the floodplain and the natural
communities are resources protected by the Marshfield Town Plan.
A village center evolved where the stagecoach roads to Cabot, Danville,
and
Montpelier
converged with the small industries along the falls of the Winooski
River. A network of roads linked the widely dispersed farms to
water-powered grist, saw and wool mills in the village center.
Farmsteads prospered throughout the town early in the 19th
century, and by 1830 the population had increased to 1271. Marshfield,
like the majority of
Vermont
towns, suffered rural de-population beginning in the 1830s, and by 1950
the population had declined to only 830.
Agriculture
The development of
Marshfield
into a rural agricultural community in the 19th century was
fostered by a terrain, climate and geographic location that favored
small family farms. The topography of the land established the
historical pattern of growth in a landscape where agriculture was the
predominant occupation throughout the century. In 1836, during
Vermont’s
sheep boom, there were over 5,000 sheep on Marshfield farms. In the
1840s farms produced bushels of wheat, barley, oats, rye, buckwheat,
corn, and potatoes, as well as hay, wool and maple sugar. A typical
livestock inventory in the1850s included sheep, cattle, dairy cows,
hogs, oxen, horses and hens. Additional farm products included cheese,
apples and honey. Many significant barns were built for livestock and
several have survived into the 21st century.
Agriculture in the area went through three general periods:
semi-self-sufficiency, commercial agriculture and decline. In the
second half of the 19th century the dairy business emerged as
the most viable enterprise within agriculture and evolved through three
phases: butter, cheese, and fluid milk. When the cooperative creamery
association was organized in 1896, the town boasted 39 dairy cows per
square mile. With the decline in farming, the forested landscape
surrounded many of the original farm roads, house and barn foundations,
wells and stonewalls, fields and pastures, apple orchards and
cemeteries.
Buildings and Bridges
The log houses of the first settlers soon gave way to more
sophisticated dwellings. Houses of wood frame or brick were built in a
variety of architectural styles including Federal, Greek Revival, and
French Second Empire. Marshfield Village still has a concentration of
historic houses, stores and churches that retain their historic
architectural character. Of the many wooden covered bridges that once
served travelers, only one covered bridge remains: the 1890
privately-built Martin Bridge that once allowed farm animals to pasture
on the east side of the Winooski River. This historic Queenpost truss
bridge is now owned by the town and is the focus of a restoration
project.
Culture and Education
In the 19th century residents organized churches, civic and
fraternal organizations, as well as a town band and orchestra. A
bandstand was a focus of community pride on the small town common near
the Marshfield Village Store. A circulating library that began shortly
before the Civil War moved to the new Jaquith Library near the town
common in 1899. As the population grew, public one-room schoolhouses
were built in eleven districts throughout the township. Gradual
consolidation led to the building of a single village high school in
1929. This former school building was renamed the Old Schoolhouse
Common in 1993 and now provides offices for the Town Clerk, the Jaquith
Library, the Marshfield Historical Society and several small businesses.
The Railroad
The Montpelier and Wells River Railroad came up the Winooski Valley in
1873 and a station was built on Depot Road near the village.
All of the commercial and political activities in the state’s capitol
were now only a short train ride away, and two years later a telegraph
line was set along the route of the railroad. The railroad continued
east to the small community of Lanesboro, organized in 1883 around a
very large sawmill.
The Twentieth Century
In the early twentieth century
Marshfield
experienced changes in business, communication, industry and
transportation. The first telephone and electric service arrived in the
village about 1900 and Rural Free Delivery of mail began about 1907.
Marshfield
Village was incorporated in 1911 where residents constructed a sewage
system, street lighting, and a fire station with an organized volunteer
fire department.
By 1920 the town’s professions included an auctioneer, a beekeeper, a
blacksmith, four carpenters, a coal dealer, three horse dealers, a
jeweler, two lumber dealers, a milk dealer, two painters and
paperhangers, and a shoe repairer. Other occupations included a
clergyman, five justices of the peace, and two physicians. Local
businesses included agricultural implements, a drug store, two
fertilizer dealers, a grain merchant, five general stores, a boarding
house, two saw mills, a stables and a stove salesman. The railroad
station had an express company and a telegraph company. The town also
boasted its own hydroelectric power plant and a large stone dam that
contained the Marshfield Reservoir.
The Groton State Forest, established in 1919, is located along the
town’s eastern border. From 1933 until 1941 the Civilian Conservation
Corps built park shelters and hiking trails to provide year-round
recreational opportunities. The CCC also worked on forestry projects
and constructed a permanent road through the forest to the town of
Groton.
The old stagecoach road along the Winooski River, known as the River
Road, was paved in 1932 between Plainfield and Marshfield and given the
designation U. S. Route 2. Automobile travelers vacationed overnight at
five private tourist cabin locations along the highway. Electric lines
reached local houses and barns in the late 1930s, and in the early 1950s
bulk milk tanks were introduced to the dairy farms. The bulk tanks,
milking machines and pasteurizing equipment led to the demise of many
marginal farms that could not afford the new technologies.
The fires of 1905 and 1909 destroyed many buildings in the village, the
devastating flood of the
Winooski
River in 1927 and the national depression of the 1930s made it difficult
for the town to recover economically. Later in the 1960s, the
population began to increase with a back-to-the-land movement that
attracted new residents from urban and suburban living to Marshfield’s
countryside.
Marshfield Now
In 1970 the town population grew to 1033 and Marshfield joined the
neighboring town of Plainfield in building a public school. The mission
of the
Twinfield
Union School community is to educate all students to become responsible,
productive, critical-thinking, life-long learning citizens in a safe,
nurturing environment of mutual respect, high standards, creativity and
academic excellence.
The Marshfield landscape represents the accumulated results of the
decisions and compromises made by generations over time. Houses, roads
and hills all have their stories. Today’s landscape was created by a
decline in agriculture, the return of the forests, a growth in
population and the introduction of conservation zoning and
land-protection programs. Also significant has been the increasing
conversion of the town into a bedroom community of residents who commute
to employment opportunities in larger towns. This has led to the
building of houses in forests and fields, fragmenting the landscape for
agriculture, forestry and wildlife.
Marshfield has evolved over time from an almost self-sufficient
agricultural and small manufacturing economy to a more complex mixture
of economic activity. In the 2000 Census there were 1496 people in
Marshfield. The town introduced zoning and planning to encourage
responsible growth while maintaining the historic rural character of the
community. Our Town Plan recognizes that
Marshfield
is, and through the planning process can remain, a small, rural,
primarily residential community characterized by a population that is
both economically and demographically diverse.
Living in the hills that form the watershed of the Winooski River
provides an opportunity to build a healthy and sustainable community
where a diverse group of people live together in ways that create a
sense of common interest in a common landscape. The economic, scenic
and wildlife values of the natural environment, in combination with the
historic values of the built environment, provide a distinctive ‘sense
of place’ and a duty of stewardship in the Town of Marshfield. This
‘sense of place’ is preserved and enhanced when concerned citizens take
action locally to protect and conserve the heritage and natural
resources of our rural community.
ã “A Sense of
Place in
Marshfield”,
researched and written by John P. Johnson, President of the Marshfield
Historical Society, January 1, 2005.
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