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Around And About Addison County-Goshen

Tuesday September 16, 2008

By M. Stuart Parks

   Did you know that some of the town of Goshen was annexed from Philadelphia?  It sounds impossible but not if you know that there was a town by that name between Chittenden and Goshen.  It was so mountainous and it attracted so few settlers that about 1814 - 1816 the south half was annexed to Chittenden and the north half to Goshen.  

   Goshen got a late start compared to some Addison County towns, principally because of its position in the Green Mountains, that is, high and rocky.  Goshen was granted by New Hampshire on February 23rd, 1782 but not chartered until February 2nd, 1792.  John Powell, William Douglas and sixty-three others were given title to 13,000 acres.  On November 1st, 1798 a new charter giving Goshen two gores in Caledonia County.  These gores were 2,828 acres and 7,339 acres bringing Goshen's total land area to 23,167 acres.

   A gore is described as an unincorporated area of land that is not part of any town and has limited self government.  However, these two gores are seventy miles away from Goshen and the settlers began to worry about the folks in the gores getting laws passed in their part of town that the Goshen folks would have to live with whether they liked them or not. The Legislature soon passed an act legalizing the formation of the town of Goshen with the 13,000 acres.  The gores in Caledonia County continued to belong to Goshen in name only until 1854 when they were severed from it by the Legislature.  The acquisition of the Philadelphia land brought the town's total area to about 24,000 acres.

    The first settler, Phineas Blood, did not arrive until 1806. He was the person who conceived the idea of annexing part of Philadelphia to Goshen.  He represented the town in the legislature in 1815 - 1816 and served as a Justice of the Peace for a number of years.  He also served over three years in the Revolution.  

    The first child was not born in Goshen until March 11, 1811.  His name was Roswell W. Mason.  Other early settlers are as follows:

    Jabeth Olmstead, 1807, wanted to get here for sugaring but his wife was so sick that three men had to carry her on her bed to the half-finished cabin.  Not long after he was arrested and jailed in Middlebury for bad debts and died soon after that experience.

    Reuben Grandey, 1809, served seven and a half years in the Revolution.  He died in 1819 and was the first person buried in the cemetery then in use.

    Noah Allen, 1809, was chosen as a selectman when the town was organized. He was known for his generous disposition and was known as “father of the town”.

    Griswold Davis, 1811, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and a representative to the General Assembly.

    James Cowen, 1823, a Revolutionary soldier, was said to be a man of piety and to have such a wonderful memory that he could repeat the text of every sermon he had heard for forty years.

    Nathan Capen, 1810, came from Boone's Station, Massachusetts.  He was the Town Clerk for twenty-eight years and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

    Abiathar Knapp, 1822, was the first minister in town, serving for eight years.
In 1815 the list of voters, all men at the time, had reached twenty-six. At least thirteen of those men served in the War of 1812 and history records that during the Battle of Plattsburgh the noise was so great that it was heard in Goshen.  Thirty-eight men served in the Civil War, all of whom were volunteers.

    Goshen sits at an altitude of over 1,600 feet which means that spring comes late and winter comes early, but still, the early settlers grew wheat, oats, rye, buckwheat, Indian corn, potatoes and hay in the many small fertile valleys.  The extensive number of maple trees produced much maple sugar, but the chief agricultural business was dairy and wool.  In some ways Goshen was a typical Addison County town, but in many others it was, and still is, unique.
   

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