The 1789 Map of Vermont

Feb 2, 2015

Driving west on Northside Drive I look across the land where La Flamme’s furniture store once stood, over Furnace Brook to the stone house and its wood frame neighbor at the junction of Northside Drive, Harwood Hill and Harmon Road. I am seeing a village, The Flats. 

Based on the age of the houses I thought The Flats was settled about 1830. I was wrong; the community is on the 1789 Map of Vermont, a map I barely knew.

Tyler Resch, the Bennington Museum’s Librarian reminded me of this map after my December column on Benning Wentworth’s grid.  Joseph Parks, Bennington historian and Banner columnist, wrote about the Map of Vermont in 1998.  He described the map as about 2 by 3 feet with Bennington

“compressed onto a space barely an inch square”. At the time Joe Parks asked Marie Sheldon Hine to redraw that square.  I reproduce her rendition here.

The map maker, William Blodgett, owned a blast furnace in the center of town, just about where North Street crosses the Walloomsac River. The forge is clearly labeled on his map. Blodgett hoped to make more maps and gain work as a land agent.  In the inch allotted to Bennington he drew 4 roads. One, mostly gone, ran from Carpenter Hill beside Jewett’s Brook across to Safford’s mill at Beech and Main Streets and up the east side of the valley. The other 3 roads we know today: Rte. 9; the way to North Bennington through the Henry Bridge (Fairview, Vail, Austin Hill, Murphy, Harrington Roads and Water Street); and Monument Ave.

 Of course the Monument didn't exist in 1789. Monument Ave was the main road in town. It continued north from Old Bennington, down the hill, across the river and up Harwood Hill toward Shaftsbury. Blodgett’s map shows 10 grist and saw mills, and about 40 houses; 10 were in Old Bennington. 10 more were at The Flats and at the beginning of Harwood Hill.

A village at this junction makes sense. Although Blodgett left out Northside Drive, at least a path was here, coming from East Road, running along the river,  crossing Furnace Brook, leading on to Walbridge’s mills at the Paper Mill dam and then to North Bennington. At The Flats it met the main road between Bennington and Shaftsbury. Here also was the fertile river bottom farm land between the Walloomsac, the Roaring Branch and Furnace Brook.  

Both houses at the intersection face down the road, welcoming the traveler. They are not haphazard. Designed with classic proportions, they were built for successful farmers. The Flats was a place, a ‘somewhere’, not just a stoplight on my way to the store.

Tyler Resch shared authorship of the article with Joe Parks. Victor Rolando researched the location of the forge.

The column details Blodgett’s life, his iron forge, his time in Bennington. A good read it is available at the Bennington Museum library.