Plainfield Washington County, Vermont

By Dudley B. Smith, M. D.

Plainfield is a small township, which contained, before the annexation of Goshen Gore, about 9,600 acres. Its surface was uneven, but no more so than the average of Eastern Vermont. It contained but little waste land, and was upon the whole a productive township.

Goshen Gore, by Plainfield, was about 3½ miles long by 1½ wide, lying east of Plainfield, and containing 3,000 acres. But very little of it is suitable for tillage. At one time it contained several families, but now has none. It formed a part of the town of Goshen until 1854.

It was annexed to Plainfield in 1874. It was embraced in the Yorkist town of Truro, and its highest mountain, which is called from that circumstance Mt. Truro, was measured by the writer, and found to be 2,229 feet above Plainfield station, or about 2,984 feet above the sea.

According to Thompson's Gazetteer, the town was organized April 4, 1796, under the name of St. Andrew's gore, and Harvey Bancroft elected town clerk. This is probably true, but it was illegal, a gore not having the power to form a town organization. November 6, 1797, the gore was incorporated into a town by the name of Plainfield, and the town meeting held at James Perry's, in March, 1798, is the first of which there is now any record, but was not the first, because called by Joshua Lawrence, James Perry, Moulton Batchelder, as selectmen of Plainfield. At this meeting, Thomas Vincent was elected town clerk. Town meetings after this were held at Capt. Jonathan Kinne's until 1823, when they were held in the village.

The charter of these lands was granted October 23, 1788. In 1788, '90 and '92, Whitelaw, Savage and Coit deeded their claims to Ira Allen, of Colchester, brother of Ethan, and to Gamaliel Painter, of Middlebury, the chief founder of Middlebury College. Allen and Painter gave a verbal agency to Col. Jacob Davis, of Montpelier, who, upon this authority, in May, 1793, began giving warrantee deeds of these lands in his own name. The following letter is recorded in the Plainfield land records:

In the autumn of 1791, Seth Freeman, of Weldon, New Hampshire, and Isaac Washburn, of the adjoining town of Croydon, came into town by the way of the East Hill in Montpelier. When they came to what is now the Four Corners near L. Cheney

In the autumn of 1791, Seth Freeman, of Weldon, N. H., and Isaac Washburn, of the adjoining town of Croydon, came into town by the way of the East Hill in Montpelier. When they came to what is now the Four Corners near L. Cheney Batchelder's house, Washburn decided that there should be his pitch. They camped for the night by the side of a hemlock log in the hollow between the south district school-house and Lewis Durfee's. Freeman chose this location. The next year they returned and made these pitches. When a man made a clearing before the land was surveyed, it was usual when the lines were run to survey him out a farm that would include all of his clearing without regard to the regular lot lines, and such a piece of land was called a "pitch."

Before the town was surveyed by Jacob Davis in the spring of 1793, there were five such pitches made. They were Hezekiah Davis' pitch, 304 rods long, 31 wide, which adjoined his farm in Montpelier, Joseph Batchelder's pitch of 650 acres, mostly lying in the S. W. corner of the town, Theodore Perkins' pitch of 100 acres, Isaac Washburn's pitch, 320 acres, Seth Freeman's pitch, 300 acres.

Theodore Perkins and his wife, Martha Conant, were from Bridgewater, Massachusetts. They removed to Pomfret, Vermont, and from there to Plainfield, March 10, 1793, on to a clearing said to have been begun by Benjamin Nash. The town being surveyed soon after, this clearing received the name of Perkins' pitch. July 8, Perkins built a log-barn; but his house seems to have been built before he moved into town.

In December 1793, Alfred Perkins was born, the first birth in town. The last that was known of him he was living in the State of New York. In the spring of 1794, Isaac Washburn's family moved into town, bringing with them Polly Reed, who afterwards married Benjamin Niles, and was grandmother to the present Geo. Niles She went over to Perkins' house, and was the first woman Mrs. Perkins had seen for several months. Whatever scandalous stories may have been told by or of the fair sex of Plainfield since that time, that winter it was certainly free from gossiping and tattling.

Theodore Perkins left four sons and one daughter: Thomas, who died at Lyme, New Hampshire, in 1871; Martin P., who lived at Shipton, Canada; Elinas P., lived in Scituate, Massachusetts one of his sons, Thomas Henry, is a broker in Boston. The wife of Rev. A. S. Swift, formerly in charge of the Congregational church in Plainfield, was Theodore Perkins' granddaughter. The Perkins house was on the flat, east of the Joshua Lawrence house, and south of the present road.

Seth Freeman made a pitch of 300 acres, and purchased lot No. 1, in the fourth range, which made him a farm of 430 acres. This he divided among his brothers, apparently as he thought they needed and deserved. He was one of the two men who purchased their land of Davis, who did not have to buy it again of Allen, having gained it by possession, and was for a time called rich, but became poor and moved away before his death.

He was not the oldest of the family, but like Abraham was the head of it. Unlike that patriarch, however, he cannot be the founder of a nation, for he left no children. His father, Ebenezer, lived with him.

Alden Freeman was the oldest of the family. He married for his second wife, Precilla, daughter of Isaac Washburn, which he had a large family; Sally, widow of Thompson and of Larabee, of Barre, and Lucy, widow of Lawson, of Barre, and mother of George Lawson, were his daughters.

Ebenezer Freeman Jr. lived on the Courtland Perry farm. In his barn was kept one of the first schools in town, perhaps quite the first. He was the father of the late Mrs. Freeman Landers. Edmund Freeman lived on the S. W. corner of Freeman's pitch, the farm now owned by his son Edmund.

Isaac Freeman built the house now owned by Elias Gladding, in 1806. It is on the northwest corner of the Freeman lot (No. I, range 4). He taught the first school in town. Mrs. Daniel A. Perry is his daughter. He died in 1813, and his widow married his brother Nathan, who owned the S. E. corner of Freeman's pitch, next to Barre line, and to J. Wesley Batchelder's farm. Isaac Freeman, Mrs. N. W. Keith, and Mrs. Carrol Flood are his children.

The Batchelder brothers, Joseph, Moulton and Nathaniel, came from Lyndeboro, New Hampshire. Nathaniel lived and died in Barre, and was the grandfather of the late J. Wesley Batchelder, of Plainfield. Lieut. Joseph Batchelder, then 42 years of age, commenced his clearing in the southwest corner of the town, in 1792, and moved his family permanently on to it in 1794.

Nathaniel Clark had commenced a clearing in Montpelier, on the farm lately owned by his son George. Neither knew of the neighborhood of the other until Clark one day, hearing the sound of chopping, started toward it, and found Batchelder with a company of stalwart boys, who had already made a large slash.

Lieut. Joseph Batchelder had two daughters, of whom Mary or Polly was born in Plainfield, July 26, 1795, and was the first girl and the second child born in town. She married Henry Parker, of Elmore. The other daughter, Nabby or Abigail, married Joseph Glidden, of Barre.

Town of Cabot | Vermont AHGP

Source: History of Washington County Vermont, Collated and Published by Abby Maria Hemenway, 1882.