Vermont AHGP
Part of the American History and
Genealogy Project
Neighborhoods of Worchester, Vermont
Hampshire Hill, so called, being mostly settled from New Hampshire, many from Acworth and Alstead. It is the geographical center of the town, at the foot of the mountain range, and comprises school district No. 8, with a few families in No. 2. The first beginning was made on the south end by Artemas Richardson, F. Johnson and E. S. Kellogg. Before 1830, the New Hampshire people came, and the hill was settled as far north as it ever has been.
Joel Newton, John Brigham, Wm. H. and John H. Cooper, Daniel A. and David L. Frost, Daniel Adams, Aaron Kemp, Joseph Evans, Ophir Leonard, Nathl. S. Morley, Alex. Dingwall and Horace H. Collier, and perhaps others we do not remember, were the first to make permanent homes on the hill; substantial, honored citizens.
A few of their descendants still live on the places their fathers cleared.
"Minister Brook," now school district No. 4, was early settled from various localities. O. L. Smith, Cyrus Crocker, Jonas Abbott, Matthias Folsom, Daniel and Richard Colby, Samuel Upham, Edward and John Clough, Joel H. Templeton, Abraham, Ephraim and Jesse Abbott, Luther Hunt and others were among its early settlers.
West Hill, district No. 7, had David Folsom, B. F. Stone, William and Samuel Hall and others. The east part of the town from Putnam's Mills to Calais, and so north, had for early settlers: Gilmore Parmenter, Caleb Ormsby, Elias Bascom, Asa Fisher, Gload Dugar, Thayer Townshend, Benj. Lathrop, Daniel Harris, J. P. B. Ladd, Jacob Baldwin and others. Wm. Hinkson and Tristram Worthen, with their families of 6 children each, settled in the extreme north part of the town.
There were probably many among the early inhabitants whose names we have not learned. Those who came before Amasa Brown, from 1797, and left before 1818 or '19, as far as we know, never returned. Mrs. Olive Brown Johnson, a daughter of Amasa Brown, who came here with her father in 1812, has given the writer some information in regard to those who came here during the first organization, and where they were located previous to their leaving town. According to her recollection, Cyrus Brigham then lived on the Whitney farm, where L. M. Hutchinson now lives, a man named Farnsworth on the Leonard Hamblet place, Daniel Colby where Mr. Seaver now resides.
The Dea. Poor place was then called the Lyon place, but no one lived there. Two families by the name of Green (Elisha and James, probably) lived on the place where P. A. Kemp now lives, Carpus Clark on a part of the Brown farm now owned by Chauncey Hunt, John Ridlon where Henry E. Hunt resides, and Henry Goodell on Mr. H. A. Hancock's farm, and in 1818-19, Mr. Brown's family had no neighbors nearer than the Stiles' place in Middlesex, where C. L. Hunt now lives.
Source: History of Washington County Vermont, Collated and Published by Abby Maria Hemenway, 1882.
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