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Vergennes Vt.

The First Town Meeting Still Going in Six States

Town Meeting dates to the European settlement of New England, and it persists today in town halls, schools and auditoriums.

Not to be confused with Town Hall meetings, it’s a form of direct democracy in which a community gathers and votes on budgets and policies.

Town Meeting Misery

A fan of Town Meeting once called them ‘a little primitive nursery of republican truth.‘ Others have called them ‘misery.’

Exeter, N.H., Judge Henry Shute did not enjoy Town Meeting. In 1898, he complained about Town Meeting, writing,

The hall is full of smoke, there are not seats enough, and the people walk restlessly to and fro, talk gossip, laugh and pay but little attention to the speakers, unless the discussion waxes warm, when there is a rush forward, and the speakers are loudly applauded or roundly hooted, as their opinions find favor or otherwise with the audience. Small boys and some not so small chase each other and wrestle, and the occasional attempt of some inebriated gentlemen to harangue the crowd in the back part of the hall meets with great favor.

The New England Historical Society tried to find the oldest continuously run Town Meeting in each state. We searched records to find the oldest town (or city, in the case of Vermont), when it held its first Town Meeting and whether it’s still held. We did our best. If, however, you know of an older town with a continuous Town Meeting, please include it in the comment section below the story.

Windsor, Conn.

First Church of Windsor

Puritans settled Windsor, the oldest English town in Connecticut, in 1633. In the early days, every man deemed a ‘freeman’ had a duty to attend Town Meeting. The town fined men for failing to attend without excuse.

The town convened meetings as often as needed. Sometimes they published orders and laws from the General Court, sometimes after Lecture Day or on Training Day when all the men would attend.

Windsor originally held Town Meeting in a thatched hut surrounded by a stockade. Eventually it moved to the First Church of Windsor

To be an inhabitant, you had to have a good character, a blameless life and honest conversation. Women weren’t allowed to be inhabitants, nor were vicious and abandoned persons, idlers, vagabonds and paupers.

In 1637, Connecticut’s General Court decreed that unmarried young men couldn’t live by themselves or with a family unless the town allowed it. Disobeying the law brought a fine of 20 shillings a week. In Windsor, Town Meeting decided who should stay and who should go.

Berwick, Maine

Berwick Town Hall

On June 9, 1713, Berwick became Maine’s ninth town. Since Maine’s older towns no longer have town meeting – or, like Castine, didn’t hold Town Meeting until later — we’re going with Berwick as having the oldest Town Meeting in Maine.

Berwick got its start in 1630, the first settlement in Maine to survive. Two others, Saint Croix Island and the Popham Colony didn’t last long. For nearly a century Berwick was a parish of Kittery, considered ‘too poor and low’ to ever form a town. Among its early settlers were indentured royalist soldiers from Scotland. The Roundheads captured them at the Battle of Dunbar during the English Civil War and sold them as slave labor.

Berwick held its first Town Meeting in the meeting house built in 1706.

Today, Berwick offers a handy guide for newcomers to Town Meeting with questions and answers such as, “Won’t I seem like an idiot if I ask questions?”

Plymouth, Mass.

Reconstructed meeting house at Plimoth Plantation

Dorchester, Mass., claims its early selectmen established the New England Town Meeting. On Oct. 8, 1633, Dorchester passed an order establishing that form of town government. Dorchester, however, has since become part of Boston — and the Pilgrims held a town meeting (then called court day) in 1622. So the distinction of having the first goes to Plymouth, Mass.

Gov. William Bradford ran the first town meeting of Plimoth Plantation in 1622 in order to divide land among the families.

The other fledgling towns followed the Pilgrim example and held annual meetings as well.

In Massachusetts, the General Court in 1635 enacted the New Towne Ordinance. It authorized each town to dispose of common property, order its civil affairs and to choose its ‘own particular officers.’

The meetings tended to get raucous, though, and in 1715 the Massachusetts General Court passed another law requiring Town Meeting to elect a moderator.

The disorderly carriage of some persons in the meetings….the affairs and business thereof is very much retarded and obstructed…at every such meeting a moderator shall be first chosen by a majority of votes, who shall thereby be empowered to manage and regulate the business of that meeting.

Only freemen had the right to vote in colonial government elections. They were shareholders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and male property owners. But all adult taxpayers could vote in town government.

A special mention goes to Pelham, Mass., which has the oldest town hall in continuous use for town meetings. It was built in 1743.

Exeter, N.H.

Settlers founded Exeter in 1638, one of the first four townships in New Hampshire. It’s the only one of the four to still hold Town Meeting.

During the earliest days, the men of Exeter came to the town center and voted on how to divide up land. Then they had refreshments, perhaps an Election Cake, rum or hard cider. They brought their African-American servants or slaves. The black servants elected their own shadow government, called the ‘Negro Court,’ as they did throughout New England.

In addition to dividing land, electing officers and setting budgets, Exeter Town Meeting resolved controversies. According to the Exeter Historical Society, in 1641 a goodman with an illegible name let his pig run wild through the fields. The pig spoiled some corn planted by the Squamscott Indians. The town had guaranteed them the right to plant and harvest their own crops. Exeter Town Meeting consequently voted the goodman had to give the Indians a bushel of corn.

Exeter usually held its meeting in March. Starting in 1855, the town held it at the Exeter Town Hall. Sawdust was spread on the floor to sop up the mud on meeting-goers’ feet.

New Hampshire allowed towns to adopt a ballot vote in 1996, and two years later Exeter did just that.

In 2019, Exeter already held its first Town Meeting, called a Deliberative Session, in February, but it scheduled an election for March 12 at the Talbot Gym.

New Shoreham, R.I.

Block Island from the ferry

Town Meeting has disappeared from nearly half of Rhode Island’s towns. Since Rhode Island adopted the Home Rule Amendment to its Constitution in 1951, 15 of the state’s 31 towns abandoned the Financial Town Meeting as the final step in adopting a budget.

New Shoreham — Block Island – is one of the 16 towns that still hold Financial Town Meeting. It’s also one of the oldest towns in Rhode Island. And according to our research, its Town Meeting is the earliest recorded in Rhode Island, dating to 1672.

New Shoreham’s annual Financial Town Meeting is held at the Block Island School on the first Monday in May. The town has held the longest Town Meeting in recent memory: 4-1/2 days in 1991. It also holds the distinction of being the smallest town in the smallest state in the country.

Vergennes, Vt.

Vergennes Opera House and Town Hall

Most towns are bigger than Vergennes, Vt., which incorporated as a city in 1788 without first incorporating as a town or a village. Though its annual meeting is called a City Meeting, we’ll grant it the honor of ‘oldest town meeting.’

Vergennes was settled in 1766 along the Otter Creek Falls. The settlement had big ambitions to develop as an industrial center.

For a while it succeeded. The Monkton Ironworks Co. became the biggest iron foundry in the United States by the War of 1812, when it made the fittings for the fleet that defeated the British on Lake Champlain. Commerce boomed until the latter half of the 19^th century, when the railroads made Vergennes’ location on waterways irrelevant. Today it’s the smallest of Vermont’s nine cities, with a population of 2,588 in 2010.

Vergennes still has an annual meeting, called a City Meeting, that dates to 1789, the year after it incorporated.

The annual City Meeting is held at the Vergennes Opera House, a restored 1897 building that houses City Hall on the first floor.

Photos: Plimoth Plantation Meetinghouse By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18002716; Block Island By Billy Hathorn at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17667939. This story was updated in 2021.

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The Madness — or Murderousness? — of Vermont’s Ezra Smith

To this day nobody really knows what happened in August of 1877 to Deacon Ezra Smith of Vergennes, Vt. Was he engulfed by madness? Was he always secretly evil? Or was he an innocent man who chose the worst possible moment to slip from the path of righteousness?

Either way, within a year he would be penniless and on the run for his life, his reputation destroyed.

Ezra Smith

Ezra was 54 in 1877. He was considered a well-off businessman, worth perhaps $20,000. He dealt in stoves and tin ware with two other men – Baldwin and Stewart – in Vergennes. And he had a sizable farm in Addison, Vt.

Ezra had a long marriage to his wife Cordelia, and they lived in a nice home in downtown Vergennes on Green Street. They had a son Frank, 21; daughter Mary, 25. Ira Mills, the 10-year-old orphan son of Cordelia’s sister, Adelaide Mills, lived with the family in Vergennes.

Son Frank, meanwhile, had recently married and lived at the family farm in Addison.

Ezra served as a deacon in the Addison Baptist Church, and the family belonged to the Baptist Church in Vergennes.

Addison Community Baptist Church

The marriage between Cordelia and Ezra Smith, benefiting from Vermont’s growing economy, seemed cordial and peaceful . No one ever challenged that appearance.

Trouble

The trouble started simply enough when Cordelia started feeling ill on Aug. 4, 1877. Doctors concluded she had cholera. Because of her age, doctors presumed, she struggled to shake off the illness. After eight days of vomiting and diarrhea, Cordelia died.

During those eight days, Cordelia’s neighbors, friends and relatives would come to visit. They would later note that it seemed the Smiths received a lack of support from church friends. Ezra then had to provide much of his wife’s care.

Ezra was later described as exhausted, frazzled and haggard during the period of Cordelia’s illness. His major support came from a young neighbor, Mary Champlin, who attended to Cordelia and stayed in the house during the illness.

On August 12, Ezra prepared some beef broth for Cordelia. She complained of its bitterness and later passed away in her sleep. Ezra closed Cordelia’s open mouth and bound it shut with a sheet to prepare her for her funeral.

Then, neighbors say, he slipped into the next bedroom and made love to Mary Champlin, his wife’s body still warm.

Mary Champlin

Mary Champlin, 31, lived in Vergennes with her four children. Mary’s husband worked in Essex, N.Y., and stayed home only for a day or two a month. Mary’s husband had left her once because Mary had taken up with a lawyer from North Adams, Mass. But they managed to patch up their marriage.

In January of 1877, Ezra first met Mary at a church social held at his home . The children and the adults at the social played a game, and as penalty for losing Ezra had to kiss Mary. Mary was not particularly attractive, as her friends describer her, but that silly kiss was Ezra’s undoing, he would later say.

As Cordelia lay sick, tongues began wagging in town. They deemed Mary’s presence in the home improper. Mary’s husband, Wilbur, tried to persuade Mary to leave town, but she refused and he left with their children.

Cordelia’s father only learned of her sickness a day before she died. He ordered doctors to investigate, and they grew suspicious. They suspected poison. So Cordelia’s father hired Solon Burroughs, one of Ezra’s friends to worm his way further into Ezra and Mary’s confidence.

lydia-sherman-arsenic-bottle

Wilbur Champlin acknowledged he had a quantity of arsenic that he used for preserving birds as trophies. Mary had access to it, he said. Cordelia’s father had her body investigated by Peter Collier, a chemist at the University of Vermont.

Finally, the sheriff made three arrests: Ezra, Mary and Solon Burroughs. Ezra confided to Solon that he believed that all three of them would hang if they couldn’t find a way to stop the investigation. Egged on by Burroughs, Ezra wrote to Professor Collier offering to pay him $350 to stop his investigation.

All Ezra accomplished in writing the note was to add another piece of evidence to the case against him.

Downward Spiral

The local Vergennes prosecutor had his case sewn up by December. He invited two high-powered lawyers to assist him –ex-Governor J.W. Stewart of Middlebury and Col. W.G. Veazey of Rutland.

John Wolcott Stewart

Gen. J.H. Lucia of Vergennes and Henry Ballard, a dynamic young lawyer from Burlington, would handle the defense. Ezra’s lawyers had the trial postponed in December of 1877 to give them a chance to prepare. It would finally begin in June of 1878.

Meanwhile, in December word leaked out that Ezra and Mary were in adjoining cells in the Middlebury jail. They had been passing love notes to each other through a stovepipe hole in the wall between them.

“Their affection for each other seems as ardent as before their arrest,” the newspaper reported.

In March of 1878, with Ezra Smith locked in jail, his creditors seized his house and property in Vergennes and his farm in Addison. They were put up for sale. With his property valued at $6,300, Ezra’s debts amounted to more than $8,000.

Vergennes, Vermont

The Trial

The trial began in June 1878, and few doubted Ezra’s guilt. He was labelled a wife-poisoner and perhaps a serial killer. His sister-in-law, Adelaide Mills, had died in circumstances similar to Cordelia’s. Ezra’s father-in-law had that case investigated, though after four years little evidence could be found.

Testimony established that the relationship between Mary and Ezra had been unwholesome. Stolen kisses witnessed by a shopkeeper, whispering between the two and glimpses of Ezra with his arm around Mary cemented the story.

The professor, Peter Collier, testified that Cordelia’s internal organs seemed unusual. And he found traces of arsenic in her internal organs, but he acknowledged he didn’t find enough arsenic to prove it had killed her.

Solon Burroughs testified that his old friend Deacon Ezra Smith was not all he appeared. He told of crooked business deals that Smith had participated in. And, he said, Smith swore that as long as he had a penny to his name, Mary Champlin would never go hungry.

Satyriasis?

On the final day of testimony, crowds packed the courtroom anticipating they would finally hear from Ezra. But they were disappointed. The final push from Ezra’s defense came from a Doctor Goldsmith.

“There is a form of insanity in which an old man who has always lived a virtuous life becomes morbidly infatuated with some woman and has an uncontrollable desire to have sexual intercourse with her at unusual places and times,” he said.

It is a disease which commonly attacks one of advanced age in which there is not only abnormal desire, but unusual power. It is called satyriasis; I have met with such cases. This desire follows many species of insanity it becomes an overruling passion; an old man with not only the great infatuation, but also the unnatural power such as the State has claimed in this case, I should judge was inflicted with this disease to such an extent, that he would be in a manner irresponsible; never saw a person afflicted in this way when under 50 or over 80 years of age; this is most common in women.

The Satyr’s Family by Albrecht Durer

Innocent, but Disgraced

Even Solon Burroughs acknowledged that he questioned his old friend Ezra’s sanity.

“I would say of his actions that he was insane,” he said. “[That] could explain some things I saw in no other way.”

The prosecutors pounced on the defense maneuvers. It was clear, they explained eloquently, that Ezra Smith had been backed into a corner by their case. Finally, he was left only with a ludicrous claim of insanity.

Ezra’s lawyers, meanwhile, hammered at the circumstantial nature of the case against Ezra. Ballard said prosecutors had entered no proof, only possible motive, into the record. It was a stunning coup that would help build the young defense lawyer’s career. The prosecutors, so sure of the motive, had failed to nail down enough sure evidence.

The jury voted 11-to-1 on the first ballot. Finally that one hold-out juror changed his vote. Ezra was found innocent. Vermonters were shocked at the decision. It left Ezra and Mary facing only a charge of adultery. Mary moved to New York, where she followed the trial with interest.

Ezra was bankrupted and disgraced. Soon after the trial he relocated to New York. And Cordelia’s father vowed to pursue him tirelessly for new evidence in the case.

This story last updated in 2022.

Image of Addison Baptist Church By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11365113.

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Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Not a Fan of the Mexican War

Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, grandson of the Revolutionary War hero, struggled with questions of right and wrong during his long military career. He thought the Mexican-American War was wrong because the United States had ‘not one particle of right’ to be there.’ He did his duty as a soldier, though, and served with distinction.

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

President James Polk pushed for the war to acquire California, then part of Mexico. Anti-slavery Northerners viewed expansion as a way to create more slave territory. Hitchcock then predicted vast bloodshed would result from U.S. aggression. He was right.

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

Like his grandfather Ethan Allen, Hitchcock was a bold and independent thinker. He was born on May 18, 1798, in Vergennes, Vt.,the son of Samuel Hitchcock and Lucy Caroline Allen. Though no likeness exists of his grandfather, his mother said her son bore a strong resemblance to him.

His brother Henry served as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. One nephew served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President William McKinley.

Ethan Allen Hitchcock graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, commissioned a third lieutenant and then quickly rose through the ranks of the U.S. Army. He served in the Seminole War in Florida and as the right-hand man of Gen. Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War.

Hitchcock was a devoted scholar, an admirer of the philosopher Spinoza and a collector of books on alchemy and flute music.

In 1845, Hitchcock served in the 3^rd Infantry Regiment, but not happily. He viewed the impending conflict with Mexico with dread and despair. “For ten years we have been encroaching on Mexico and insulting her,” he wrote. “Her people I consider a simple, well disposed, pastoral race, no way inclined to savage usages.”

Violence

On June 30, 1845, Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock was stationed at Fort Jessup in Louisiana. He had just learned of orders to move the army to the west bank of the Rio Grande. Hitchcock believed Texas had no right to claim the territory they were ordered to defend. He wrote in his diary:

Fort Jessup, La., June 30, 1845. Orders came last evening by express from Washington City directing General [Zachary] Taylor to move without any delay to some point on the coast near the Sabine or elsewhere, and as soon as he shall hear of the acceptance by the Texas convention of the annexation resolutions of our Congress he is immediately to proceed with his whole command to the extreme western border of Texas and take up a position on the banks of or near the Rio Grande, and he is to expel any armed force of Mexicans who may cross that river.

[William W. S.] Bliss read the orders to me last evening hastily at tattoo. I have scarcely slept a wink, thinking of the needful preparations. I am now noting [writing] at reveille by candlelight and waiting the signal for muster….Violence leads to violence, and if this movement of ours does not lead to others and bloodshed, I am much mistaken….

With thanks to the History Is A Weapon blog.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Ethan Allen Hitchcock Gets Word of Jefferson Davis’ Capture ‘In Curious Guise’

Ethan Allen Hitchcock was quite satisfied to learn Jefferson Davis was not only captured just after the Civil War ended, but captured in women’s clothes.

Gen. Ethan Allen Hitchcock

Hitchcock disliked Davis not only for his role in the Civil War, but for personal reasons.

Hitchcock was the grandson of Ethan Allen, the famed Vermont Revolutionary War general. He was born on May 18, 1798, in Vergennes, Vt., the son of Samuel Hitchcock and Lucy Caroline Allen.

He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, commissioned a third lieutenant and quickly rose through the ranks of the U.S. Army. He served in the Seminole War in Florida and as the right-hand man of Gen. Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War.

Hitchcock was a devoted scholar, an admirer of Spinoza and a collector of books on alchemy and flute music.

The Mexican-American War disgusted him. “We have not one particle of right to be here,” he wrote in his diary.

I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors. We have outraged the Mexican government and people by an arrogance and presumption that deserve to be punished. For ten years we have been encroaching on Mexico and insulting her…. Her people I consider a simple, well disposed, pastoral race, no way inclined to savage usages….

Hitchcock liked and admired Winfield Scott, which would work to his disadvantage. Scott ran for president of the United States against Franklin Pierce, and lost. Pierce then named Jefferson Davis as his secretary of war. Hitchcock believed he did it partly because of Davis’ ‘violent hostility’ toward Scott.

In 1855, Hitchcock was ordered to serve under a commander he viewed as brutal and ignorant. To avoid that, he asked Scott for a leave of absence. Scott granted it. Then he asked for an extension, but he was denied, due to what he called Jefferson Davis’ ‘rude and unwarrantable interference.’ Hitchcock resigned and moved to St. Louis, where he pursued his writing and philosophical studies.

After the Civil War broke out, Hitchcock was commissioned a major general and went to work in the War Department. After the war ended, the news reached him on May 14, 1865, that Jefferson Davis had been captured by Union troops. Not only that, but he was captured in women’s clothes. Gideon Welles, secretary of the Navy, called it ‘a tame and ignoble letting-down of the traitor.’

It wasn’t quite like that, though the Northern press was happy to depict Davis as a cross-dressing coward, undermining attempts to portray him as a hero. Davis and his wife Varina were sleeping in a tent in southern Georgia when they were awakened by gunfire. Mrs. Davis begged him to escape while he could. Inside the dark tent, Jefferson Davis grabbed his wife’s cloak, thinking it was his, and Mrs. Davis gave him her shawl to put over his head to hide his identity.

Jefferson Davis

They didn’t get far. Union soldiers captured them and took them to Fort Monroe in Virginia. Some of the soldiers on the scene spread the word that Davis had been dressed like a woman. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton quickly realized the cross-dressing gossip could serve as useful propaganda. Mrs. Davis was ordered to turn over her cloak and shawl.

Her cloak was very much like a man’s, and it wasn’t unusual in those days for men to wear shawls. Since the garments didn’t help the story, Stanton had them locked in a War Department safe, where they remained for decades.

Hitchcock commented philosophically on Davis’ capture in his diary:

May 14. Jefferson Davis is captured–in curious guise! Now he may find leisure to make his peace with God for his part in the great crime of the South.

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