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Six Indian Trails That Turned Into Scenic Highways and Byways

The Indian trails that crisscrossed New England go back to prehistoric times.

Native Americans migrated from summer to winter homes along the paths, often worn bare by centuries of travel. They used the trails for hunting, trading and making war.

When the English colonists arrived, they owed a debt of gratitude for the Indian trails, wrote Chester B. Price in his book, Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire.

“[T]hanks to the Indians, the early New Englanders inherited a vast network of trails which not only covered the New England states, but extended as far west as the Rocky Mountains,” Price wrote.

The Mohawk Trail and Kennebec Trail were two of the most famous Indian trails in New England. During the American Revolution, they were used for military maneuvers. Benedict Arnold followed both, the Kennebec Trail to his regret and the Mohawk Trail to his satisfaction – he captured Fort Ticonderoga at the end of it.

We identified six scenic driving routes that follow old Indian trails, at least one in each state. Some have been researched more thoroughly than others. If you know of scenic old Indian trails that can be driven today, please share them in the comments section.

The Old Connecticut Path

The Oliver Ellsworth House lies near one of Connecticut’s Indian trails.

The Old Connecticut Path was one of the most important Indian trails, stretching from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut River. In the early 1630s Nipmuck Indians loaded their surplus corn onto birch-bark backpacks and walked from the Connecticut River to Massachusetts Bay. There they traded their corn for copper and iron goods and woolen cloth.

John Oldham, whose death started the Pequot War, followed the Old Connecticut Path to explore the continent’s interior in 1633.

In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker spent two weeks on the Old Connecticut Path with his followers to Hartford.

The Rev. John Wareham also led his congregation along the Old Connecticut Path to Windsor, Conn. John Adams followed that route from Tolland to Windsor in 1771. “Today I rode through paradise,” Adams wrote.

There is no consensus the exact location of the Old Connecticut Path from beginning to end, though genealogical researchers are working on it.

They concluded Adams took a part of the path that goes from the Tolland Green Historic District through the towns of Ellington, East Windsor and South Windsor. Then he went on to the Palisado Green in Windsor.

Generally, the Old Connecticut Path went through Massachusetts heading west along the Charles River in Cambridge, curved south in Wayland through Framingham, to Webster and to Lake Chaubunagungamaug. In Connecticut it continued to Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor.

Today you can download apps that guide driving tours along parts of the Old Connecticut Path in Northeast Connecticut. You can follow John Adams’ route, or you can take other routes that go from Webster, Mass., to Tolland or Woodstock in Connecticut. Another Connecticut route goes from Woodstock to the Willimantic River. (Click here for more information about driving tours.)

Waldoboro Mast Trail (Route 220)

Downtown Waldoboro, which hasn’t changed much since this postcard was published, lies at the end of one of Maine’s old Indian trails.

Maine’s Indians used a vast network of canoe trails to get around, and to reach them they used a series of Indian trails from the interior to the coast. Carrying places, or portages, gave Maine tribes mobility throughout the region. It also let them trade extensively with each other and later with Europeans.

Indian paths from inland Maine to the coast also gave the Native Americans access to fur, birch bark and moose hide. One such path is known as the Waldoboro Mast Trail, which now follows Route 220 from Montville to Waldoboro. It was the most direct route from Lake St. George to the shellfish beds of the seacoast.

Wawenoc Indian families migrated along the path from the seasonal hunting camp to the seasonal fishing camp. They hunted for moose and beaver in the winter and brought their fur as trade goods to the coast using snowshoes, sledges and toboggans.

English settlers found the trail a convenient route to carry masts and spars for hundreds of the King’s ships built in Waldoboro.

Today Route 220 winds through rural Maine from Montville, which has several historic properties and the Frye Mountain Wildlife Management Area. It passes through the scenic towns of Liberty, home of Lake George and the Davistown Museum, and Washington. Travelers know Waldoboro for its commercial clutter on Route 1, which includes the popular eatery Moody’s Diner. The town itself has five nature preserves, a traditional downtown and eight sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a map of Route 220, click here.

Mohawk Trail

The Mohawk Trail.

The Mohawk Trail, one of the most famous Indian trails, today is one of the most beautiful drives in Massachusetts. Originally a trade route, it connected the Atlantic Indian tribes with the Iroquois tribes in Upstate New York and Canada.

The trail became a warpath when Mohawk war parties traveled it to destroy Pocumtuck settlements. Metacomet, or King Philip, took the Mohawk trail in 1676 to try to enlist the Mohawks in his cause (he failed). Benedict Arnold then took the Mohawk Trail on his way to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1914, the Massachusetts General Court declared the 63-mile Mohawk Trail a scenic tourist route – the first in the United States.

Today Routes 2 and 2A follow the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts from Athol to Williamstown. Boosters claim 100 scenic and culture attractions, including the Hail to the Sunrise statue, the Bridge of Flowers, a natural bridge, glacial potholes, pre-revolutionary homes in Old Deerfield, old growth forests and views of the Berkshire and Taconic Mountains.

Highway markers designate the trail. Click here for Mohawk Trail driving tours.

Winnicoek Trail

A seaside estate at Little Boar’s Head along one of New Hampshire’s many old Indian trails.

The Winnicoek Trail ran along the coast from the Merrimack River in Massachusetts through Winnicoek, now Hampton, and along the seashore to the Piscataqua River at Strawbery Banke, now Portsmouth.

The Pennacook and Abenaki Indians migrated along the path in the summer to what is now Odiorne Point. It’s a wooded park along the shoreline with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Town of New Castle.

When the English colonists arrived in 1635, they used the Winnicoek Trail as a bridle path. Today it’s scenic Route 1A, also known as Ocean Boulevard, running along New Hampshire’s 18-mile shoreline.

Ocean Boulevard passes the wide, sandy beaches in Salisbury, Mass., and Hampton, N.H., then climbs a rocky promontory. Seaside estates begin at the Little Boar’s Head historic district and continue through Rye. Take a detour along Route 1B to wind through the quaint town of New Castle and past the grand old Wentworth-By-The-Sea Hotel. Route 1A finally ends in Portsmouth, a historic seaside city with many fine restaurants and Federal style homes.

Click here for a map of Route 1A.

Pequot Path

Route 1A turns into Ocean Road and the Narragansett Pier.

For hundreds of years, Narragansett and Pequot Indians traveled along the Pequot Path. It ran about 69 miles near the mainland shore from Providence to New London, Conn.

In 1636, Roger Williams took the Pequot path through Apponaug (Warwick) on his journey from Providence to the trading post at Cocumscussoc (near Wickford). “It is admirable to see what paths their naked hardened feet have made in the wilderness in the most stony and rockie places,” he wrote. Williams probably saw a dozen Narragansett villages along 20 miles of the path.

English settlers began using the Pequot Path until it evolved into the lower part of the Boston Post Road. Today, parts of scenic Route 1A (not to be confused with US Route 1A) follow the old Pequot path along the South Coast.

Scenic Route 1A follows the shore from Wickford to Narragansett, past the John H. Chafee Nature Preserve, a good spot to get out and walk to Narragansett Bay. Or, take a detour to the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace. The road passes large, exclusive homes, with views of the bay and the historic Casey Farm. FInally it feeds into Ocean Road past Town Beach to Narragansett Pier.

Click here to see how the Lower Post Road follows existing roads in Rhode Island.

Route 22A

Vergennes, a city that grew up along one of Vermont’s Indian trails.

Route 22A through the Lake Champlain Valley in Vermont was once part of a network of well-worn Indian trails linking villages and other overland trail networks. The western Abenakis of Vermont also used waterways such as the Connecticut River and Lakes Champlain and Memphremagog.

The St. Francis Indians came down from Canada along the trail by Lake Champlain to find warmer fishing grounds. The trail finally stretched to the Bronx, N.Y., where it became known as ‘the road to Bedford and Vermont.’ Today Vermont Route 22A is a continuation of New York Route 22A and a scenic drive in foliage season.

Route 22A goes from Ferrisburgh to historic Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. It then runs through Addison, Bridport, Shoreham, Orwell and Fair Haven on the New York border. Along the way lie the Chimney Point State Historic Site, dairy farms, rolling hills, white church steeples, and country inns.

Images: Old County Jail and Museum, Tolland, Conn. By Photograph by Greg O’Beirne – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1391441; Hail to the Sunrise, By This mediaToddC4176 (talk)Original workJoseph Pollia, 1893-1954. – self-made, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36285807; Bridge of Flowers By FFM784 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61250392; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594; Little Boar’s Head By Teemu08 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1798424; Narragansett Pier By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594.

This story about New England Indian trails was updated in 2023.

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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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Lt. Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock Views Indians as ‘Part of the Great Human Family’

Lt. Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock was ordered to Florida in 1842 to ‘clear out the Indians,’ a duty he accepted but vowed to do without shedding blood.

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

He was the grandson of Ethan Allen, the famed Vermont Revolutionary War general, but he struggled with questions of right and wrong during his long military career. The Mexican War, for example, disgusted him because he viewed it as an insult and an encroachment on the rights of the Mexican people.

He also respected the Indians he was ordered to ‘clear out.’

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

Hitchcock 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 as 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. He also served as a major general in the Civil War.

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

On Aug. 31, 1842, a band of Creek warriors attacked the Perkins family in Washington County, Fla., killing them all in their home. The attack terrified settlers in the area. The state militia failed to track down the Indians. Hitchcock was ordered to join his regiment in Florida.

The Human Family

Ethan Allen Hitchcock commented on his assignment in his diary:

I have been much with Indians and look upon them as a part of the great human family, capable of being reasoned with and susceptible of passions and affections which, rightly touched, will secure moral results with almost mechanical certainty. I repeatedly urged Mr. Poinsett, when he was Secretary of War, to voluntarily assign to the Indians some small part of Florida, and they would soon be willing to go West. One reason why the Indians would not surrender is that they were under the impression that they would be killed if they did so. Years of bloody pursuit of them makes it absolutely necessary to give them assurance of protection and security. …Even if the war was originally unavoidable, which I do not believe, there have been many lives and at least ten million dollars wasted to pay for a ridiculous pride in warring against a handful of abused savages.

This story last updated in 2022.

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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.

Battle of Buena Vista, 1847

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….

The Rest of the War

Hitchcock predicted correctly. The Mexican-American War went on for two years. Mexicans more properly call it Intervención estadounidense en México (American intervention in Mexico).

Winfield Scott

Hitchcock served throughout the war. U.S. troops invaded Mexico’s heartland under Gen. Winfield Scott. During the march on Mexica City, Hitchcock served as his inspector general. When the war ended in 1848, Mexico ceded California, Nevada and Utah and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Historian Howard Zinn relied on Hitchcock’s journal entries during the war for his treatment of the conflict in Voices of A People’s History of the United States.

With thanks to the History Is A Weapon blog.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Matthew Lyon, Vermont’s Spitting Congressman

Much about Matthew Lyon of Fair Haven, Vt., is unclear, but one thing is certain. He started the first congressional brawl on Jan. 30, 1798 when he spat tobacco juice into the face of Roger Griswold, a Federalist from Connecticut.

The Brawl between Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold

Matthew Lyon, a Jeffersonian Republican-Democrat, had arrived in Philadelphia half a year earlier ‘full of himself and seething with aggression.’ He had finally been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives after several tries, and he was there to ‘take the side of the democrats against the aristocrats.’

One aristocrat said he felt, ‘ grieved that the saliva of an Irishman should be left upon the face of an American.’

Matthew Lyon

Matthew Lyon was born on July 14, 1749 in County Wicklow Ireland. His father may have been executed for treason against the British. Whatever the case, he worked to support his widowed mother and started to learn printing and bookbinding.

He emigrated to Woodbury, Conn., in 1764 as an indentured servant. Ten years later he joined other white settlers and moved to Wallingford, Vt. (then the New Hampshire Grants). In Wallingford, he bought cheap land and organized a militia.

When the American Revolution broke out, Matthew Lyon joined the Green Mountain Boys and took part in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. But then Gen. Horatio Gates court-martialed him and had him dishonorably discharged.

There are two versions of what actually happened. According to Lyon and others, he and his men were told to guard a cornfield, and he asked to leave Gates and join Seth Warner. According to others — his political enemies — he was cashiered for cowardice and forced to wear a wooden sword to show his shame.

Matthew Lyon did join Warner’s regiment and later rose to the rank of colonel in the Vermont militia. He also received an appointment as deputy secretary to Governor Thomas Chittenden, whose daughter he married.

He parlayed that connection into a seat in the Vermont House of Representatives. In 1779, he founded Fair Haven, Vt., and finally won election to Congress on his fourth try.

In Fair Haven he established the first store, built several mills and started a newspaper that eventually became the Rutland Herald.

The Fight

Matthew Lyon

Feelings ran high in 1798 between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.

As a Jeffersonian, Matthew Lyon viewed himself as a champion of the common man against the wealthy, well-educated Federalists.

During a ballot count on the House floor on Jan. 30, 1798, Matthew Lyon began to bait Roger Griswold. He told him the Connecticut Federalists didn’t represent nine-tenths of their constituents.

If he ran a printing press in Connecticut, he said, he would start a revolution there in six months.

Griswold leaned over and asked if he would fight with a wooden sword. Lyon spat tobacco juice in his face, earning him the nickname, ‘The Spitting Lyon.’

Retaliation

The Federalists excoriated Lyon. One Massachusetts Federalist said Lyon, a ‘kennel of filth,’ should be expelled from Congress. Another called him a ‘nasty, brutish, spitting animal.’

Lyon retorted he had no choice because Federalist newspapers would bandy him about as a ‘mean poltroon’ if he had said nothing to Griswold.

On Feb. 15, 1798, Griswold retaliated. While Lyon retrieved his mail, Griswold jumped up and began beating him about the head with a wooden cane. Lyon grabbed a pair of tongs to defend himself. Other congressmen managed to pull them apart, grabbing Griswold by the legs to separate him from Lyon.

The House Ethics Committee later recommended censure, but the full House rejected the motion.

Jail and Revenge

Later that year, President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. They criminalized criticism of the federal government, and Matthew Lyon was the first to be tried and convicted under the Acts.

Lyon spent four months in a Vergennes, Vt., jail. The Green Mountain Boys threatened to destroy it, but Lyon urged them not to. He ran for Congress from the jail and won.

Two years later, Matthew Lyon got his revenge: He cast the deciding vote in the election of Thomas Jefferson over John Adams.

Image of Matthew Lyon By Billmckern – State House Portrait, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49864949. This story was updated in 2022.

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vergennes

Six Indian Trails That Turned Into Scenic Highways and Byways

The Old Connecticut Path

Waldoboro Mast Trail (Route 220)

Mohawk Trail

Winnicoek Trail

Pequot Path

Route 22A

The First Town Meeting Still Going in Six States

Town Meeting Misery

Windsor, Conn.

Berwick, Maine

Plymouth, Mass.

Exeter, N.H.

New Shoreham, R.I.

Vergennes, Vt.

Lt. Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock Views Indians as ‘Part of the Great Human Family’

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

The Human Family

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

Ethan Allen Hitchcock

Violence

The Rest of the War

Matthew Lyon, Vermont’s Spitting Congressman

Matthew Lyon

The Fight

Retaliation

Jail and Revenge

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