Archive | This Week in Poultney History

In the spring of 1849, the firm of Ross & West established a Melodeon Factory in East Poultney. Paul M. Ross and Elijah West chose for their new business a brick building formerly used as a blacksmith’s shop. At first they produced only the casework and bellows, having purchased the reed and keyboard actions from […]

At the town meeting of 1780, it was voted to erect a “meeting house.” This building was used jointly by the Congregationalists and the Baptists, the first Union Church in the State of Vermont.

Nehemiah Howe built the first grist-mill in Poultney, which was erected at the falls, where the east village now is, some little time before 1777. Prior to that, for the first few years settlers had to go to Manchester to mill, some thirty miles distant.

The first settlers, who had come in April, 1771, and built shanties near the present-day main intersection in Poultney, were Ebenezer Allen, a cousin of Ethan, and Thomas Ashley, an Allen in-law.

At the last annual proprietors meeting in Connecticut, in February, 1772, Ethan Allen was elected Proprietors’ Clerk, and the meeting was adjourned until April to the Poultney home of Heber Allen, Ethan’s brother.