Town History

Middletown Springs History

History of Middletown, Vermont, by Barnes Frisbie (1867, reprinted 1975), tells the early history of the town in great detail. About 1774 a few settlers, mostly from Connecticut, started coming into this area that lay in a fertile valley ringed about by high hills. A  good-sized stream promised power for mills that a new settlement would need. In increasing numbers they cleared land, built log cabins, prepared fields for planting, and laid plans for mills along the river. When news came of the war with England, many able-bodied men dropped everything and headed south. After the Battle of Bennington, they were mustered out in 1778-79 and came back, eager to take up their unfinished work.

As grist mills, tanneries, distilleries and sawmills were set up along the Poultney River, and as new settlers arrived, residents of the surrounding towns who lived closer to the new settlement than to their own village centers joined in the new venture. By 1783 this settlement, then parts of Ira, Tinmouth, Pawlet and Wells, held about 300 dwellers, and interest arose about organizing a new town.

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