Chartered: August 10, 1781 (Vermont
Charter)
Area: 28,686 Acres = 44.82 Square Miles [ Size Rank: 66 ]
Coordinates (Geographic Center): N 44° 09' W 72°39'
Altitude: 735 feet
ASL Population (US Census, 2000): 5,791 [ Population Rank: 21
]
Population Density (persons per square mile): 129.2 [ Density Rank:
30 ]
Stages of the cache
This is a 5 stage multicache that will take you
several areas in the town of Northfield.
To find Stage 4
N 44 AA.BBB W 072 CC.DDD
The sign above the door on the building at the
Stage 3 coordinates indicates this building was used from
syear1 to syear2.
AA = (syear2 – syear1) / 2
BBB = (syear2 – syear1) * 15 + 4
The plaque beside the door contains several
dates. We are interested in the first two dates, pyear1 and
pyear2.
CC = (pyear2 – pyear1) * 2 – 2
DDD = (pyear2 – pyear1) * 50 –
45
Brief history of
Northfield
From 1785 through the 1820s, largely Yankees from
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the older Vermont towns settled
Northfield. Next to arrive were the Irish, attracted in the
1840’s by jobs on the railroad. The Welsh arrived after the
Irish to work in the slate quarries in the 1850’s and
1860’s. Stonework also brought the next wave. Starting about
1890, Italians, Spaniards, and Scots joined the workforce in the
granite sheds. From the 1880’s onward, Canadians of French
descent came seeking opportunity, many buying up hill farms
abandoned in the decades after the Civil War.
The years from 1785 to 1825 saw the development
of Northfield’s four villages. The first settlement was on
East Hill (now Mill Hill), close by Elijah Paine’s grist and
sawmills. As the population grew, boundaries crept up the hill and
northward along Route 12. Clusters of houses became villages, each
with its own personality and name: South Village, Center Village,
Factory Village, and the Falls.
First to have a distinct identity was South
Village, which had numerous small businesses and manufacturing
operations through the nineteenth century. Next was Center Village,
where the first post office, town clerk’s office, and
churches were established, and which for many years was the social
and political center of town. After the Center came Factory Village
(the present Village of Northfield) named for the woolen mill
located there. Last to develop was Northfield Falls, and by the
late 1820’s it, too, was a thriving community.
With the arrival of the railroad in the
1840’s, Factory Village and Depot Square increasingly became
the hub of local activity. Residents there began to demand lighted
streets, sidewalks, fire and police protection, and they then
petitioned the legislature to establish a separate Village of
Northfield. The Village of Northfield was incorporated November 14,
1855.
Over the next fifty years, village residents
voted taxes on themselves for a variety of services. Sidewalks were
laid down, the water department was established and the first
electric plant was built (both in 1895), and the first sewer lines
were laid (1901-1904). Around 1900 the police department was set
up, and the two independent fire companies, which existed from the
1860’s, came under village control.
The price of such amenities was high;
consequently, as they were increasingly needed outside the village,
police, and fire services were taken over by the town. The town and
village highway departments were supported by taxes levied
separately on the grand lists of the village and town. Once
settlements were established, people turned their attention to
making a living. Of necessity, almost everyone was a farmer first,
and most lived by barter (goods and services were paid for with
other goods and services). Eventually people needed hard cash, and
it was this quest for individual and collective economic security
that has been the paramount concern in Northfield for two
centuries.
Until about 1814, residents made potash on their
farms and sent it to mills in America and abroad which used it for
everything from finishing wool cloth to making glass. About 1812,
as the demand for potash was waning, Elijah Paine built a huge
woolen mill on the site of the now closed Cetrangolo Finishing
works (which closed in 1999). Paine’s woolen mill employed
between 175 and 200 workers and was for years the town’s
largest employer.
When wool prices declined in the 1840’s,
Elijah Paine’s son Charles came to the rescue. As President
of the Vermont Central Railroad, Charles Paine pushed the line from
Windsor, Vermont to Burlington, finishing construction on the last
day of 1849, and locating the railroad’s headquarters in
Northfield. For fifteen years the Vermont Central Railroad meant
prestige for Northfield and prosperity for its citizens. Hundreds
of people worked for the line.
In 1852, Paine lost control of his railroad. Over
the next decade the new owners gradually moved operations to St.
Albans. John Gregory Smith, the new president, said he would
“make the grass grow in the streets of Northfield.” He
very nearly succeeded. The town’s population, one of the
largest in Vermont at the time, dropped precipitously and over
fifty houses stood vacant. It took 25 years to recover from the
loss.
Slate quarrying and finishing, which started
early in the nineteenth century, provided some respite. In the
1860’s and 1870’s some two hundred men worked for the
slate companies, but by the 1880’s this industry too was in
decline.
The next savior was granite. In 1889 investors
built a spur line and a small finishing shed on railroad land and
arranged to have granite brought down from the Barre quarries.
Several more sheds were eventually constructed, and by the outbreak
of World War I, over 525 people were employed in the
sheds.
Times changed, and by 1954 only the Rock of Ages
plant was left, and that too was closed when the head office
decided it was too expensive to ship the rough stone here. In 1999
Cetrangolo Finishing Works, founded in 1955, was the last to close.
As of August 2000, the Cetrangolo Finishing Works building has been
demolished and the site is vacant.
In the end, economic rejuvenation came from what
at first might have seemed an unpromising source. Late in 1886, the
faculty and student body of Norwich University arrived in town.
Their arrival followed acceptance by Norwich trustees of a bid by a
group of citizens to have the college relocated here. It is
doubtful that anyone seeing the four teachers and fourteen students
arrive imagined that the college would become the town’s
largest employer.
Beside the large industries, small-scale
manufacturing operations and retail businesses of many kinds
flourished here in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This diversity was common in Vermont, and Northfield was no
exception. Collectively these stores and manufacturers gave
employment to many, and economic health to the community for
decades.
The Great Depression hastened the end of many
businesses. Henry Ford and his competitors made the demise of other
businesses certain. Mass production of the automobile and a revived
national economy after 1945 put Vermonters on wheels and took them
out of town to work and shop. The importance of the automobile as a
bringer of change cannot be overstated. In Northfield, as
elsewhere, it meant workers no longer had to depend on local
businesses for jobs and shopping opportunities; they could drive
anywhere employment was available and goods were for
sale.
As manufacturing jobs declined, the importance of
Norwich University increased. About 1950, Norwich, Rock of Ages,
and the Nantanna textile mill each employed approximately 140
people. By 1963, Rock of Ages went out of business. Though the
college has seen ups and downs over the past 125 years, its
presence has been an economic force for the community and a social
and cultural life Northfield probably would not otherwise have
seen.
Since World War II, population growth has been
slow but steady. The town has seen none of the large-scale tourism
that has brought mixed blessings to other Vermont towns. While no
large industry has come to town, a number of small businesses have
sprung up. Slightly more than half of the Northfield labor force
worked out of town. Over two centuries, Northfield evolved from
farming to manufacturing to a mix of small businesses and a college
town economy.
References:
McIntire, Julia. (1981 Fall). History of
Northfield. Central Vermont Views, 3, No. 1,
28-33.
McIntire, J. W., and Cleveland, R.L. (1985).
Picture Northfield: A Photographic Study.
The Northfield Town Committee (1974). Green
Mountain Heritage: The Chronicle of Northfield,
Vermont.
The above text is from the current Northfield
Municipal Plan.