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The town of Derby, located in Orleans County, in
the northern most portion of Vermont, has a long agricultural history
in a diverse range of production. Sharing an international border with
Quebec Province, Canada, the town’s physically shape has been altered
at different points in time, growing to its present shape that we know
of today. Located in the region known as the Northeast Kingdom, the
area has had rich stocks of timber, maple sugaring, hop vineyards, and
dairy production in its history. With a vast amount of natural
resources to rely on, Derby has also overcome many hardships both
naturally and domestically.
Originally chartered to a group of investors led by Timothy Andrus
(appears as Timothy Andrews in other sources) on October 29, 1779, it
wasn’t until 1795 that the town of Derby was formally settled[i].
Originally chartered as a town of 23,040 acres, its present size has
augmented to 36, 556 acres due to the annexing of the town of Salem to
Derby on March 1, 1881 by an act of state legislation. While the
history and consequence disappearance of Salem is worthy of its own
work, it will broadly be touched on before the annex of 1881, and
included from that year forward. It is also worth noting for research
purposes that the town of Salem originally was chartered as
Gatesborough, but later chartered as Salem[ii].
The first known surveying done in the founding of
Derby, was conducted in 1789 with Timothy Hinman, Aaron Hinman, Samuel
Drakery, Obadiah Wheeler, and the states surveyor general James
Whitelaw. The group spent that summer in the region surveying the
charter and inspecting the natural available resources. At the time
they would have found vast amounts of first growth forests of massive
Pine, Hemlock, Birch, Chestnut, Oak and Maple trees, with little to no
open space, and many rock out crops and glacial till of varying size.
Such natural resources would have made the town of Derby a rather
lucrative investment by the founding proprietors.
Timothy
Hinman was originally from the area of present day Southbury,
Connecticut, with the Hinman family being an integral part in the
founding of the Litchfield County region of Connecticut. While a period
of time lapsed between the chartering and establishment of the town of
Derby itself, Hinman’s determination would lead Derby into becoming an
important part of Northeastern Vermont. He would be a significant force
in establishing industry and identity for the town of Derby, becoming
the first elected state representative in 1798 from Derby as well as
the first judge when Orleans County was created in 1800[iii].
The following year a dispute occurred between the
boundary of the town of Salem and Derby, with 6,000 acres of Salem
overlapped the original charter of Derby[iv]. The ownership of the
acreage was awarded to Derby with Hinman leading defending the dispute.
From 1791-1793, Hinman worked with a crew of surveyors and laborers to
clear and create a public road that extended from Montpelier through
Greensboro, to present day Derby Center. Once completed, the following
year, Hinman moved his family to Greensboro while he worked to ready a
permanent home in Derby. The earliest permanent settlers in 1795 were
Alexander Magoon, Henry Burrel, and Hinman[v].
Shortly after the settlement of Derby, significant events
happened both regionally and internationally that directly affected not
only agricultural production, but also outright human survival. First
in the War of 1812, the town would have had much stress and
distractions in sharing a border with a British Commonwealth. Although
there was one incident reported with no injuries, the year was rather a
distraction than a hindrance. A few years later, The Hurricane of 1815
directly struck New England, devastating the entire region with damage
ranging from destroyed crops, to homes lost. Massive losses were
reported in all states of the region, ranging from livestock
destruction to crop failure, and extensive property damage. Finally the
following year, 1816, brought an international crisis known by many as
the “Year Without a Summer”[vi], “The year of two winters” and
“Eighteen hundred and froze to death”[vii]. With the summer of 1816
bringing hard frosts all summer long and even a foot of snow in June,
the agricultural production of Derby that year would have been
completely lost, leading to long term disruptions. While the effects of
this year were recorded around the world, northern New England and
southern Quebec suffered rather harshly. In the Niles’ Weekly Register
a front page for August 10th, 1816 issue writes that extreme frost and
snow occurred in each month of the summer leading to many crops failing
all over northern New England and livestock along with birds, were all
found dead from the extreme cold[viii].
The
immediate years that followed would have no doubt affected Derby. A
heavily reliance occurred on the local timbers, one of the last
remaining resources that survived the disaster. Cut timber and potash
production would have been the only source of the little income
available for the region. With no records showing a decrease in the
population of Derby, it must be ascertained that the local resources of
fish and game and imported supplies from great distances, would have
some how sustained the town, though hard pressed.
One of the earliest agricultural crops produced in
Derby was primarily maple sugar with far smaller amounts of maple
molasses or syrup. While the process is quite time consuming with large
amounts of the raw maple sap collected and boiled down for small
yields, the product has always been lucrative in the state. The season
for maple sugar production is quite short, lasting about four weeks in
the northern woods of Vermont, with the sugar makers referring to
different periods as “runs”. Variants in the weather created different
runs, or if the weather was to cold, interrupting the season entirely.
Most of the sap collected from the runs was boiled down till it was
extremely thick and left to harden into sugar. Usually the later runs
would be more for maple molasses than sugar, due to the small amounts
of sugar left in the sap.[ix] Timothy Hinman himself took part in maple
production, actually tapping trees before creating a permanent
settlement with his family and others in Derby[x]. To this day sugar
operations still commence in Derby, making it the town’s oldest
agricultural tradition, with many sugar houses in operation and road
side stands offering the liquid gold for sale.
According to
the 1850, the town of Derby produced roughly 69,000 lbs of maple
sugar[xi][1]. In the 1880 census, 90, 865 lbs of maple sugar was
produced in Derby with 32,875 lbs produced in Salem. The single largest
production in 1880 came from A. T. Daily in Derby, with 170 acres of
woodlands that led to 2,500 pounds of maple sugar produced in
1880[xii]. While the state of Vermont produced 11,261,077 lbs of maple
sugar in 1880, the 1.1% production between Salem and Derby would have
been an important and profitable product[xiii]. It is also worth noting
that the effects of 1816 would have devastated the maple industry in
this region, due to not only outright killing many trees that had
already budded, but also the need of the summer to produce and store
the starch that is needed for sap production the following spring.
Derby would most certainly have had to replant portions of the maple
trees, and with sap running from only older trees, the maple production
would have been affected for upwards of a decade thereafter.
A product that goes hand in hand with maple sugaring is timber. With
the extensive acres of woodlands, timber would have been a strong
source of revenue. Numerous reports have all stated that the area of
Derby possessed large amounts of timber, with many species of hardwood
and soft wood represented. While the census of different decades report
on the amount of acres of hardwood, it would be rather difficult to
know the yearly amount of cut timers produced in Derby, though it would
have been a profitable business, particularly in the period just after
permanent settlement.
One of the more volatile crops that were raised in both Derby and Salem
was hops. An integral component used in the brewing of beer, hops were
an important part of everyday life. At the time, beer was considered a
safer alternative than the consumption of water, due to the part of the
brewing process of boiling the liquid, therefore sanitizing the
beverage. Hard Cider was the other primary beverage of the period,
utilizing fermentation to create a somewhat stable and safe drink. Hops
provided both a balance to the sweetness of the grains in the brewing
process, as well as acting as a preservative during storage. Nearly
every town at this time had a brewer as well as many farmers producing
ale for their family’s consumption. While in the middle of the
nineteenth century, New York produced nine-tenths of all hops produced
in the U.S. with Vermont ranked as second[xiv].
With the mid-nineteenth century being
a prominent period in hops production for the state of Vermont, the
town of Derby alone accounted for 22.7% of the entire states production
in 1880. In the 1850 Vermont agricultural survey, it was reported that
65, 245 lbs of hops[xv] were produced in the town of Derby. The census
for the state showed a yield of 288,023 lbs for the year[xvi]. From the
Vermont Agricultural Census of 1880, it is estimated that nearly 8,500
pounds of hops were produced in Derby, a very drastic drop off from the
1850 production. In 1860, it was estimated that nearly 640,000 pounds
were produced in the state, with a decrease of roughly 100,000 pounds
by 1870, and followed a steep decline in production with only 4,400
pounds in production in 1900[xvii]. In 1858 the hop vineyards of the
three northern counties of Vermont produced a total of nearly 122,000
pounds, estimated to be nearly worth the same in dollars, showing that
the production of hops was a valuable agricultural product[xviii]. The
same volatility still exists in modern times in hops production, as
hops shortages that have occurred in recent years world wide drove
prices significantly up, and have only started to ease.
A very important agricultural product
produced in Derby over the course of the town’s history is dairy.
Looking over census records from 1850, 1860, and 1880 respectively, the
total production for the town is daunting. Nearly every farm listed had
dairy cows amongst its herds, with milk, butter and cheese being
produced. The production appears to have remained strong through the
thirty-year period of the census covered. While the size and number of
farms and the towns landscape have drastically changed over time, there
are still numerous dairy farms in Derby at the present. An important
person in the dairy history of Derby is actually from more recent years
than later. Earle E. Hackett brought significant attention to Derby in
the dairy world of the 1960’s. At the height of his operations, Hackett
owned roughly fifty-six farms in the Derby area and surrounding
regions, earning him the name of “The Cow Country King” [xix].
The town of Derby has been a resilient and
industrious part of Vermont’s history, with a very interesting and
unique history of its own. While other agricultural products such as
pork, chicken and apples would no doubt been and still is important,
the citizens of Derby have adapted to the demands of both the local and
state demands as well as international. With the production of hops
shifting away from Vermont at the close of the nineteenth century,
maple and dairy production have been the backbone to the local and
regional economy.
[1] The number is an estimate due to the poor condition of the 1850 census records.
Endnotes
[i]
Thompson, Zadock. A Gazetteer of The State of Vermont; Containing A
Brief General View of The State, A Historical and Topographical
Description of All The Counties, Towns, Rivers, Etc. (Montpelier: E. P.
Walton, Printer, 1824), 116.
[ii] Swift, Esther. Vermont Place-Names: Footprints of History. (Camden: Picton Press, 1996), 150.
[iii]
Bingham, Norman. Sketch of The Life Hon. Timothy Hinman: An Address
Delivered Before The Orleans County Historical Society, Derby, VT.,
Sept. 1, 1891; Also Genealogy of His Descendants. (Somerville: Press of
the Somerville Citizens, 1892), 18-19.
[iv] Swift, 351.
[v] Bingham, 15-16.
[vi]
“History of Orleans County: The Year Without a Summer, 1816” retrieved
on 10/24/2009 from the Orleans County Historical Society website.
[vii]
Russell, Howard. A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New
England. (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1982), 147.
[viii] Niles, H. edit. Niles Weekly Register: From March to September 1816 – Vol. X. (Baltimore: The Franklin Press, 1816), 385.
[ix] Oppel, Frank edit. Tales of Old New England. (Edison: Castle Books, 2002), 222.
[x] Hay, Cecil & Mildred. History of Derby, Vermont. (Littleton, Courier Printing Co, 1967). 127.
[xi]
“Seventh Census of the United States original returns of the assistant
marshals: fourth series: agricultural production by counties: 1850”.
Microfilm 626, Reel 2. Bailey/Howe Microforms, The University of
Vermont: Burlington, VT. (Accessed 10/02/09)
[xii] “Tenth Census,
Agriculture, Vermont, 1880” Microfilm 629, Reel 2. Bailey/Howe
Microforms, The University of Vermont: Burlington, VT.
(Accessed10/02/09)
[xiii] Cutting, Hiram A. The Forests of
Vermont, Maple Sugar Industry, Experimental Farm Work, Cattle Disease,
Etc., Etc. (Montpelier: Vermont Watchman & State Journal Press,
1886), 72.
[xiv] Crockett, Walter H. Vermont: Its Resources and
Opportunities. (Montpelier: General Assembly of the State of Vermont,
1916), 36-37.
[xv] Seventh Census.
[xvi] Crockett, 37.
[xvii] Crockett, 37.
[xviii] Russell, 226.
[xix] Hay, 130.
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