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Plymouth | Early Settlers & Industry
Plymouth | Early Settlers and Industry
The town of Plymouth, Vermont holds natural beauty that is iconic to the state. Scenic lakes, high mountain peaks, and lush, green forests give the town of Plymouth a feeling of wildness that draws people to it from near and far.
European settlers first came to this area in the 1700s. The town was chartered in 1761 as Salt Ash, and later as Plymouth in 1797(Ward, 1983). Plymouth is located above a band of dolomitic limestone, which creates soils rich in minerals not often found in other parts of the state. The rich soils are excellent for supporting farming and agriculture, something nearly every settler practiced.
The bedrock and the surficial deposits left by glaciers have had a strong impact on the history of this landscape. The manufacturing of lime was a booming industry for the town starting in the 1830s (Ward, 1983). Early settlement structures such as rock walls in the forest and lime kilns found near Farm & Wilderness are evidence that the land was once cleared for agriculture and the timber used for lime kilns. The converted charcoal was used in iron and copper production, which were also mined in the area. Due to the unique bedrock, the town benefitted from successful mining and limestone manufacturing industries (Thompson, 18).
Opposite page: A lime kiln found on Farm & Wilderness land toward the southeast area of the property, very close to the rich, dolomitic limestone soils.
Left: A hand-drawn map from 1995 showing the location of a lime kiln near Woodward Reservoir on Farm & Wilderness land.
The Abenaki people have had a permanent and continuous presence in this region for over 12,000 years. Eugene Rich, the co-chair of the Missisquoi Abenaki Tribal Council, explains, “There’s never been a time when this tribe wasn’t here. There is a time in which we weren’t talked about. We didn’t talk about ourselves. And people forget.” (Evancie, VPR,What Is The Status Of The Abenaki Native Americans In Vermont Today?).
In the report, “The Greensboro Bend PLACE program & Socially Just Conservation,” Lauren Sopher highlights Abenaki voices by summarizing Frederick M. Wiseman’s accounts in his book, The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation. Dr. Wiseman is an Abenaki Tribal Council member and the Director of the Abenaki Tribal Museum and Cultural Center in Vermont. His book is the first to be written about Abenaki history and culture from an Abenaki perspective, and it draws from family knowledge and the remembered wisdom of the community. Lauren Sopher summarizes the history of the indigenous people as told by Dr. Wisemen. The time-line on the next page is an incomplete account of that history that specifically highlights how the first peoples interacted with the land they inhabited.
Source: The chiefs of each tribe, Frederick M. Wiseman, and Kris Stepenuck. Design edits only: Lauren Sopher (Sopher, 2019).
10,000-6,500 THE YEARS OF THE MOOSE [MOZ]
6,500-1,000 THE YEARS OF THE LOG SHIPS
Living in dispersed groups, the ancestors of the Abenaki people known as “The Oldest Ones” hunted small and medium sized game and followed terrestrial and aquatic life throughout the landscape on a yearly cycle. Plants and tubers also supplemented their diet. At this point, the landscape was a tundra made up of grasses, lichens, sedges, and small shrubs such as sata blueberry and kanosasiz dwarf willow. Around 11,000 years ago, it began to transition to include maskwamozi (birch), kokokhoakw (fir), ossggakw (poplar), and mskak (spruce). Over time, streams were populated by wdopiak (alders) and kanosasak (willows), and the land transitioned to a woodland composed of conifers, mahlawks (ash), and senomozi (sugar maple) (Sopher, 2019).
As the climate started to warm and become drier, the woodlands changed to include pagȏn (butternut) and watsilmezi (white oak). “The ancestors of the Abenaki lived in smaller, seasonal camps in order to easily hunt in the uplands and fish along rivers” (Sopher, 2019). Tools made of wood, bone, metal and stone allowed for further expansion through waterways and on land, and trading between tribes increased. Family and village life became larger and more complex. “Villages were centered around rich alluvial river valleys, such as Nonnigonikon Winooskik (the Winooski Site, near Burlington, Vermont)” (Sopher, 2019)
