Our Vermont Travelblog

Trip 10 - Barnet And Peacham

It's Christmas Eve Eve, and we are up at the Fortress of Solitude for a few days respite from real life ('cept that I had some course development work to do in the morning), so we of course had to take the opportunity to do a rare 251 Club jaunt.

We'd planned to just stop in one of our favorite towns, Peacham, but decided to add neighboring Barnet along the way (history, demographics):

Barnet was granted to 67 men, 9 of whom were named Stevens. The tradition in the Stevens family is that their first American ancestor had emigrated from Barnet, Hertfordshire, England, accounting for the origin of the name.

Very early in the town's history some of the Stevens group moved to Barnet and bought a gristmill. The stream which powered the mill became known as Stevens River, the village as Stevens Mill or Stevens Village. When the Post Office was established there in 1807, the village was renamed Barnet, and has remained so since.

We weren't going to officially do Barnet, but I had to stop when we passed the General Store.

I found Barnet to be an absolutely charming, quintessential Vermont town.  And of course, Peacham is even more so: a number of shots from that famous little village below the fold...

Trip 8 - Burke And Newark

Before Sunday brunch, we decided to meander a bit around some towns near the Fortress of Solitude. 

The first official 251 stop was in Burke (history, demographics): Writing for Hemenway's Gazetteer, the Reverend Thomas Goodwillie gave incorrect explanations for the origins of several town names, Burke among them. The Reverend said Dr. Jonathan Arnold named the town for his son, Burke Arnold. Nothing could have been further from the truth: Dr. Arnold did receive charters for several towns in the area, but not for Burke, nor did he have a son by that name...

While it cannot be proved, it is thought that the town really was named for Edmund Burke (1729-97) the great British statesman and orator, who was one of the foremost proponents of liberal treatment for the American colonies...At the time the town was chartered, Edmund Burke had just helped to force Lord North's resignation as prime minister because of his colonial policies and conduct of the war.

Um...here we are down the road in Burke.