Vol. II - THE
PERRIGO PAPERS - No. 1, page 5
Robert E. Bishop, Editor - MAY, 1981 -
| The Perrigos and the town
of Pownal Vermont had many things in common. Pownal was originally settled by the Dutch in 1732. It was to be thirty years later (1762) before the first English settlers arrived. Pownal a 1977 publication of the Pownal Bicen- tennial Committee, tells it thusly: "Not every family that came to Pow— nal stayed. It was a time of search— out new farmlands, and many families made more than one step before Pownal. The earliest list of families we have dates from 1765 [The year that Fred- erick Perrigo was born in Pownal) and contains many families names which we suppose did not last anywhere near two centuries: Brooklin, Bull, Howard, Perigo, etc. They died out or more likely moved on with the frontier. ..And so among the five earliest settlers, we find three from Rhode Is- land, one from Massachusetts, and onefrom Connecticut.” The descendants of Frederick Perrigo [25] have even a more illustrious connection with the Pownal story. Frederick was to marry Mary Vanornam in Apr, 1791. She was of Dutch family which originally settled the village in 1732. Mary’s ancestors appear in the Pownal book under a wide variety of spellings including Van Ar- nems, Van Norman, Van Ernum, and Vannonum. Early on, Pownal picked up a reputa- tion of "differentness which can be sensed rather than defined.” The town was accused of having ‘no religion at all’ because the free-thinking Rhode Islanders. Pownal was also a town di- vided as to loyalty to Crown and many of them left for the north to join the British commander Burgoyne who was bearing down upon Bennington just a- bove Pownal. Most of the tories were Dutch, however. The Pownal account of the Bennington battle mentions out il- lustrious ancestor as follows: “It looked bad for the Americans for awhi- le until they gradually got re-organ- ized and then Seth Warner’s fresh tro- ops arrived from Manchester at just the right movement to atop the enemy at- tack and turn it into a rout. With War- ner's regiment were two drummer boys from Pownal. William Pratt and David Perrigo, and a soldier named Silas Pratt." |
David and Rufus Perrigo were
both to be situated in what history refers to the Oblong Patent; a free zone some 80 miles long and twenty miles wide which was an overlapping of separate claims of both New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. It was the latter state that outwitted the first two by getting out paperwork establishing claims or huge tracts of land, much of which was in the disputed territory. Benning Wentworth was the con man and while he gave huge land grants to ready buyers, he also reserved huge chunks of land for him- self. The popular deal with such grants was to settle the land a bit and then resell the farm to newcomers who were willing to buy at inflated prices. A Phd dissertation by Bonomi, entit- led, A Factious People [date unknown], states: "Vacant lands. overlapping col- onial boundaries, unextinguished Indian titles, and an unsympathetic government conspired to make New York land titles among the most assailable in north America. It was hardly a wonder that new Englanders should feel encouraged to challenge the New York claims to the border area, finding existing sections uninhabited, some new Englanders simply squatted in expectation that occupancy and the use of the land would prove in the long run the strongest evidence of title. One of the outcomes of the disputes over land was that Vermont squatters became known as a ‘drove of bandit rovers. Seth Warner, before the war, commanded some of the early raids on unsuspecting strangers who dared enter the land of his Vermont squatters. Later, George Washington converted Warner's gang into the quasi-military Green Moun- tain Boys. Sosin, in his work, The Rev- olutionary Frontier, 1673-1783, writes: "While early proprietors were interes- ted in speculation, many of the earliest pioneers in Vermont seem in many cases to have moved for religious considera- tions or because of the legal and social disabilities under which they had suf- rered. During another controversy in Massachusetts more than a few Baptists went into the region west of the upper Connecticut River to escape taxes levied for the support of the Congregational Churchs. The towns of Shaftsbury, Pownal, Gilford, and Dummerton seem to have contained such groups.” |
The Perrigo Papers by Mr. Robert Bishop , Generations 1 thru 3, Generations 4 thru 5, Generations 6 thru 7 , Generations 8 thru 10
MAY 1981 ISSUE: Cover , Page 1 - Vol. II May 1981, Page 2 - Vol II May 1981, Page 3 - Vol II May 1981, Page 4 - Vol II May 1981, Page 6 - Vol II May 1981, Page 7 - Vol II May 1981, Page 8 - Vol II May 1981, Page 9 - Vol II May 1981,
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