Greensboro, Vermont, USA (Greensborough) (Greensboro Bend)
1849 Greensborough

Orleans Co. The surface of this town is uneven, but the elevations are not generally abrupt. The land is well timbered, mostly with hard wood, except on the river and about its head waters, whore it is almost entirely hemlock, spruce, cedar, and fir. The soil is of a middling quality. The River Lamoille is formed by the union of several streams in this town. Caspian Lake or Lake Beautiful, lies in the south part of this town, and discharges its waters to the east into the Lamoille, affording a number of valuable mill privileges, around which has grown up a beautiful little village. This pond is about three miles long, and one and a half broad. Elligo Pond, lying mostly in the western part of Greensboro', is about a mile long, and forms the head waters of Black River. These ponds produce abundance of fine trout. Runaway Pond [see Glover) was partly in this town, and was formerly the source of the Lamoille. There are several other small ponds in the north part of the town, which, at present, form the head waters of the Lamoille.

Boundaries. Northerly by Glover, easterly by Wheelock and Goshen Gore, southerly by Hardwick, and westerly by Craftsbury, and a small part of Wolcott.

First Settlers. The first settlement was begun in the spring of 1789, when Messrs. Ashbel and Aaron Shepard removed, with their families, from Newbury to this place. The hardships which the first settlers of this town had to endure, were very considerable. In coming into the town, the women had to proceed on foot, and all the furniture, belonging to the two families, was drawn upon three hand-sleds, on the crust. Both families consisted of five persons, Mr. Ashbel Shepard and his wife, and Mr. Aaron Shepard, his wife and one child. Mr. Aaron Shepard removed his family to Coos in August, and did not return till March, when his brother, Horace Shepard and family, returned with him. Thus were Mr. Ashbel Shepard and his wife, left from August till March, with no other human being in the town. Their nearest neighbors were Mr. Cutler's family, in Craftsbury, which had removed there the preceding autumn, and Mr. Webster's family, in Cabot. Mr. Shepard brought all his grain from Newbury, a distance of more than forty miles, of which he drew it sixteen miles upon a hand-sled, with the snow between four and five feet deep. In the same manner, he drew hay for the support of a cow, from a meadow of wild grass, three miles distant. On the 25th of March, Mrs. Shepard was delivered of a son, William Scott, the first child born in this town. The proprietors voted him a present of 100 acres of land.

First Minister. The Rev. Salmon King was settled over the Congregational Church in 1803, and continued a few years.

Productions of the Soil. Wheat, 2,074 bushels ; Indian corn, 557 bushels ; potatoes, 42,423 bushels; hay, 3,215 tons ; maple sugar, 43,920 pounds ; wool, 1 1 ,820 pounds.

Distances. Fifteen miles south from Irasburgh, and twenty-seven north-east from Montpelier.

A gazetteer of Vermont... by John Hayward Boston - Tappan, Whittemore, and Mason 1849

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