Bridport (Vermont)

Bridport
Community hall in the town center
Location in Vermont
Bridport
Basic data
Foundation :	October 10, 1761
State :	United States
State :	Vermont
County :	Addison County
Coordinates :	43 ° 59 ′  N , 73 ° 20 ′  W Coordinates: 43 ° 59 ′  N , 73 ° 20 ′  W
Time zone :	Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 )
Residents :	1,218 (as of 2010)
Population density :	10.8 inhabitants per km 2
Area :	119.9 km 2  (approx. 46 mi 2 ) of which 113.3 km 2  (approx. 44 mi 2 ) are land
Height :	49 m
Postal code :	05734
Area code :	+1 802
FIPS :	50-08575
GNIS ID :	1462051
Website :	bridportvt.org

Bridport is a town in Addison County of the state of Vermont in the United States with a population of 1,218 (according to the 2010 census).

geography

Geographical location

The place is on the west bank of Lake Champlain in a plain. This is also the western border of the state of Vermont to the neighboring state of New York. In the Bridports area there are no significant bodies of water or hills; the two highest peaks are the 179 m high Hemingway Hill and the 160 m high Hamilton Hill .

Neighboring communities

All information as air lines between the official coordinates of the places from the 2010 census.

• North: Addison , 1.5 miles
• Northeast: Weybridge , 7.7 mi
• East: Cornwall , 7.9 miles
• South: Shoreham , 2 miles
• Southwest: Putnam, New York , 7.5 mi
• West: Ticonderoga, New York , 15 mi
• Northwest: Crown Point, New York , 17.7 mi

climate

The snowfall between October and April is up to five and a half meters, about twice as high as the average snow depth in the USA, the daily sunshine duration is at the lower end of the range in the USA.

history

The area of ​​the present-day Bridport was sold on October 10, 1761 by Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire as part of the New Hampshire Grants to 64 settlers, mainly from Massachusetts . However, the same areas were soon used and sold by New York. From 1768 onwards, the first, hesitant settlements were made by pioneers from both sides. Due to the legal uncertainty, but also because of the poor drinking water supply in the area - there was only brackish water, partly salty, but no drinking water; this was obtained in cisterns from captured rainwater - settlement progressed very slowly. During the advance of American troops against the nearby Fort Ticonderoga on the eve of the War of Independence in 1775 and the later fighting with the British in 1776/77, the settlers largely withdrew. In a military operation on November 4, 1778, the men and sons of the settlers, a total of 39 people, were deported to Canada by the British. They reached Quebec on December 6, 1778 and were held there for 16 months and 19 days. During this time, raids by Indians on the isolated homesteads of the settlers were also widespread. Since women and children were usually spared, it became routine that the men fled into the forests, had the Indians plundered and then continued to work on the farms.

There was no direct fighting between the settlers of the various sellers during this time, although the British tried to arrest the rebels in this part of the colonies as well. For example, when Ethan Allen was arrested by six armed British soldiers in a house in Bridport in 1772 , the landlady helped Allen escape through a window. In doing so, she herself brought the British to earn the reward. In response to the British allegations about helping her to escape, she defended herself by pointing out that otherwise the neighbors would have set her house on fire. So the Bridport residents supported the "Yorkers" or "Hampshires" in the other towns, but in their own area they refrained from direct hostilities.

After the end of the war of independence, the settlement and reclamation of the area slowly got going. The constituent city assembly took place on March 29, 1784; a first envoy to the House of Representatives of the Vermont Republic , the predecessor state of today's Vermont, was appointed in 1786. From the same year there is a tax list listing 32 taxpayers in the town. A first parish was founded in 1790; the first census of 1791 showed 449 residents.

The dysentery , which raged in the area in 1802, claimed 16 deaths; the epidemic of 1813 even about 50. When the epidemic broke out again in 1822, 25 deaths were counted again.

By 1840, the main route of transport was Lake Champlain. Several landing points made it possible to transfer goods. Thompson mentions four Bridport stores (and a tavern) during this period. Furthermore, sheep farming was the predominant livestock industry; more than 27,000 animals were counted. Cistern water still had to be used for the supply of animals and people, so that the much more water-consuming dairy farming, which was established in many other towns in the course of the connection of the metropolitan areas on the east coast by the railway lines through the Green Mountains, began in 1847 Lake level crossed, in Bridport crossed very late.

For 1850, Hemenway reports that the town was linked to Middlebury by a stagecoach. Bridport never reached a railway line. As a result, from around 1850 onwards, there was a slow emigration to the surrounding, better connected and thus more profitable towns and the pre-forms of the metropolitan areas. In the American Civil War (1861-1865) 113 men were committed; most of them came back unharmed. The emigration continued through World War I and the Great Depression, neither of which had much of an impact on the remote area. The trend was not reversed until the mid-1960s: the development of the surrounding centers, especially Middleburys and Vergennes, led to immigration. At the same time, the improvement of the drinking water supply resulted in a final switch to the regionally widespread dairy farming.

religion

Bridport is home to a Roman Catholic parish.

Population development

Census Results - Town of Bridport, Vermont
year	1700	1710	1720	1730	1740	1750	1760	1770	1780	1790
Residents										449
year	1800	1810	1820	1830	1840	1850	1860	1870	1880	1890
Residents	1124	1520	1511	1774	1480	1393	1298	1171	1167	1018
year	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990
Residents	956	848	745	703	665	663	653	809	997	1137
year	2000	2010	2020	2030	2040	2050	2060	2070	2080	2090
Residents	1235	1218

Economy and Infrastructure

In Bridport, dairy farming and grain growing are the main sources of income. Around a third of the population works directly in agriculture, either as a farmer or as an auxiliary worker.

traffic

Bridport is accessed by two roads: on the one hand from Vermont State Route 22A , which crosses the town from north to south and thus connects to Vergennes and Burlington , and on the other hand Vermont State Route 175 , which runs from east to west , which connects the town the center of Middlebury to the east and the crossing over the lake at Crown Point , the Lake Champlain Bridge .

media

There are no media providers in Bridport. There are a number of receivable radio stations in the wider area, the closest of which are in Middlebury, Vergennes and Warren. The two local television stations that can be received in Bridport are based in Monkton and in neighboring Port Henry, New York.

Public facilities

With the exception of the Town Hall and the school, there are no public facilities in Bridport. The closest hospitals are in Middlebury ( Porter Medical Center ) and Ticonderoga, New York ( Moses-Ludington Hospital ).

education

Bridport is part of the Addison Central School District with Cornwall, Middlebury, Ripton, Salisbury, Shoreham and Weybridge.

The town has a six-class elementary school (pre-school to fifth grade) with a kindergarten. For further training, trips to the surrounding communities, especially to Middlebury, are necessary.

There is no public library in Bridport. The closest are in Shoreham and Middlebury.

Personalities

• Charles A. Eldredge (1820–1896), politician and long-time representative of Wisconsin in the US House of Representatives
• Rawson C. Myrick (1882–1974), longtime Vermont Secretary of State politician

literature

• Zadock Thompson: History of Vermont, natural, civil and statistical, in three parts . tape 3 . Chauncey Goodrich, Burlington 1842, p. 31 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Abby Maria Hemenway: The Vermont historical Gazetteer . tape 1 . Burlington 1867, p. 16 ff .
• History of Briport
  Transcript from an 1886 History of Addison County, edited by HP Smith. Middlebury College website. ( Memento from July 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

Commons : Bridport, Vermont  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• Homepage of the municipality (English)
• Entry of the parish on Vermont.gov
• Entry on VirtualVermont (English) ( Memento from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bridport in the United States Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System , accessed October 1, 2014
2. ↑ Population data from the 2010 US Census in the American Factfinder
3. ↑ Hemingway Hill on Peakery.com , accessed on 27 July 2017
4. ↑ Hamilton Hill on Peakery.com , accessed July 27, 2017
5. ↑ Coordinates of the locations of the Census Authority 2010
6. ↑ Climate data at www.City-Data.com (English)
7. ↑ Copy of the tax lists on www.accessgenealogy.com (English)
8. ↑ List for Addison County on the website www.VermontCivilWar.org ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) 
9. ↑ Population 1790–2010 according to the census results
10. ^ Addison Central School District / Homepage. In: acsdvt.org. Retrieved July 27, 2017 (English). 
11. ↑ Homepage of the Bridport Central School ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)