Mansion_rev8.qxd - National Park Service

een suitable for growing wheat, rye, corn, oats, peas, and
beans–crops commonly grown by Vermont settlers. 39 On
his rougher terrain at the foot of Mount Tom, corresponding
with the Mansion grounds, Cady may have used the
land in part as pasture. 40
LANDSCAPE SUMMARY
Prior to European settlement in the eighteenth century,
the Mansion grounds and the surrounding floodplain at
the eastern foot of Mount Tom were part of a vast northern
hardwoods forest that may have been occupied by the
Western Abenaki as a seasonal camp. According to oral tradition
recorded in the late nineteenth century, John
Perkins was the first European to settle near the Mansion
grounds in c.1769. He built a log hut located east of the
Mansion grounds in the general location of the Upper
Barns at Billings Farm & Museum. By 1776, John
Hoisington had acquired two hundred acres in the
Ottauquechee intervale, and in 1782, sold part of this property,
including all or part of the Mansion grounds, to
Charles Kilham. The next year, Kilham in turn sold fifty of
these acres, again including all or part of the Mansion
grounds, to James Cady. It was Cady who built a house
directly east of the Mansion in c.1783, replacing the earlier
Perkins log hut. From its elevated position on an intervale
terrace, the Cady house probably looked out across an
open meadow that extended across the intervale to the
river. To the west or rear of the house rose Mount Tom,
which remained forested, and to the south across the
Ottauquechee River was the young village of Woodstock.
In 1789, James Cady sold his fifty-acre farm to Charles
Marsh, and moved to Royalton, north of Woodstock. 41
Over the next two decades, Charles Marsh was to
transform the property into one of the most prominent
places in Woodstock.
ENDNOTES
1 W. J. Latmer et al., Soil Survey (Reconnaissance) of
Vermont (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of
Agriculture, 1930), 2; David Steward, The Glacial Geology of
Vermont (Montpelier: Vermont Geological Survey Bulletin
No. 19, 1961), 45.
2
Ping Hsi Chang, et al., Bedrock Geology of the Woodstock
Quadrangle, Vermont (Montpelier: Vermont Geological
Survey, Bulletin No. 29, 1965), 13.
3
The general geological reference for this section is: R. D.
Hatcher, W. A. Thomas, and G. W. Viele, "The Appalchian-
Ouchita Orogen in the United States," in Decade of North
American Geology (Geological Society of America, 1989),
Volume F-2.
4 Chang, 38-41.
5 Christopher McGrory Klyza and Stephen C. Trombulak,
The Story of Vermont: A Natural and Cultural History
(Hanover, N.H.: Published for Middlebury College Press
by University Press of New England, 1999), 17-18.
6 David P. Stewart, The Glacial Geology of Vermont
(Montpelier: Vermont Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 19,
1961), 68.
7
David P. Steward et al., "Original Surficial Mapping,"
Woodstock 15 Minute Quadrangle (Montpelier: Vermont
Geological Survey, mapping completed 1956-1966).
8
Thomas M. Bonnicksen, America’s Ancient Forests From
the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 2000), 32.
9
New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation, Ecological Communities of New York State
(Latham, N.Y.: Published by the Department, no date), 57-
59; Albers, 42-43; Zadeck Thompson, History of Vermont,
Natural Civil, and Statistical (Burlington: Published for the
author by C. Goodrich, 1842), 209-218; Bonnicksen, 270.
10 Henry Swan Dana, The History of Woodstock, Vermont
1761-1886, Rev. ed. with an Introduction and Epilogue by
Peter S. Jennison (Taftsville: Published for the Woodstock
Foundation by the Countryman Press, 1980), 13-14.
11 Bonnicksen, 280.
12 Albers, 44.
13 Calloway, 6, 14.
14 Calloway, 8-9, 12.
15 Calloway, 10; Day, 210.
PRE-1789
16
Albers, 58; based on work of William Haviland and
Marjory Power, The Original Vermonters (Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1994); Gordon Day,
"Western Abenaki." In Michael K. Foster and William
17