Town Promotion in Nineteenth-Century Vermont

Abstract

IN recent years there has been a growing interest in the history of cities in the United States. This has resulted in the publication of a number of city histories and some excellent studies of nineteenth-century town promotion.' Most of the scholarship devoted to town promotion has concentrated on the trans-Appalachian West, neglecting northern New England.2 This neglect is understandable because in the nineteenth century the population was expanding westward, and the cities beyond the Appalachian Mountains were mushrooming. On the other hand, in northern New England the population trends were not keeping pace with the rest of the nation. Indeed, Lewis D. Stillwell reminds us that in Vermont by 1860 more than half the towns... were losing population, and forty-two per cent of the natives ... were living in other states.3