The geologic history of Vermont begins more than 450 million years ago during the Cambrian and Devonian periods.
Human history of Native American settlement can be divided into the hunter-gatherer Archaic Period, from c. 7000–1000 BC, and the sedentary Woodland Period, from c. 1000 BC to AD 1600. Vermont was admitted to the United States as the fourteenth state in 1791 after a brief period of sovereignty following the American Revolutionary War. Vermont experienced rising abolitionist sentiment and subsequently fought for the Union side in the American Civil War.
Vermont experienced significant demographic changes from the mid-19th century through 1980. The mid-1800s brought waves of Irish, Scottish, and Italian immigrants who joined the predominantly English and French Canadian population, with many working in Barre's granite industry. European immigration peaked between 1890-1900, with Italian and Scottish women often operating boarding houses to help newcomers integrate.
Early 20th century tensions emerged as Protestant Anglo-Americans worried about rural decline and growing Catholic populations from continued Irish, Italian, and French Canadian immigration. Despite these social tensions, Vermont saw remarkable population growth between 1970-1980, increasing from 444,732 to 511,456 residents - a 15% jump representing the largest growth since the Revolutionary War era.. Vermont established itself as a progressive leader in the 21st century through landmark legislation. It pioneered LGBTQ+ rights by becoming the first state to introduce civil unions in 2000 and the first to voluntarily legalize same-sex marriage in 2009 without court pressure. Vermont also led on cannabis reform, becoming the first state to legalize recreational marijuana through legislative action in 2018, while also being the ninth state to allow medical marijuana use.
Geological and marine history Vermont was covered with shallow seas periodically from the Cambrian to Devonian periods. Most of the sedimentary rocks laid down in these seas were deformed by mountain-building. Fossils, however, are common in the Lake Champlain region. Lower areas of western Vermont have flooded again, as part of the St. Lawrence Valley and Champlain Valley by Lake Vermont whose northern boundary followed the melting glacier at the end of the last ice age until it reached the ocean. This was replaced by Lake Vermont and the Champlain Sea, when the land had not yet rebounded from the weight of the glaciers which were sometimes thick. Shells of salt-water mollusks, along with the bones of beluga whales, have been found in the Lake Champlain region.
Lake Vermont is connected to a glacial western lake near what is now the Great Lakes. They allowed western fish to enter the state, which is why Vermont has more native species than any other New England State, 78. About half of these are western in origin.
Little is known of the pre-Columbian history of Vermont. Between 8500 and 7000 BC, glacial activity created the saltwater Champlain Sea. This event caused lamprey, Atlantic salmon, and rainbow smelt to become landlocked.
Native American period Native Americans inhabited and hunted in Vermont. From 7000 to 1000 BC was the Archaic Period. During that era, Native Americans migrated year-round. From 1000 BC to 1600 AD was the Woodland Period, when villages and trade networks were established, and ceramic and bow and arrow technology were developed. The western part of the state became home to a small population of Algonquian-speaking tribes, including the Mohican and Abenaki peoples.
The Sokoki lived in what is now southern Vermont; the Cowasucks in northeastern Vermont.
Between 1534 and 1609, the Iroquois Mohawks drove many of the smaller native tribes out of the Champlain Valley, later using the area as a hunting ground and warring with the remaining Abenaki.
Early European period French exploration and settlement French explorer Samuel de Champlain claimed the area of what is now Lake Champlain, giving the name, Verd Mont (Green Mountain) to the region he found, on a 1647 map. Evidence suggests that this name came into use among English settlers, before it morphed to "Vermont", ca. 1760.
To aid and impress his new Abenaki allies, Champlain shot and killed an Iroquois chief with an arquebus, July 29, 1609. While the Iroquois were already enemies with the Abenaki, they formed a permanent enmity with the French with this incident, ultimately costing the French the bulk of their most developed possessions in the New World, including the contested area of most of Vermont, at the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763.
France claimed Vermont as part of New France, and erected Fort Sainte Anne on Isle La Motte in 1666 as part of their fortification of Lake Champlain. This was the first European settlement in Vermont.
During the latter half of the 17th century, non-French settlers began to explore Vermont and its surrounding area. In 1690, a group of Dutch-British settlers from Albany under Captain Jacobus de Warm established the De Warm Stockade at Chimney Point (eight miles west of Addison). This settlement and trading post were directly across the lake from Crown Point, New York (Pointe à la Chevelure).
There were regular periods of skirmishing between English colonies to the south and the French colony to the north, and the area of Vermont was an unsettled frontier. In 1704, De Rouville passed up the Winooski (Onion) River, to reach the Connecticut, and then down to Deerfield, Massachusetts, which he raided.
British settlement During Father Rale's War, the first permanent British settlement was established in 1724 with the construction of Fort Dummer in Vermont's far southeast under the command of Lieutenant Timothy Dwight of Connecticut. This fort protected the nearby settlements of Dummerston and Brattleboro in the surrounding area. These settlements were made by people from Massachusetts and Connecticut. The second British settlement at Bennington in the southwest corner of Vermont would not be made until after 37 years of conflict in the region.
In 1725, 60 armed men entered Vermont with rough maps, with the goal of attacking the Village of St. Francis, but turned back at Crown Point.
In 1731, the French arrived at Chimney Point, near Addison. Here they constructed a small temporary wooden stockade (Fort de Pieux) until work on Fort St. Frédéric began in 1734. When this fort was completed, Fort de Pieux was abandoned as unneeded.
There was another period of conflict from 1740 to 1748, the War of the Austrian Succession or King George's War. There were raids at a private defensive work, Bridgeman's Fort, in Vernon, Vermont.
During the French and Indian War, 1755–1761, some Vermont settlers joined the colonial militia assisting the British in attacks on the French at Fort Carillon.
Rogers' Rangers staged an attack against the Abenaki village of Saint-Francis, Quebec from Lake Champlain in 1759. Separating afterwards, they fled the angered French and Abenakis through northern Vermont back to safety in Lake Champlain and New Hampshire.
Following France's loss in the French and Indian War, the 1763 Treaty of Paris gave control of the whole region to the British. Colonial settlement was limited by the British to lands east of the Appalachians, and Vermont was divided nearly in half in a jagged line running from Fort William Henry on Lake George diagonally north-eastward to Lake Memphremagog. Lands north of this line, including the entire Champlain Valley, were reserved for Indians. During this time French families were largely driven out, although scholars of the Vermont Archaeological Society have questioned if a French influence was removed completely, noting some remote farms may have eluded the notice of the British colonists.
New Hampshire Grants, New York's claim, and the Vermont Republic
The end of the war brought new settlers to Vermont. The first settler of the grants was Samuel Robinson, who began clearing land in Bennington in 1761.
In the 28 years from 1763 to 1791, the non-Indian population of Vermont rose from 300 to 85,000.
A fort at Crown Point had been built in 1759, and the Crown Point Military Road stretched across the Green Mountains from Springfield to Chimney Point, making traveling from the neighboring British colonies easier than ever before. Three colonies laid claim to the area. The Province of Massachusetts Bay claimed the land on the basis of the 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Province of New York claimed Vermont based on land granted to the Duke of York (later King James II & VII) in 1664. (The Connecticut River was also the eastern boundary of 1616 claim by Dutch colonists, though the British-Dutch border near the Atlantic Ocean would later be adjusted considerably.) The Province of New Hampshire, whose western limits had never been determined, also claimed Vermont, in part based upon a decree of George II in 1740. On March 5, 1740, George II ruled that Massachusetts's northern boundary in this area would be its present location - due west from a point three miles due north of Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River. The boundary was surveyed by Richard Hasen in 1741, and Fort Dummer (Brattleboro), was found to be north of the line. Provisions and support for Fort Dummer were ordered by the Colonial Office from New Hampshire in the following years.
New Hampshire's governor, Benning Wentworth, issued a series of 135 land grants between 1749 and 1764 called the New Hampshire Grants. Many of these were in a large valley on the west (or New York side) of the Green Mountains and only about forty miles from Albany. The town was laid out in 1749 and was settled after the war in 1761. The town was named Bennington for Wentworth. The location of the town was well north of the Massachusetts limit set by decree in 1740, and east of the known eastern limit of New York, twenty miles east of the Hudson River. Ultimately, by 1754, Wentworth had granted lands for 15 towns.
On July 20, 1764, King George III signed an Order in Council to establish various boundaries to quell disputes among the North American colonies. The boundary between the Province of New York and the Province of Quebec was set at the 45th parallel north, from the Connecticut River to the St. Lawrence River. George gave the land west of the Connecticut River to New York, reasoning that the wealthier province would act as a buffer between the expansionist New Hampshire and the Catholic, French-speaking Quebecois. Under this decree, Albany County, New York, as it then existed, implicitly gained the land presently known as Vermont. Although the exact line was later disputed, the river is still the modern boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont.
New York took the declaration of 1764 to apply retroactively, and considered the New Hampshire grants invalid. It therefore required land holders to purchase new grants for the same land from New York. New York then created counties in the region, with courthouses, sheriffs, and jails, and began judicial proceedings against those who held land solely by New Hampshire grants.
In 1767, the Privy Council forbade New York from selling land in Vermont that was in conflict with grants from New Hampshire, reversing the 1764 decision.
In 1770, Ethan Allen—along with his brothers Ira and Levi, as well as Seth Warner—recruited an informal militia, the Green Mountain Boys, to protect the interests of the original New Hampshire settlers against the new migrants from New York. A significant standoff occurred at the Breakenridge farm in Bennington, when a sheriff from Albany arrived with a posse of 750 men to dispossess Breakenridge. The residents raised a body of about 300 armed men to resist. The Albany sheriff demanded Breakenridge, and was informed, "If you attempt it, you are a dead man." The sheriff returned to Albany.