Westford

History

The area that is today described as Westford, Vermont originally fell within the traditional territories of the Sokoki, Missisquoi, and Cowasuck bands of the Western Abenaki tribes. Newly introduced infectious diseases and attacks by English settlers greatly impacted native populations and prompted their emigration to Quebec by the 1670s, opening the land for settlement by European immigrants. The original charter for the Town of Westford was granted at a cost of by New Hampshire's provisional governor Benning Wentworth on June 8, 1763, as part of a series of what came to be known as New Hampshire Grants.{{Refn|group=nb|Other New Hampshire Grants dated June 8, 1763, include Berlin, Mansfield, Midlesex, Milton, Stow, Underhill, and Worster. From their founding, both Westford and Underhill shared many of the same grantees, and settlement between the two towns occurred in concert with families such as the Macombers living in Westford but conducting business on Underhill's Mount Macomber. Governor Wentworth's land grants in the area that is today Vermont were considered controversial at the time and since the early 1750s New York, which also laid claim to the area, had challenged the validity of town charters granted by Wentworth. Between 1764 and 1770, in a series of legal decisions handed down by England's Board of Trade and the New York Supreme Court of Judicature, New York was found to be the proper jurisdictional body for the area and Wentworth's charters were invalidated. New York immediately began redistricting the area by land patent, putting Westford within the now-extinct Charlotte County (formed 1772), and requiring residents to repurchase their land from New York in order to retain legal title. The residents of Westford (together with residents of the other…

Geography

Westford is in northern Chittenden County, bordered by Franklin and Lamoille counties to the north. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.53%, is water. Prominent waterways include Westford Pond, Pond Brook, Rogers Brook, and the Browns River (on the east), as well as Morgan Brook (in the town's center) and Beaver Brook (in the northeast near Cloverdale). The town has a number of named hills including those named after prominent families (e.g. Duffy and Stewart), and others named descriptively (e.g. Oak, Beech, Spruce, Bald, and Prospect). In her bicentennial work, Vermont Place-Names, historian Esther Munroe Swift suggests that some of the more abstract names of Westford's hills may closely reflect the sentiments of the original English settlers. Swift notes that the process of subdividing down to individual lots was often done in stages with the first few lots representing land suitable for dwellings and tillage, the second group of lots representing pasture land, and the third group representing land suitable only for logging. Swift points to hills like Westford's Number Eleven Hill (never renamed from its original lot number) and Jack Lot Hill as examples of hills whose names reflect the dissatisfaction of their owners with the quality of land. The town of Westford contains two villages: Brookside (centered in the bend of Rogers Brook along Maple Tree Lane and Brookside Road), and Westford (commonly known as Westford Center and centered on the Westford Commons). Smaller communities include the hamlet of Cloverdale (located near Vermont Route 15 in Westford's northeast corner), Osgood Hill where early settler Manassah Osgood first settled, Bowman's Corners just south of Brookside, and the historic…

Race & ethnicity