I've started a "thing" of trying to drive down one new road every time I'm driving somewhere. That's getting a little challenging when I'm headed down to Middlebury (though still far from impossible), but easy as pie when I'm headed north. Recently I've checked out Little Ireland Road, Lafayette Road, Belden Falls Road and today, the road that leads to Hillsboro.
I'd always wondered a bit why the sign on rte 116 read simply "Hillsboro," and not "Hillsboro Road," but I guess it's because Hillsboro was considered a neighborhood of Starksboro, and this is merely the access road? The other day, I was really surprised by how far up Little Ireland Road (and then Ireland Road) continued, with houses and farms and more houses and farms -- the most beautiful farm was located way up Ireland Road. But the Hillsboro road was quite different. Though both roads are dirt, the Ireland Road is wide and clear and well-graded. The Hillsboro road was not: 2 ruts, with broken branches frequently strewn across it. I wouldn't much like to be going up there during Mud Season -- and I very much doubt it gets plowed in winter. After a mere 3 or 4 houses and camps, it's clear that there are no more utilities going up the road -- no electricity, for example. It almost seemed like a private road, really, but there were no signs telling me to stop, so I didn't.
Though I passed a sign on the left saying "Starksboro Municipal Forest," things didn't get interesting until a couple of miles in. And then, I realized I was in old farm land. There's a certain look about Vermont roads when you're in the vicinity of an old farm. It's unmistakable -- I spotted it on my walk around the woods here the other day, too, just up from the paddock where the Norris horses are. The road runs carefully between banks on either side, usually with classic New England stone walls. But even when there aren't the stone walls, it's still clear. Is it the banks? the mature trees? the occasional enormous maple tree? I'm not sure. But suddenly, through the seeming wildness of the woods, you know that people used to live here, farm here, work here.
I say "seeming wildness" because Jan Albers' wonderful book Hands on the Land has taught us all that Vermont was not always so wild, that all or most of these forests and woods, sylvan idylls now, were once fields and pastures. In the nineteenth century, many of them were homes to merino sheep (ah, happy sheep, and happy shepherds!). But the bottom of the market fell out on merino wool with the growth of the Australian market, and merino sheep were seen no more. Moreover, upland farms, with their shorter growing seasons and rockier soil became less practicable, so people moved down -- or out. And the woods moved back in.
Hillsboro, sadly, is clearly no more. Once there was a community large enough to have its own cemetery up there, and now, there is nothing I could find but trees. The cemetery was not as large as the So. Starksboro cemetery, but it wasn't just a single family affair either. It was certainly dominated by Hills, however! Lots of them. The saddest tomb was of someone named True Layn and his wife (Anne?). Four of their children were buried with them, and three of those died by age 8. The fourth, a daughter, died when she was 21. I wonder if they had other children. I hope so.
When I came home, I checked out Bertha's Book, the indispensable compendium of Starksboro history, to see what Bertha Hanson had to say about Hillsboro. Hillsboro was actually one of the first little communities she wrote about, back in 1957, but she didn't have too much to say, except to tell the story of the four Hill brothers who settled in various parts of Starksboro (not just Hillsboro) in the years around 1800. Heroic Samuel Hill hauled all his worldly goods from Barrington New Hampshire by dragging them on a hand sled in 1798! But by 1870, there was only one Hill family living up there, though once there had been a schoolhouse, a society of Baptists and other families, of course. As Bertha wrote: "changinge social and economic conditions led many of the second generation to move away from the hill farms. Some went west, some went to other towns, others bought land in the valley." (p. 14)
And thus, Hillsboro became the quite place in the woods that it is now. From the cemetery, I could look off to the south and see what I assume was Little Ireland Road in the distance. But once upon a time, the land must have all been cleared, just as it appears in the cheerful photo on page 15 of Bertha's Book: "Haying in Hillsboro."
I suspect that the road continues well beyond the cemetery, but I wasn't able to follow it, alas. One of the super-centenarian maple trees had fallen just across the road about a hundred yards further on, blocking my way. Perhaps the approach of hunting season will inspire someone to clear the road. I'll certainly go back and check again.
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