Life in the borderland

 

The border station at DerbyLine was just one location where travelers croosed one of the world's longest unarmed borders. 

Journal Opinion June 25, 2025

On an almost daily basis the news is filled with the relationship between the United States, New Hampshire and Vermont, and Canada.

It is only about 80 miles from here to the Canadian border. That means our area is located in what might be referred to as a borderland. Its history has been impacted by that proximity to another nation and somewhat distinct cultures.

This column covers several highlights of that history from colonial times to the 20th century. I have drawn on material from vintage publications, interviews and articles that I have written over the past 18 years.

Before 1763, the French and Indian War made the area unattractive for settlement because of the danger of attacks from the north by the French and their native allies. Those forces passed through the area to attack English settlements such as Fort #4 at Charlestown, New Hampshire. 

Nevertheless, men from southern New England explored the area in the early 18^th century. . Massachusetts’s Capt. Benjamin Wright led expeditions in 1709 and 1725, visiting present-day Haverhill and Ryegate.

In October, 1759, men in Robert Rogers’ Rangers, returning from an attack on Quebec’s St. Francis native village, passed south through the area. Capt. Joseph Waits shot a deer in the meadow near the mouth of the river that now carries his name.

 When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the French ceded their interests in Canada to the British.

The boundary between Quebec and New York, including what is now Vermont, was established at 45 degrees north latitude. The boundary between New Hampshire and Quebec was not finalized until 1842.

With the immediate threat of attack gone, the royal governor of New Hampshire chartered many local towns, and settlers flooded in from southern New England.

 The outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 brought a new succession of alarms for the early area residents.

During the earliest years of the Revolution, residents believed they were on the planned British invasion route from Canada to Massachusetts. Haverhill built four stockages to provide a secure place for citizens in case of attack. Loaded weapons were never far from willing hands.  

The British successes at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 “caused great consternation” in surrounding communities. They felt they were in “a dangerous and critical situation…open to sudden attack.”

Newbury’s Col. Jacob Bayley repeatedly wrote to General Washington promoting the idea of a preventative invasion route from Newbury to St. Johns on the Richelieu River.

When he received approval, Bayley began construction from Wells River following a route laid out by James Whitelaw of Ryegate. Col. Moses Hazen of Haverhill  led the construction of a second portion of the road.

The fear that it would become an invasion route for British forces caused construction to stop 40 miles short of St. Johns. The road became known as the Bayley-Hazen Road.

In October, 1780, a force of 300 natives and Tories headed to attack Newbury, but being warned that they were anticipated, they veered west and attacked Royalton and Tunbridge instead.

In May, 1782, Capt. Robert Rogers came into the Coos with a strong force, and encamped among the hills back of Bradford village, and communicated with other local Tories.   

Rogers was not the only loyalist who had roots in the local area. In 1776, John Peters of Bradford was forced by the “rebels” to escape to Canada. He spent the rest of the war fighting on the British side.

This fear of attack from Canada continued during the last two years of the Revolution and was again raised during the War of 1812. The only other attack from Canada came during the Civil War when a group of Confederates raided St. Albans in 1864.  

A different type of invasion, a peaceful migration of French Canadians, began in the early 1800s. Most Canadians of French descent were subsistence farmers and their number outgrew the available farmland. This shortage made the farmland of northern New England beckon.

Some migrants from Quebec came as seasonal workers with intensions of returning to their families. Others brought their families and settled on farms close to the border.

An additional French migration following the failed Patriote Revellion (1837) against British rule in Quebec.

It was estimated that by 1850, 62% of the 20,000 French Canadian immigrants had settled in Vermont. 

By the late 1800s, New Hampshire and Vermont had established programs to fill their abandoned farms with migrant families. In 1889, a St. Johnsbury newspaper said that French Canadians “own a good share of the farms in the northern tier of counties.”

By 1900, over a half-million French Canadians had migrated to the urban centers of New England. 

As with other immigrant groups, French Canadians were attracted by employment in New Hampshire and Vermont mills, forests, and mines. 

These immigrants were a major source of workers for the Fairbanks Scale Co. of St. Johnsbury, the Estey Organ Co. of Brattleboro, the granite industry of Barre, the paper mill in Berlin and the textile mills of Manchester, Lebanon, and the Burlington-Winooski area.

French-language newspapers, social organizations, credit unions, church parishes, and parochial schools flourished in many “petit Canada” neighborhoods.

From the west side of Manchester to border communities like Newport, VT, French was as common as English. As third and fourth generations became assimilated into the American culture, dedicated French Canadians became Franco-Americans.

The arrival of the French Canadians was not without controversy. The ugly reactions of discrimination and disapproval from the older Yankee stock began early and continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

One local resident who grew up near the border in the 1960s said some residents who spoke French at home were still reluctant to do so in public places.

One must not search far to find current local residents with French-based last names.  They include Coutermarche, Gagnon, Couillard, Lefebvre, and Trombley. Other names were anglicized.  

Immigration was a two-way street. Migrants from New England settled in Canada.  Many British loyalists settled in the Eastern Townships of Quebec during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

These English-speaking Quebec residents kept their ethnic identity in an increasingly French oriented province, but other relocated.

Rufus Pierson was one example of those who left Quebec and returned to the United States. He was born in 1852 in Danville, Quebec and moved to Topsham with his wife Luella. Together, they had 14 children most of whom lived to adulthood and formed the large local Pierson family which remains prevalent to this day.

There were others who settled locally. Over the years, Bradford residents with the last names Hutchinson, Haskins, and Morrill have been mentioned in local news when visiting relatives in Quebec.

Lee Morrill, who grew up in Bradford around 1960, said that, as a youngster, he often made summer visits with both his parents’ extended families who lived in the Eastern Townships.

Aside from familial ties the economic links have bounded both sides of the border.  

 In the late 18th century, overland routes were established from Boston and New York to Montreal and Quebec City. These routes connected with communities in New Hampshire and Vermont for both stage passengers and commercial products.  Steamships also accessed Quebec on Lake Champlain and Lake Memphremagog.

“The state’s economy was heavily reliant on trade with Canada, with Vermont wheat, beef, pork potash, and timber among the major exports.  In return, Vermont imported liquor, manufactured items, foodstuffs and other goods.”

The building of a railroad opened transportation to Quebec and beyond. The Connecticut & Passumpsic Rivers railroad reach Bradford in 1848 and St. Johnsbury in 1852. Newport became a railroad town in 1863 and, in 1870, the railroad was linked to Canada’s Grant Trunk line at Sherbrooke, Quebec.

In 1876, a Bradford passenger could buy a round-trip ticket for a grand tour of Montreal and Quebec on the Passumpsic for $12.50.

In 1888, the Orange County Gazette noted,” The people of Canada and along the line of the Passumpsic united in the enterprise, giving assurance that they would continue the road from Wells River to Montreal.” 

By then there were regular trains for Montreal and Quebec City from both Wells River on the Passumpsic and Haverhill on the Concord and Montreal line.

There were frequent newspaper notices of locals traveling to and from Canada for both personal and business reasons.

 Improved highways added an additional route to the border and beyond.

In 1927, the Connecticut River Highway became Route 5 to Derby Line and Quebec highways beyond Stanstead.  In 1931, Route 5 was improved by being paved. Bus routes connected Vermont and New Hampshire with Quebec.

The completion of I-91 increased the amount of personal and commercial traffic between Quebec and the Upper Valley, with connections to urban areas to the south. 

While legitimate trade passed back and forth across the border, there is also a tradition of smuggling of illegal items dating back to the founding of the two nations. 

Legitimate trade became a serious issue for Vermont’s economy when an embargo was placed on foreign trade in 1807.  President Jefferson took this action in reaction to the impact on America of a war between the British and the French.

The following year, Congress passed the “Land Embargo” which made the import of “any goods, wares or merchandise” illegal.

This prohibition’s impact on farmers, lumbermen and merchants made it both unpopular and ignored as many continued to trade with Canada.

Strategies were devised to prevent Vermonters from being branded and arrested as smugglers. Products were brought to the border and retrieved by those on the other side.

It was said that one farmer took his herd of pigs right up to the border, allowing them to be called across to corn feed bearing buyer on the other side. 

“Smuggler’s Notch lived up to its name.” with exports, now deemed illegal, passing in opposite directions through the mountains. 

There was so much illegal action that customs agents could not stem the flow, especially in the face of determined men on both sides of the border. For many smugglings was “not deemed dishonorable.”

Legal trade between the two nations resumed when the embargo was lifted in 1809.  However, illegal trade continued to evade import tariffs or other restrictions.

Historian Christopher Klein referred to the northern border as “a lawless no-man’s-land frequented by counterfeiters, transnational criminals, and outlaw gangs smuggling alcohol, produce, gypsum, and livestock.”

Lawmen from the two states sometimes had to coordinate with Canadian authorities to apprehend criminals who had fled to Canada.

An early example of this occurred in 1806 when Orange County Sheriff Micah Barron traveled to Lower Canada, and with the consent of Canadian authorities, apprehended the notorious counterfeiter Stephen Burroughs.

Smuggling continued throughout the 19th century. In July 1865, reports in the Newport newspaper mentioned items smuggled from Canada, including silk, nutmeg, and alcohol. Lake Memphremagog n the international border was a well-worn route for smugglers.

In 1893, the newspaper reported that treasury agents had broken up “an underground railroad’ involved in smuggling Chinese over the border in violation of U.S. immigration laws.

Smuggled items also passed into Canada. In 1879, the St. Albans Messenger reported an increased in smuggled goods into Canada of cotton goods, hardware, and “every kind of manufactured goods.” An increase in Canadian tariffs on American goods created “a strong inducement” for smuggling.

Prohibitions against the sale of alcoholic beverages first enacted by New Hampshire and Vermont, and then by the federal government, opened the market to widespread smuggling from Canada. 

 While efforts were made to interrupt smuggling at the border, smugglers made their way along local supply routes to markets south. Heavily loaded vehicles were often noticed speeding along local roads, sometimes followed by pursuing enforcers.

Some smugglers were apprehended. In May 1917, a car with 375 bottles of Canadian ale was captured at Wells River.

Even after Prohibition came to an end, smugglers, to avoid federal taxes, still moved large amounts of Canadian liquor across the border.

Over the years, since smuggling has continued across the border in both directions. Human trafficking, drugs, and goods legal or taxed in one jurisdiction but not the other.     

Vehicles with Canadian license plates are common on area highways often passing American vehicles going north. For those living along the border, reactions to the meeting of two nations range from frequent contacts to discounting the impact of the transnational economies.

Recent events may change the latter as we become very aware of the impact that the transnational economies of the two nations have on the economy of Northern New England.

Beginning with a senior class trip to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, I have taken hundreds of students to Quebec for student exchanges or day trips. My hope was that those visits would create a favorable awareness of that what exists on both sides of this borderland.