Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Spring 2014, Vol. 40, No. 1 | Page 8

by Paul S. Gillies, Esq.

RUMINATIONS
The Legal History of Jamaica, Vermont
To understand the legal history of Vermont, we might start with a legal history of
one town. The dart is thrown, and lands on
Jamaica. Jamaica, a small town deep in the
Green Mountains, in Windham County, has
left large footprints on the law of Vermont.
It has trod into areas of pauper law, highways, property tax assessment, and others,
and the decisions that emerged from its
controversies became precedents that affected other towns in similar situations.
Introducing Jamaica

Jamaica was chartered in 1780, by proprietors including Thomas Chittenden,
Matthew Lyon, and Ira Allen. Governor
Thomas Chittenden issued the charter, and
the town organized the next year. Its charter required each proprietor to plant and
cultivate at least five acres of land, and
build a house at least eight feet square on
it, within four years once the war ended,
and reserved all the tallest pine trees for
the navy.1 Vermont had no navy in 1780, but
the New Hampshire charters that served in
part as models for Vermont contained that
condition, and it was continued after Vermont began issuing its own. In case Vermont ever needs them, those trees remain
dedicated to a naval use.
There is a dispute over the origin of the
name. In one account the name stems from
the island paradise in the Caribbean Sea,
the word that was first heard by white men
on Columbus’s second voyage to the new
world, affixed to the island that now bears
its name by Arawack Indians, meaning a
land of rivers and underground streams.2
Esther Munroe Swift states it was a Natick
Indian word meaning “beaver.” There were
Jamaicas in Massachusetts and New York
before this town took the name.3 It contains forty-two square miles, and is trapezoidal in shape. Its population crested
1,000 in the 2012 census. Ten years after
it was organized, it held 263 people, and
the town grew over time to 1,600 before
the Civil War, then gradually slipped down
in population to 496 by 1960.4 The town
is boxed in by Londonderry on the north,
Townshend on the east, Wardsboro on the
south, and the towns of Stratton and Winhall on the west. That western line separates Windham from Bennington Counties.
Route 30 travels southeasterly for a mile,
then joins up with Route 100 for its merry way toward Townshend and Brattleboro,
following the West River. That route was
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laid out by the state in 1801, but not until 1931 did it cease being a town highway.
Much of the town lies in the Green Mountain National Forest. The West River runs
around Ball Mountain, and heads southeasterly, gathering waters from Mill Brook
and other streams, on its way to the Connecticut River. The Pinnacle is the highest
point in town, at 2,542 feet.
The town’s write-up in the Federal Writers’ Project Guide to the Green Mountain
State (1933) includes one story of early Jamaica. “According to persistent legend, the
first minister of the Congregational Church,
John Stoddard, was dismissed from the
pastorate in 1799 for selling his wife to
another man. Mrs. Stodda ɐ