Brattleboro , originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located about 10 miles (16 km) north of the Massachusetts state line at the confluence of Vermont’s West River and Connecticut. With a 2022 Census population of 12,106, it is the most populous municipality abutting Vermont’s eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River.

There are satellite campuses of two colleges in Brattleboro: Community College of Vermont, and Vermont Technical College. Located in Brattleboro are the New England Center for Circus Arts,Vermont Jazz Center, and the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental health and addictions hospital.

History

Indigenous people

This place was called “Wantastiquet” by Indigenous people.

Frontier fort

To defend the Massachusetts Bay Colony against Chief Gray Lock and others during Dummer’s War, the Massachusetts General Court voted on December 27, 1723, to build a blockhouse and stockade on the Connecticut River near the site of what would later become known as Brattleboro. Lieutenant-governor William Dummer signed the measure, and construction of Fort Dummer began on February 3, 1724. It was completed before summer. On October 11 of that year, the French attacked the fort and killed some soldiers. In 1725, Dummer’s War ended.

By 1728, and in subsequent peaceful periods, the fort served as a trading post for commerce among the colonial settlers and the Indians. But violence flared up from time to time throughout the first half of the 18th century. In 1744, what became known as King George’s War broke out, lasting until 1748. During this period a small body of British colonial troops were posted at the fort, but after 1750 this was considered unnecessary.

Although the area was originally part of the Equivalent Lands, the township became one of the New Hampshire grants, and was chartered (founded) as such on December 26, 1753, by Governor Benning Wentworth. It was named Brattleborough, after Brigadier-General William Brattle, Jr. of Boston, a military officer, cleric, slaveholder as well as a principal proprietor. Ironically, there is no record that Brattle ever visited the locality, and settlement activities remained tentative until after the 1763 Treaty of Paris, when France abandoned their claims to Vermont, part of the region which they had called New France.

Hostilities having ceased, Brattleboro developed quickly in peacetime, and soon was second to no other settlement in the state for business and wealth. In 1771, Stephen Greenleaf opened Vermont’s first store in the east village, and in 1784, a post office was established. A bridge was built across the Connecticut River to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1804.

In 1834, the Brattleboro Retreat, then called the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, was established through a generous bequest by Anna Marsh of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In 1844, the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment was opened by Robert Wesselhoeft; this was the third “water cure” establishment in the country, utilizing waters from a spring near the current downtown fire station. Until the water cure closed in 1871, the town was widely known as a curative health resort.

Other industries began to appear in the town under the initiation of the businessman John Holbrook, who initiated firms like the Brattleboro Typographic Company. These businesses initiated a decade of very successful printing industry in the town.

Mill town

Whetstone Falls, very close to where Brattleboro’s Whetstone Brook flows into the Connecticut River, was a handy source of water power for watermills, initially a sawmill and a gristmill. By 1859, when the population had reached 3,816, Brattleboro had a woolen textile mill, a paper mill, a manufacturer of papermaking machinery, a factory making melodeons, two machine shops, a flour mill, a carriage factory, and four printing establishments. Connected by the Vermont & Massachusetts Railroad and the Vermont Valley Railroad, the town prospered as a regional center for trade in commodities including grain, lumber, turpentine, tallow and pork. In 1888, the spelling of the town’s name was shortened to Brattleboro.

The Estey Organ company, the largest organ manufacturer in the United States, operated in Brattleboro for about a century beginning in 1852. The company’s main factory was located southwest of downtown Brattleboro, on the south side of Whetstone Brook between Birge and Organ Streets. At its height, the complex had more than 20 buildings, many of which were interconnected by raised walkways and covered bridges. One of the buildings now houses the Estey Organ Museum. The entire surviving complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, both for its architecture, and for having been a major economic force in Brattleboro for many years.

In 1871, Thomas P. James, “The Spirit Pen of Dickens”, a printer by trade, moved to Brattleboro, where he took a job at The Vermont Farmer and Record. James claimed that the departed spirit of Charles Dickens had given him a communication during at a seance on Oak Street. According to James, Dickens’ spirit conveyed that he had chosen James to write down the end of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, which Dickens had not completed before he died. Dickens’ spirit also supposedly told James that it was fine if James made a profit from the book. The book was printed by the same company that owned the Springfield Union, which was the paper that published the first news about James’ claims, as well as excerpts from the new chapters of the novel. Newspaper editors from papers around New England who had employed James denounced the entire affair as a well-planned advertising hoax. The book became a sensation, being reviewed in the New York Times and widely promoted in spiritualist magazines of the day. James published the novel on October 31, 1873, and reported that he sold 30,000 copies of it. James left Brattleboro in 1879, abandoning his third wife, and moving to Watertown, Massachusetts, with his fourth wife Lizzie Plummer, a member of the wealthy Salisbury family with ties to Brattleboro’s printing and paper making industries.

British author Rudyard Kipling settled in Brattleboro after marrying a young Brattleboro woman, Carrie Balestier, in 1892. The couple built a home called Naulakha, just over the town line to the north in neighboring Dummerston. Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and other works there. He also wrote about local life in the early 1890s: heavy snowfalls, ox-teams drawing sledges, and people in the small towns beset with what he called a “terrifying intimacy” about each other’s lives. He recorded the death of men who had left, going to seek their fortunes in the cities or out west, and the consequent loneliness and depression in the lives of local women; the long length of the workday for farmers, even in winter, often for lack of help; and the abandonment of farms.

The first person ever to receive a U.S. Social Security benefit check, issued on January 31, 1940, was Ida May Fuller from Brattleboro.

On May 12, 1950, auctioneer Emma Bailey held her first auction in Brattleboro, selling a rocking chair for $2.50. She was the first American woman auctioneer, and later became the first woman admitted to the National Auctioneers Association.

Education

Brattleboro has a diverse mix of public and private primary, secondary and post-secondary schools and career centers. Sub-campuses of the Community College of Vermont and Vermont Technical College are located in Brattleboro; in the downtown’s newly renovated Brooks House. Brattleboro is also home to the New England Academic Center of Union Institute and University, housed in the Marlboro College Graduate Center building.

SIT Graduate Institute, formerly known as the School for International Training, is a private higher education institution in northern Brattleboro. An outgrowth of The Experiment in International Living, which was founded in 1932 in nearby Putney, Vermont, the Graduate Institute offers master’s degrees in several internationally oriented concentrations. Its students and faculty hail from all regions of the globe, giving Brattleboro a decidedly eclectic and international flair, and its notable alumni include native Vermonter and 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams.

Brattleboro currently has three public K–6 elementary schools. They are:

There is one public middle school, the Brattleboro Area Middle School (BAMS), and one public high school, the Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS). The Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, which oversees the public school system in the southeastern corner of Windham County, also administers a dedicated vocational education unit, the Windham Regional Career Center.Oak Meadow, a K–12 homeschool curriculum provider and distance learning school is also based out of downtown Brattleboro.

Demographics

As of the census of 2010, there were 12,046 people, 5,364 households, and 2,880 families residing in the town. Almost all of the population is concentrated in two census-designated places identified in the town: Brattleboro and West Brattleboro. The results of recent censuses indicate very little change in the overall number of people living in the town. Despite this, Brattleboro remains the most populous town along Vermont’s eastern border.

The population density of the town was 375.3 people per square mile (144.9/km). There were 5,686 housing units at an average density of 177.7 per square mile (68.6/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 92.1% White, 1.9% Black or African American, 0.3% Native American, 2.2% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.6% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.7% of the population.

There were 5,364 households, out of which 27.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.8% were married couples living together, 12.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 46.3% were non-families. 37.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.15 and the average family size was 2.84.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 22.3% under the age of 18, 6.6% from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 25.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 79.9 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $31,997, and the median income for a family was $44,267. Males had a median income of $31,001 versus $25,329 for females. The per capita income for the town was $19,554. About 9.2% of families and 13.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.0% of those under age 18 and 9.2% of those age 65 or over.