Barton, Vermont: Crystal Lake and a Daring Capture

Barton, Vermont takes its name from Colonel William Barton, a Rhode Island officer who pulled off one of the Revolution's most audacious moves: a midnight raid in seventeen seventy-seven that captured British General Richard Prescott right out of his headquarters near Newport. In the spirit of that Rhode Island connection, veterans originally petitioned to name this town Providence, after their home city, but by the time the charter was formally issued on October twentieth, seventeen eighty-nine, the name honored their colonel instead. The town sits at the southern end of Crystal Lake, a glacial kettle pond.

Settlers arrived in the years after the charter, built mills on the outlet stream, and later quarried granite from the surrounding hills. The lake remains the heart of the community today.