Middlesex,
Vermont
Middlesex took its
boundaries from Waterbury, which had been granted the day before. Worcester, which was
granted on the same day as Middlesex, took its boundaries from Middlesex. For that reason
it has always been assumed this town was named for its location between the other two.
However, if one keeps in mind Benning Wentworth's propensity for touching as many bases as
he could, it seems that he may have had one, two or even three other sources in mind.
First, many colonial settlers had come from the county of
Middlesex in England. Second, towns of Middlesex in Massachusetts and Connecticut already
were well known and prosperous. Third, an English nobleman had Middlesex as one of his
titles: Charles Sackville was styled Lord Middlesex until 1765, when he succeeded his
father as the second Duke of Dorset. He was married to a daughter of Richard Boyle, the
third Earl of Burlington. Lord Middlesex seems to have been a pretty poor sort. Lord
Shelburne said he was "a man who had little good sense and less stability." This
would not have deterred Wentworth, who was more concerned with potential political support
than with character. Middlesex (having become the Duke of Dorset) was in the House of
Lords when Wentworth granted the town of Middlesex. In any case, as Shelburne also went on
to say, Middlesex had some redeeming features: he loved music and poetry.
In 1770 acting governor Cadwallader Colden of New
York also tried to use the Middlesex name. He issued a patent for a town which was to have
been called Middlesex, located in the area of present-day Bethel and Randolph. Like most
New York patents, that one never progressed beyond the status of a paper town.
The town's history relates that in the late
1800's Middlesex still had a large bear population, as attested to by the story of a
farmer and his wife who went out to find what had killed one of their sheep. The farmer
spotted a bear and killed it; then his wife called out that she could see another. The
farmer killed that bear, too, and they started back home, only to find the one they had
been looking for, a third bear eating a sheep. If that was a sample of the bear population
in Middlesex it is easy to see why one section of town was for years known as Beartown. It
is claimed that another section was such a miserable place to live that it was called
merely Skunks Misery.
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