Carla Occaso
Berlin was settled by a hunter and a handful of Revolutionary War soldiers and their families, according to multiple accounts. One of the first permanent settlers was Jacob Fowler, a hunter, who traveled along the Winooski River and its branches, according to an article published on the website Vermontgeneology.com. Fowler is known to have followed a trail that led to Berlin Pond. Today, one of the barely marked “trails” that led directly from what is now Montpelier to Berlin Pond is mostly paved and named “Hill Street,” which branches to the south off Berlin Street and away from the Winooski River about half way between Main Street and Granite Street when heading east out of Montpelier.
Zachariah Perrin settled in Berlin in 1789, helped found the Congregational Church, and had a large family. Eleazar Hubbard bought land that is now Benjamin’s Falls at the north end of Berlin Pond around 1790, and started the first grist mill. David Nye arrived around 1790, and along with co-creating a large family, cultivated beef cattle that he sold in the Boston market. Nye was also elected the town’s first town clerk and an adopter of the Temperance movement.
Many settlers came to Berlin with their families by pulling their belongings in ox carts or on sleds. And several settled on the west side of Berlin Pond, where you can still see networks of overgrown rock walls. Both William Flagg and Jacob Black were listed as fighting in the Battle of Bunker Hill and at Monmouth Court under Gen. George Washington. Both started farms adjacent to each other west of Berlin Pond. Jacob and Abigail Black were also parents to the first child born in Berlin, Abigail K. Black, in 1789.
The first school was kept by Dr. Gershom Heaton in the winter of 1794–95, in a log house. The gravestones of Heaton, Flagg, and Black and can be found in Black Cemetery. Also nestled there is the gravestone of Ruhamah Ellis, noted as being the “relict” of Capt. Daniel Taylor. Taylor came to Berlin in 1793 after serving in the Revolutionary War and surviving captivity by the British army. He had a farm, ran a tavern, and kept a small grocery.
If you drive around Berlin Pond today, you can see the remnants of the former farms. You can see more remnants of early settlement if you walk on the trails at Irish Hill. The trails are open to foot travel as well as mountain biking in warmer months.
