Court House - Westminster, VT
Posted by: 
neoc1
N 43° 04.252 W 072° 27.306
18T E 707196 N 4771827
An historic marker on Route 5 in Westminster, VT notes two significant events in the history of Vermont and the United States.
Waymark Code: WMHTBW
Location: Vermont, United States
Date Posted: 08/12/2013
Views: 1
The Westminster "massacre" was the result of an organized resistance to the oppression of King George's courts in the American colonies. When Westminster court officers tried to subdue a crowd that was obstructing court business, one demonstrator, William French, was shot and killed. Some consider this event the first battle of the American Revolution.
In 1764, King George III declared the boundary between New Hampshire and New York to be the west bank of the Connecticut River above Massachusetts. Thus present day Vermont was part of New York except for the New Hampshire Grants which were towns created by land grants sold by New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth. Dissatisfied colonists rejected both the claims by new York and new Hampshire and organized to form an independent Vermont.
On January 15, 1777, representatives of the New Hampshire Grants declared the independence of Vermont. For six months it was called itself The Republic of New Connecticut. On June 2, 1777, a second convention met and adopted the name Vermont, to better achieve joining the United States as the 14th state.
An historic marker in Westminster is inscribed:
{Seal of the State of Vermont}
COURT HOUSE
Westminster "Massacre"
-----------*-----------
Northward stood the Cumberland
County Court House, seat of New
York's colonial administration.
Opposition to holding a court
session led to the "Massacre" of
March 13, 1775. here the New
Hampshire Grants pn January 16, 1777
declared their independence as
"New Connecticut", later Vermont.
Vermont Historic Sites Commission