St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Episode 127 / 11 July 2019 / 152 min / full

Menage a Nope in St Johnsbury, Vermont

"We're going to St. Johnsbury, Vermont ... It's in Caledonia County." about 0:05:27

The case: Murder of Melissa Jenkins (March 2012). Read the case file.

The figures, as told in 2019

Population

7,375

Median age

44.9

Median household income

about $40,000

Median home value

$141,500

Cost of living

88

Religious

33%

Property crime

▼ about 25% under the average

Violent crime

▼ just above half of the national average

Registered sex offenders

30

History, in brief

• The town was originally granted in 1760 as part of the New Hampshire grants and named Bestborough. about 0:08:11
• It was regranted by Vermont in 1786 as Dunmore. about 0:08:24
• Settlement is dated to 1786. about 0:08:40
• Early settler Jonathan Arnold was a member of the Continental Congress and wrote Rhode Island's Act of Secession from Great Britain in 1776. about 0:08:42
• Arnold left Rhode Island in 1787 and, with six other families, built homes in what is now the centre of St. Johnsbury. about 0:08:59
• By 1790 the settlement had 143 people. about 0:09:10
• The first town meeting was held in Jonathan Arnold's home, where the town adopted its name. about 0:09:44
• Ethan Allen proposed naming the town Saint John in honour of his friend Jean de Crèvecoeur, known in America as J. Hector St. John. about 0:10:04
• The name St. Johnsbury was chosen to distinguish it from St. John in New Brunswick. about 0:11:32
• In 1916 F. B. Sandborn gave a talk to the Old Planter Society of Salem called Hector St. John, an old evasive planter. about 0:11:45
• By the mid-1800s the town had manufacturing, including scales; the platform scale was invented there in 1830. about 0:13:15
• It also produced maple syrup and maple syrup products. about 0:13:23
• The Boston to Montreal railroad line came through in the 1850s and the town began to grow and became the county seat. about 0:13:38
• George C. Cary founded the Cary Maple Sugar Company in 1904. about 0:14:05
• Cary promoted maple syrup for flavouring plug tobacco and as a flavouring agent in cigarettes. about 0:14:10
• He built a large plant on Portland Street, known as Maple Grove Farms of Vermont. about 0:15:26
• The company now operates a museum and a sugar house on the site. about 0:15:34
• St. Johnsbury became known as the maple centre of the world. about 0:15:42
• The first aeroplane flight in Vermont took place at the fair in St. Johnsbury on April 19th, 1910. about 0:15:57
• In the 1940s local industries included Fairbanks scales, a maple sugar candy company and a maker of bowling pins. about 0:16:05
• The town had a population of 7,000 in 1900. about 0:19:43
• Its peak population was about 9,600 around 1930. about 0:19:54

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