History



Royalton Vermont 250th Birthday: History: About Royalton


Hannah (Hendee) Handy



     On November 23, 1769, a territory consisting of 49.9 square miles of land (& water) was chartered by the Royal Lieutenant Governor of New York.  The newly chartered territory then became know as Royalton, VT.

     Located in the very center of Vermont, Royalton was the site of he 1780 Royalton Raid.  According to the History of Royalton, Vt, by Evelyn Wood Lovejoy, "In the morning of October 16 in 1760, a band of 300 Indians led by British troops raided farms near South Royalton, Vermont, stealing men and boys to sell for the bounty offered by the British. The 1780 Royalton Raid was the last major British raid of the American War of Independence in New England."

     The history of Royalton is not complete without the story of Hannah (Hendee) Handy.  As told by Historian Lovejoy, on the morning of the Royalton Raid, "The Hendee family had been warned, and the husband set off to warn others downstream. Hannah picked up her young daughter (Lucretia) and ran to the woods with her 7 year old son Michael. The Indians caught them and took Michael. When she demanded to know what they would do with the boy, one of the Indians who spoke English replied, "make a soldier of him." As they dragged away her sobbing little boy, Hannah carried her screaming daughter toward the road and headed toward Lebanon, sixteen miles away.

     She had not gone far when she was filled with a surge of uncommon resolve, a fierce determination. She returned upriver and found the British and the Indians gathering their captives....
Oblivious of the danger, she demanded her little boy. Capt. Horton said he could not control the Indians; it was none of his concern what they did. She threatened him. "You are their Commander, and they must and will obey you. The curse will fall upon you for whatever crime they commit, and all the innocent blood they shall shed will be found in your skirts when the secrets of men's hearts are made known, and it will cry for vengeance upon your head". When her young son was brought in she took him by hand and refused to let go. An Indian threatened her with cutlass and jerked her son away. She defiantly took him back and said that she would never give up, they would not have her little boy.

      Finally, when the captives were assembled for the long march to Canada, Mrs. Hendee somehow crossed the river with her daughter and nine small boys...Two of them she carried across. The others waded through the water with their arms around each other's necks, clinging to her skirts. As the cold October night closed in, Mrs. Hendee huddled in the woods with the soaking-wet little brood she had rescued from certain death"

     In 1915 a monument to recognize Handy's extraordinary courage was built on the the the town green in the village of South Royalton.  The monument was restored and rededicated in 2018.

Check back frequently as the story continues......🎂