Glover, Vermont
Orleans county. Glover was first settled in 1797. It lies 33 miles N.N.E. from Montpelier and 12 S. by E. from Irasburgh. The town is hilly, and the soil is more fit for grazing than tillage. There are about 3,200 sheep in the town. There are in the town branches of Barton's, Passumpsic, Lamoille, and Black rivers, and several ponds. On these streams are some manufactures, but none of any great importance. Population, 1830, 902.
We copy an account of the running off of Long Pond [Runaway Pond], from Thompson's valuable Gazetteer of Vermont.
"Long pond was situated partly in this township and partly in Greensborough. This pond was one and a half miles long, and about half a mile wide, and discharged its waters to the south, forming one of the head branches of the river Lamoille. On the 6th of June, 1810, about 60 persons went to this pond for the purpose of opening an outlet to the north into Barton river, that the mills, on that stream, might receive an occasional supply of water. A small channel was excavated, and the water commenced running in a northerly direction. It happened that the northern barrier of the pond consisted entirely of quicksand, except an encrusting of clay next the water. The sand was immediately removed by the current, and a large channel formed. The basin formed by the encrusting of clay was incapable of sustaining the incumbent mass of waters, and it brake. The whole pond immediately took a northerly course, and, in fifteen minutes from this time, its bed was left entirely bare. It was discharged so suddenly that the country below was instantly inundated. The deluge advanced like a wall of waters, 60 or 70 feet in height, and 20 rods in width, leveling the forests and the hills, and filling up the valleys, and sweeping off mills, houses, barns, fences, cattle, horses and sheep as it passed, for the distance of more than ten miles, and barely giving the inhabitants sufficient notice of its appearance to escape with their lives into the mountains. A rock, supposed to weigh more than 100 tons, was removed half a mile from its bed. The waters removed so rapidly as to reach Memphremagog lake, distance 27 miles, in about six hours from the time they left the pond. Nothing now remains of the pond but its bed, a part of which is cultivated and a part overgrown with bushes and wild grass, with a small brook running through it, which is now the head branch of Barton river. The channel through which the waters escaped is 127 feet in depth and several rods in width. A pond, some distance below, was, at first, entirely filled with sand, which has since settled down, and it is now about one half its former dimensions. Marks of the ravages are still to be seen through nearly the whole course of Barton river."
