(HOST) Young Vermonters are leaving the state and lawmakers are worried. But commentator Edith Hunter says that a little reading of history reveals that the crisis is not a new one – young people have been leaving Vermont for close to 200 years.
(HUNTER) It was not until about 1780 that the first settlers, in large numbers, poured into Vermont from Massachusetts, Connecticut and adjacent New Hampshire. And it was only a generation after that, that of necessity some of their children began the exodus out to New York, Ohio, and points further west. The average family in 1800 included close to 10 children. It took about 125 acres (the average size farm), to support a family. Simple arithmetic suggests that only one or two of those children could stay at home and earn a living.
Two classic books tell the story of what happened. In Migration From Vermont, by Lewis D. Stilwell, first published in book form in 1948 and republished 35 years later, we read: “The year 1808 may be selected as a turning point in Vermont’s development. … After 1808, immigration into Vermont from the rest of New England stopped short, never again to be resumed. At the same time, emigration out of Vermont rose for the first time to a flood.”
The same story is told in the other classic, The Hill Country of Northern New England, by Harold Fisher Wilson, first published in 1936 and reprinted in 1967. The author tells the story of the passage of the hill farms of rocky New England from self-sufficient farms, to sheep farms, to diary farms, to some diversification including the tourist industry, and in some cases, to abandonment.
The author writes: “It was for the most part the young people who were leaving the farms and villages of the hill country for the cities. The causes for their departure were numerous and varied, but most of them can be associated … with urban attractions and especially with the more enticing economic opportunities.” Or, as we would say today, “they left to find good paying jobs.”
Since these books were first published there have been some large scale immigrations into Vermont. Beginning in the 1960s the “back to the land” movement brought in many young people disillusioned by the war in Vietnam. And the construction of I-91, also in the 1960s, made it easier for second-home vacationers to build in Vermont.
But, when it comes to those “good paying jobs” that seem so illusive, I see hope. My own three sons are all are living here in Vermont having created jobs for themselves. They didn’t find them, they made them. Their goals were not “high paying” jobs, but jobs that are fulfilling and socially useful. We should encourage that kind of individual initiative.
Writer and historian Edith Hunter lives in Weathersfield Center.