← Back to Resources & Archives
No eighteenth-century structures survive in Cabot — none of the log cabins of the Websters, Lyfords, or Heaths. Along the old Bayley-Hazen Road, stone foundations and cellar holes, now overgrown, mark where the first settlers eked out a living. Five small granite markers on Cabot Plain recall the tavern, the town's first schoolhouse, the Hazen campsite, the Bayley-Hazen Road, and the spot where first settler Benjamin Webster cleared his land.
Cabot's government began on the Plain, where former Revolutionary soldiers held the first town meetings in 1788. After about eighteen years it moved to the geographic Center of Town — where only faint foundations, the old Center Cemetery, and the site of the animal pound and whipping post remain — and by 1849, the town's government shifted again downhill to the growing Village beside the Winooski River, still the town's center today. As mills rose along the streams and roads improved, more substantial buildings followed, and new communities formed within the township.
Village & Lower Cabot Homes
The Village and Lower Cabot Historic Districts hold many fine examples of nineteenth-century architecture, documented in a 1979 state survey. Among the most notable: the Wiswell house (1886–89), a richly detailed Victorian still owned by fifth-generation Wiswell descendants; the stately Judge Lamson home on Elm Street (1869), little changed, with a sweeping lawn and well-kept carriage houses; and the True A. Town house in Lower Cabot (1875–78), a regionally rare "Carpenter Gothic" once owned by a house painter who specialized in authentic Victorian colors.
Old Schoolhouses
Several of Cabot's one-room schoolhouses still stand (see Cabot Schools). The Lower Cabot Schoolhouse of 1880 — whose bell, once objected to as too noisy, mysteriously vanished and was found years later in a mill pond — is now a private home little changed on the outside. The West Hill Schoolhouse (c. 1896), owned by the Society, has been restored with authentic furnishings as a learning center. The Walbridge Schoolhouse was moved from Route 215 to Cabot Plain and made a vacation home while keeping its original exterior. Original school buildings remain on Cabot Plain, in East Cabot, and in South Cabot, all privately owned today. And the Village School of 1845 — later a Good Templars' hall, then a plumbing shop — is today the Society's Main Street Museum.
Cabot Common & the Churches
The village common holds a granite obelisk to the Union soldiers of Cabot who died in the Civil War, with a small Liberty Tree marker to the American Revolution nearby. Two churches once faced the common. The Cabot United Church traces to the Congregational Church organized in 1801 at the Center of Town. The Methodist church was built about 1823; as membership dwindled, the two congregations merged in 1935 to form Cabot United Church, and the Methodist building later served as a school gymnasium and classrooms before passing into private hands.
The original source pages
These summaries draw on the Society's earlier archive. Each page below is reproduced in full, with its original photographs, maps, and documents.
The full 1979 historic survey and the Society's building records offer much more detail. To research a particular building or arrange a museum visit, please contact the Society.