Place:Saint Johnsbury, Caledonia, Vermont, United States

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St. Johnsbury (known locally as "St. J")^[1] is the shire town (county seat) of Caledonia County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 7,364. St. Johnsbury is situated on the Passumpsic River and is located approximately six miles northwest of the Connecticut River and south of the Canada–U.S. border.

St. Johnsbury is the largest town by population in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and has long served as a commercial center for the region. In 2006, the town was named "Best Small Town" in National Geographic Adventure's "Where to live and play" feature. The more densely settled southern one-third of the town is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the St. Johnsbury census-designated place, where over 81% of the population resides.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The town was originally granted in 1760 as part of the New Hampshire Grants and named Bessborough. It was regranted by Vermont in 1786 as Dunmore, and settled the same year. An early settler was Jonathan Arnold, a member of the Continental Congress and author of Rhode Island's act of secession from the Kingdom of Great Britain in May 1776. Arnold left Rhode Island in 1787 and, with six other families, built homes at what is now the town center.

By 1790, the village had grown to 143 inhabitants, and the first town meeting took place in Arnold's home that year, where the name St. Johnsbury was adopted. According to local lore, Vermont founder Ethan Allen himself proposed naming the town St. John in honor of his friend Jean de Crèvecœur, a French-born author and agriculturist and a friend of Benjamin Franklin. (He was known in the United States as J. Hector St. John.) According to this account, de Crèvecœur suggested instead the unusual St. Johnsbury to differentiate it from Saint John, New Brunswick.

In the mid-19th century, St. Johnsbury became a minor manufacturing center, with the main products being scales—the platform scale was invented there by Thaddeus Fairbanks in 1830—and maple syrup and related products. With the arrival of the railroad line from Boston to Montreal in the 1850s, St. Johnsbury grew quickly and was named the shire town (county seat) in 1856, replacing Danville. The oldest occupied residence in St. Johnsbury was built in 1798 and located on the corner of Summer and Central streets, attached to the J. J. Palmer house.

The former St. Johnsbury Fairground was located where Interstates 91 and 93 converge, south of the town. The Third Vermont Regiment drilled there prior to joining the Union Army during the Civil War. The first air flight in Vermont occurred at the fair on April 19, 1910.

In the 1940s the town contained three major industrial companies, each then the largest of its type in the world. One was Fairbanks Scales, another was a maple sugar candy company, while a third made candlepins for bowling. The rest of the economy was mostly rural.

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