Dear Rita, In the mid-1820's, the State constructed/improved the Port Kent/Hopkinton road. This was a main thorofare for many years after that. Port Kent is on Lake Champlain. In those days, the Lake was the main transportation artery in the region. The route was right through the mountains, so the likelyhood of settlers/farmers planting themselves along the route was low. Hopkinton is on the north slope of the mountains, in St. Lawrence county about fifteen miles east of Canton. The 1830's and 40's were an era of great growth in the North Country and the farmland around Canton is rich with a longer growing season that in the mountains along the Port Kent/Hopkinton route to the south and east. This was an area to which many people living in more established communities in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and east-central New York migrated prior to the Civil War to obtain fresh, fertile, cheap farmland. Wayne Miller Plattsburgh State University On Wed, 26 Aug 1998 [log in to unmask] wrote: > Dear Linda, > > I have been doing genealogical research in St. Lawrence County. Several of > the settlers in the DePyster/Canton area were from Hebron. I wondered if > there was a trail that settlers followed or a land agent may have been in > Hebron sending people that way. It just seemed odd that so many seemed to > have come from Hebron. > > Rita Craska > ************************************************************************** Wayne L. Miller Special Collections Librarian Feinberg Library 2 Draper Avenue 518-564-5206 Plattsburgh, NY 12901 [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] "I wonder what will happen today!" -Maggie Muggins- "Not even God can change history...which is why he tolerates historians." -Voltaire **************************************************************************