page_title: Barnet, Vermont
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Barnet, Vermont / History
caption_attribution_description: English: [Engraving by Metropolitan Publishing and Engraving Co., Boston] Source: Gazetteer of Caledonia and Essex Counties, VT; 1764-1887, by Hamilton Child, May, 1887, page 329.
context_page_description: Barnet is a town in Caledonia County, Vermont, United States. The population was 1,708 at the 2010 census. Barnet contains the locations of Barnet Center, East Barnet, McIndoe Falls, Mosquitoville, Passumpsic and West Barnet. The main settlement of Barnet is recorded as a census-designated place by the U.S. Census Bureau, with a population of 129 at the 2010 census.
context_section_description: The town of Barnet, Vermont, originally took its name from the town of Barnet, England.
  On September 16, 1763, the town received its charter from the royal governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth.
  The first European descendants to work the land and stay in the town were three brothers, Daniel, Jacob, and Elijah Hall, along with Jonathan Fowler. Their homestead was built along the Connecticut River and to the north near McIndoe Falls. Elijah Hall built the first house in Caledonia County in Barnet, near the base of Stevens Falls. Colonel Alexander Harvey came from Dundee, Scotland, for those in the town who wished to find new land in the American colonies. Despite losing contact with almost all of them after the American Revolution broke out, he decided to stay, claiming 7,000 acres (28 km²) of land and a lake, now known as Harvey's Lake.
  Two governors of the state of Vermont were from Barnet: Erastus Fairbanks, who served two terms from 1852–1853 and 1860–1861, and his son, Horace Fairbanks, who served from 1876 to 1878. The Fairbanks family left Barnet for nearby St. Johnsbury, where they were known for manufacturing the first platform scale.
  Ocean explorer and scuba inventor Jacques Cousteau had influential experiences on Harvey's Lake as a young boy in the early 1920s. While attending a summer camp he experimented with staying underwater by breathing through hollow reeds found in the lake shallows. Though he could not yet swim well, this allowed him to stay underwater for extended periods.
caption: Horace Fairbanks
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