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About Brighton, Vermont 
Essex County
*Area, Population and Density rankings above refer to Brighton's relative position among Vermont's 255 civic entities (9 cities, 242 towns, 4 gores and grants). Complete rankings are here.
Brlghton has had three names. It was originally granted by Vermont in 1780 to a group of Connecticut men as Gilead, presumably because of the commendatory connotations of Biblical place-names. Although there was a city of Gilead in ancient Palestine, in more recent times the name has usually been associated with the mountain region east of the Jordan River, and with Mount Gilead, the 4,000-foot-high peak that towers over the Dead Sea. In every sense the Gilead name was a suitable choice for this mountain town in northeastern Vermont. However, the original grantees did not pay the required fees, and the town went up for sale again. Many of the state records of this era refer to the town as simply Number 31, it being only one of several towns in the Northeast Kingdom (a term generally credited to the late George Aiken, former Vermont Governor and US Senator, describing the still very rural area comprised of Essex, Orleans and Caledonia counties in a 1949 speech. The name stuck.) that were laid out and put up for sale in the young republic's ongoing efforts to become financially solvent. Following the lapse of the Gilead grant, the town was bought by a different group, most of whom were in a Rhode Island line regiment of the Continental Army, the commander of which was one of the most picturesquely named men to appear in the annals of place-names: Colonel Joseph Nightingale of Providence. This time, the town was was named Random, apparently at the suggestion of the group's agent, Joseph Brown, who chose the name because the town was, in fact, a random purchase from the several towns that were being offered for sale by Vermont. Latter-day residents came to feel that the Random name did nothing to attract either settlers or business to their town, so the legislature changed the name to Brighton in 1832, when the town's population was just over 100. Probably the new name was chosen in memory of the English resort town, which has given its name to communities in Massachusetts and New York. The village of Island Pond takes its name from the adjacent body of water, which in turn is named for the 20-acre island in the pond. Originally Knowlton Pond after the surveyor who laid out the town and several others in the region, the Abnaki called it Menanbawk (literally, "island pond"), and it was not long before the townsfolk adopted the English version.
Material excerpted or adapted from Esther Munroe Swift's
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Activities
Goings-on in and near Brighton | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Contact Info Emergency Services (Statewide): 911
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Churches, Ministries, Charitables Episcopal : Island Pond Christ Church 802-723-6381 |
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Schools Orleans Essex North Supervisory Union 802-334-5847 |
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Neighboring Towns | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This is a basic geographic reference, intended to show relative location of adjacent towns. Directional accuracy is limited to 16 compass points. There isn't even the slightest suggestion that one can necessarily travel directly from one town to the next (as in "You can't get there from here").
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Utilities Notes about utilities:
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