Saint Albans

See Saint Albans (disambiguation) for articles sharing the titleSaint Albans.

SAINT ALBANS, a city and the county-seat of Franklin county, Vermont, U.S.A., 57 m. (by rail) N.N.W. of Montpelier. Pop. (1900) 6239, including 1201 foreign-born; (1910) 6381. St Albans is served by the Central Vermont railway, which has general offices and shops here, and by an electric line connecting with Lake Champlain at St Albans Bay and with Swanton, 9 m. N. The city is built on a plain less than 3 m. from Lake Champlain and about 300 ft. above it; surrounding hills (Aldis and Bellevue) rise still higher and command charming views of the Green Mountains, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. Among the prominent buildings are a U.S. customs-house, the city hall, the court house, a public library, a hospital (1882), the Warner Home for Little Wanderers (1882), two Roman Catholic parochial schools and two convents. There are marble quarries in the vicinity, but the surrounding country is devoted largely to dairying. St Albans has a large creamery, manufactures condensed milk and ships large quantities of butter.

The first permanent settlement here was established in 1786; the township of St Albans (pop. in 1900, 1715) was incorporated in 1859, and the larger part of it was chartered as the city of St Albans in 1897. On the 19th of October 1864 Lieut. Bennett H. Young led from Canada about twenty-five un-uniformed Confederate soldiers in a raid on St Albans. They looted three banks, wounded several citizens, one mortally, and escaped to Canada, where Young and twelve others were arrested and brought to trial. But they were never punished, and even the $75,000 which had been taken from them on their arrest was returned to them. Later, however, the Canadian government refunded this amount to the banks. In 1866 and again in 1870 the Fenians made St Albans a base for attacks on Canada, and United States troops were sent here to preserve neutrality.