Montpelier,
E. P. Walton, printer,
1860.

The first Blacksmith in town was James Hawkins, who, previous to 1790, bought the farm lying between the old Howard place and Henry Nutt's farm. Here, after having finished off the house, the frame of which was the first one raised in Montpelier, he erected a Blacksmith's Shop, and carried on the business to a limited extent, in connection with house-building jobs, for some years. But Jonathan Shepard was the first man who built a Blacksmith's shop and put it in operation in Montpelier village. He, at a little later period, erected a Blacksmith's shop somewhere in the public corner at the head of State Street, as near as he can now point out, no road then being opened across the Branch from the old Cadwell house; and here, through a hired journeyman Blacksmith, he carried on the business till, some years after, he sold out his shop and custom to James Hawkins, buying the farm of the latter and turning in therefore, with the
shop and other payments, the first Morgan horse ever known in Vermont or elsewhere.*'

* The statement of Mr. Shepard, who is still alive, has been always uniformly and confidently made as follows:-He had purchased, at the great price for those days of about $200, a young stallion horse, of a Woodstock man, who had the animal of our Justin Morgan of that section, the latter having reared him from a colt. Mr. S. further vouches for his personal knowledge of the fact that Justin Morgan owned the
mare that brought this colt-that the mare was so great a traveller that Morgan, who had a relative in Canada whom he often visited, used to make the journey, which was seventy miles, in a single day; and that, on one of these visits, this colt was sired by a common Canadian stallion. And that it was from this colt, growing up and being kept in Randolph and other places, that the whole race of the noted Vermont Morgan horses originated.

Daniel Thompson