Railroad lines spread across Vermont - on the map below. The railroads opened up new markets for the quarries.
blocks extracted from his quarry.
He also provided granite for Barre’s
Greek Revival Congregational
Church (1840) and for Montpelier’s
Washington County Courthouse
(1844). For these projects and
others, a sizable amount of Barre
granite was shipped during the
winter at great expense and effort
using teams of horses and oxen
pulling heavy sleds.
An 1844 report to the board of
directors of the Vermont Central
Railroad noted that more than 600
tons of granite went to Burling-
ton each year. Despite this fact, the
Vermont
Central
Railroad
constructed its route along
the Dog River rather than
through
Barre
along
the
Stevens Branch, so for the next
two decades teams pulled Barre
granite 15 miles to the nearest
railroad station in Northfield.
Despite
the
transportation
barrier, the granite industry in
Barre continued to expand in the
1840s and 1850s, by training local
men and attracting experienced
stoneworkers from throughout
New England. Ira Harrington, a
locally trained granite worker
(whose grandfather Nathan Holden
had owned a Barre granite quarry
from 1811 to 1813,) learned the
trade from Richard Abbott of Barre
and then purchased Richard’s busi-
ness and continued to expand
upon its success. In 1857, Ira won
a contract to erect in Burlington’s
Green
Mount
Cemetery
a