New Haven River Disaster of 1830

It was July 26th 1830, it had been a very wet season. Saturday afternoon it started raining unusually hard. It was still raining hard Sunday night. It was between ten and eleven o'clock when the residents of Haven Hollow, living closest to the stream first became alarmed. They began fighting to save what they could from the mills and other buildings that were threatened with immediate destruction. Still it wasn't time to panic. They had lived there for years, for some as many as thirty years. The water had never been a serious threat. This was unfortunate because had they realized they were witnessing what would become Vermont's worst flood of the 19th century they might have forgone the things and saved their lives.