from History of Woodstock, Vermont
by Henry Swan Dana
Benjamin Emmons was one of eight brothers who settled in Hinsdale and Chesterfield, N. H. These were all healthy, active men, with large and powerful frames, fitted in a high degree to endure and overcome the hardships of border life.
Several of the brothers served in the provincial army during the French and Indian war, and it is related how one of them, named Dyer, won a bet made between the colonels of an English and a Colonial regiment as to which could bring forward the man superior to all others in muscular strength. To test the matter Dyer Emmons took a cannon weighing eight hundred pounds, carried it six rods, and threw it over a stone wall. The Englishman pitted against him could not do this, and so lost the wager to his colonel, which was a barrel of rum.2
Of these eight brothers three came into Vermont. Solomon pitched his tent in Windsor in 1763, and how he lived and what were his fortunes is related elsewhere.
Abel married the sister of Simon Davis, and he and Simon settled in Chesterfield in the spring of 1762. Abel did not come to Woodstock till 1780, but Simon Davis came about the same time with Benjamin Emmons and settled on North Branch, taking up the farm next above Oliver McKenzie's.
Benjamin Emmons was married to Elizabeth Smith in Chesterfield, November 18, 1765.8 He moved from Chesterfield to Woodstock in April, 1772, " when his daughter Bethany was three months old," and she was born the 3d of January that year. Benjamin Emmons settled on the farm now owned and occupied by Henry E. Vaughan, where he continued to reside the whole period of his stay in Woodstock, including thirty-five years. His land purchase of Oliver Willard,' made at the time of his coming into the town, embraced about seven hundred acres in the immediate vicinity where he settled. This covered all the land deeded by Willard to Powers iu 1768, and much more besides, but the title to the part once held by Powers did not need even a quitclaim from him, and he still looked to Willard for that long-standing balance of account.
