Fairfield certainly has a history of unique village and hamlet names, most of which still exist.
1. Puddle Dock (East Fairfield). East Fairfield - or Puddledock, as it was affectionately called due to the hub-deep mud in the street every spring - was once a very bustling little town. A stroll along Main Street across from the green in the early 1900s would have taken a visitor past the pool hall, a barbershop, a grocery store, the granary, the drug store, and the milliner shop which shared a roof with the post office and a dance hall. Next came the famous Isham House, built in 1870 and run as a hotel until it burned in 1923. When the train came through it stopped at a platform in the back of the hotel, giving passengers the choice of either eating dinner and continuing on their way, or staying overnight for a little dancing on the wonderful spring dance floor next door. Silent movies were also shown in this hall with Zoa Mitchell on the piano.
2. Saint Rocks : Also mentioned early on as Saint Rochs. Could possibly be named afte the district suburb of Saint Rochs in Quebec. It should be noted a lot of Archambaults descend from the St Rochs area of Quebec.
4. Herrick: Later called North Fairfield, Herrick used pre-1940s
3. Norfalk and South Norwalk: We believe Norwalk is referencing "North Fairfield", and South Norwalk would be Fairfield Center. It is sometimes referred to as Norfork (and some believe it means North fork). Norwalk and South Norwalk are also notable towns in Fairfield County Connecticut nearby to Fairfield CT, and original settlers were likely familiar with how those towns were situated and likened them to their new settlement in Fairfield VT. A certain G.G Soule (Maybe George G. Soule from NY) may have been either a publisher or surveyor, and helped publish a map plan of Norwalk and South Norwalk, CT with A.D Ellis in 1867, published by the famous F.W. Beers Co. It is noteworthy as many Soules now live in Fairfield.
4. Shenang (Shanaing)/Egypt. The upper counties of Vermont had a bad growing year in 1816, which became known as the infamous Year With No Summer. Monthly frosts destroyed crops until there was not much left to harvest, except on Nathaniel Foster's farm. Foster had sowed corn among the tree stumps in his field. Farmers found it easier to remove the stumps from newly cleared fields if they burned them out after having left them to decay a while, so when the frosts hit, farmer Foster began burning his stumps. When stumps burn in the ground, the process is a long and smoky one as the roots burn deep into the soil. Foster's corn survived the cold summer in the warmth of the stump fires, and there was seed-corn in Fairfield for the following year.
Bankers came from St. Albans to offer $5.00 a bushel, but Foster refused to sell his corn to them. Instead, the next spring, when people came to buy seed corn, he sold it to them for $1.00 a bushel. Those who received the life-sustaining ears of corn called the place Egypt after the biblical story of Jacob, who sent his sons to Egypt to buy corn during the famine in Canaan. https://vtdigger.org/2020/03/01/then-again-the-egypt-of-franklin-county/
5. Young Ireland: Pretty obviously a reference to the many families of Irish immigrants
6. Northern Lost Nation. "Some local nicknames for various areas within the town were retained in the names for schools or school districts as recently as the 1950s and '60s. Lost Nation probably was nicknamed because it was an area far from the more settled sections of town." (p. 236) "Vermont Place Names: Footprints of History" by Esther Munroe Swift (1977)
7. Across the Swamp
8. Fairfield Center. Central Part of the town.
9. Fairfield/Fanton Station.
10. Dream Pond/Fairfield Pond. Was once known as Dream Pond. Dream Pond recalls an 1842 incident in which a man was convicted of murder after a woman dreamed she saw him drowning a mother and her baby there.
11. Prindleville
12. Hardscrabble
13. Pumpkin Village
14. The Ridge
15. Fox Hill
16. The Creek
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