• "Our Home"
• Extended Family
  • Introduction
  • Ausland
  • Bailey
  • Bradford
  • Long
  • Ochsner
  • Rockwell
  • Shontz
  • Wenzel
• Index of Names
• Lines of Descent
• Bios & Blogs
• A Rich History
• Photo Gallery
• Contact
• "Family Talk"

 

Levi Bailey of Bailey's Mills, Vermont

 

A Biographical Sketch

[The following biographical statement was drawn from the entry on Ransom Bailey in Portrait and Biographical Record of Jasper, Marshall and Grundy County, Iowa, published in 1894 by the Biographical Publishing Company of Chicago (page 451 ff), and from a report written by Samuel Orwell Bailey after he made a visit East.  The report by Samuel Orwell Bailey was circulated as part of her family research by Cynthia Bailey.]

The grandparents [of Ransom Bailey], Levi and Hannah Bailey Bailey, were natives of Massachusetts.  Levi’s father and one brother were killed in the battle of Bunker Hill, and two of his brothers were early settlers of New York.  The grandfather [Levi] was but 14 years of age when his father was killed.  He then started out for himself and went to Vermont where he began making potash.  This was the first that had been manufactured in that state. 

Later he established the first blacksmith shop, then the first grist and saw mill, and afterward was in the first woolen mill, starch factory, and linseed oil mill in Reading, Vermont.  He was handy at almost everything he undertook, and during the later part of his life was a stock drover, being the heaviest drover to the Brighton market.  He passed his entire life in Windsor, County.

In politics he was a Whig and a prominent man in that section.

 

Levi Bailey came [to Reading, Vermont] in 1790 from Hartland, Vermont, and settled on the Hiram S. Fay farm which he partly cleared up in 1794.  He in company with George Betterly, purchased of Micah Holmer, Jr., for 100 pounds, the site of Bailey’s Mills, a dam, and mill pond then existing; but Mr. Bailey soon became the sole owner.

He was an active and enterprising man, built an oil mill in 1831 and the large brick building now standing in 1835-36-37, and three different grist mills besides the cloth dressing mill.  From the fall of 1813 to 1833 he was engaged at Reading Center in the mercantile business with the late Abel Gilson, under the name of Bailey and Gilson