check out history - Orleans, VT. | WikiXM

Roger Enos purchased land in 1820 in the area from Ira Allen. He had been given a land grant as a veteran in lieu of pay after the Revolutionary War; he may also have purchased this parcel from Herman Allen. It was named "Barton Landing"; this was the first place where craft could be safely loaded for transportation down the Barton River to Lake Memphremagog.

It was at the confluence of the Willoughby and Barton rivers, providing sufficient water for flotation. Native Americans had used this landing for years before the pioneers.Enos built the first building, a sawmill, at the confluence. Jesse Cook bought this building in 1830 to convert to a textile mill for weaving cloth, part of the northern economy using cotton from the South.

In 1839 John Little converted it into a grain mill.Lovinas Chandler bought this building in 1869 to use as a lumber mill. His son, who founded the E. L. Chandler Company, expanded the business here and in Barton Village in the 1890s. About the turn of the 20th century, Parker Young Company bought this complex of buildings.

The 1928 flood ruined these buildings, together with causing other damage throughout the region.Parker Young sold these properties back to E.L. Chandler. The owners developed the Sweat-Comings Company, the Vermont American Corporation, and finally, the Baumritter Corporation. The latter's furniture division expanded from a payroll of $120,000 in 1954 to $2,500,000 in 1968.

Then it was sold to Ethan Allen Manufacturing.In 1833, the Valley House was built as a restaurant and tavern. In 1875 twenty rooms were added for an inn. The building was destroyed by fire in 1998. The railroad reached the village in 1859–1860. Railroad accidents were not uncommon. On November 9, 1909, a crew member was killed in a head-on collision between two locomotives, just north of the rail intersection with Main Street.

Near the same place, on March 12, 1913, another head-on collision killed one of the crew.The railroad requested that the village change its name to avoid confusion with Barton Village. The village changed its name to Orleans in 1908 by popular vote, to the name of the county.In the late 1910s, the Ku Klux Klan was first revived in Atlanta.

It gradually expanded into northern and midwestern cities, where anxieties about migration, immigration, and social changes had heightened because of rapid industrialization and movement of peoples. The KKK promoted itself as a fraternal organization, among many that had been started since the late 19th century.

In this period, it was primarily opposed to Catholic and Jewish immigrants, but kept some of its racist background. A chapter was started in Orleans. A 1918 photograph shows children at the old Opera House, a number of them dressed in KKK hoods, and others in blackface.In the late 1970s, as efforts were made to improve water quality and the environment, the federal and state governments stopped the village from dumping raw sewage into the Barton River.

Orleans built a new treatment plant, which cost $2.8 million, 90% of which was paid for by state and federal governments. The village disconnected its old storm sewers from the sanitary sewage system.In 1999, the local Ethan Allen plant employed 600 workers. This dropped substantially in the 21st century, as it moved some manufacturing offshore or to areas with lower labor costs.