under Governor James Hartness at Springfield, Vermont, a group of the old and loyal workmen who did not wish to see Windsor wiped from the map as a manufacturing center, remained and made great personal sacrifices to found the Windsor Machine Company and to keep the wheels of industry turning in the old Robbins & Lawrence shops, in which many of them had served their apprenticeships many years before. From 1889 to 1902 this concern maintained a rather precarious existence. But with the inventive and mechanical ability of such men as Mr. George O. Gridley and Mr. Frank Cone, backed by the business ability and financial power of the late Mr. Maxwell Evarts the best friend that Windsor ever had, this descendant of notable mechanical forebears by 1910 outgrew its ancestral home and expanded into one of the largest and finest machine tool plants in New England-and now as the New England Plant of the National Acme Company it is helping to uphold the engineering traditions of Windsor at the present time.

An independent spirit certainly animated those patriots who met in the "Old Constitution House" at Windsor on July 2, 1777, and it seems that a similar independent spirit must have inspired the early Windsor mechanics to break away from current practice in the field of Engineering. Such combined characteristics have frequently appeared in other northern races who dwell in mountainous districts-both the Swiss and the Scotch, for instance, being noted both for their love of Freedom and for their genius and skill in Mechanics.

The "Green Mountain Boys" were certainly much like the bands of William Tell and Rob Roy in purpose, in organization and in temperament. Nor does it require a great stretch of the imagination to recognize a striking similarity between the ingenious sons of Vermont "hill farmers" who, having learned their trade in primitive Green Mountain gun shops, became leading manufacturers in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and elsewhere; and those boys who, after learning the rudiments of mechanics made cuckoo clocks and

wooden toys in some Alpine farm house and later became the leading clock and instrument makers of Geneva; or those other boys who made nails and cutlery at some obscure Highland forge, and later became the famous Engineers and Iron Masters of Glasgow.

Journal

of the

Vermont Constitutional Convention

Held at

Windsor

July 3 to 9 1793