Historian, naturalist, professor, and minister, Zadock Thompson (1796-1856) played a significant role in how nineteenth-century Vermonters viewed their state’s heritage and appreciated its natural resources. Thompson’s magisterial 1842 History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical remains one of the best sources ever published on the Green Mountain State. The cover image from this program is a drawing of a catamount done by his daughter from this book.
Kevin Graffagnino looks at Thompson’s life and career, with particular emphasis on how his work shaped several generations of Vermont attitudes toward our state’s eighteenth-century beginnings.
This program is sponsored by the Woodstock History Center and the Bridgewater Historical Society.
About the presenter
J. Kevin Graffagnino is author/editor of 17 books on Vermont history, including The Shaping of Vermont, Vermont in the Victorian Age, and Vermont Heritage: Essays on Green Mountain History, 1779-1920. His most recent books are Ira Allen: A Biography and Vermontiana: An Annotated Checklist, 1764-1899, both of which came out in 2024. Dr. Graffagnino was curator of Vermont history at the University of Vermont library’s Special Collections 1978-95 and executive director of the Vermont Historical Society 2003-08. Since 1980 he has spoken in more than half the towns in Vermont.
