Program

Legends & Lore®

Subject

Legend

Location

95 Cemetery Ave, Manchester Center, VT 05255, USA

Lat/Long

43.177057, -73.050498

Grant Recipient

Manchester Historical Society

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, New England was confronted by a far-reaching vampire panic. Much of the scare was due to local superstitions about what was causing an outbreak of tuberculous (consumption). In several documented cases around the Northeast, communities believed that vampires were the source.

One of the earliest examples of this is the story of Rachel Harris Burton, of Manchester, VT. Not long after marrying Captain Isaac Burton, 20-year-old Rachel fell ill. She died and was buried locally around 1792. Capt. Burton remarried, and again, it wasn’t long before his second wife, Hulda Powell, was stricken with tuberculous and died in 1793.

As burgeoning fears of vampirism took hold, locals in Manchester blamed Rachel for Hulda’s rapid deterioration. They became fixated on the tragic situation and accusations emerged that Rachel had become a “demon vampire.” In an attempt to ward off the undead, residents exhumed Rachel’s body and burned her at a nearby forge.

The scene is described by Judge John S. Pettibone in his ca. 1860 History of Manchester manuscript, which was later published in the “Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society December 1930.” Pettibone writes:

They took out the liver, heart, and lungs, what remained of them, and burned them to ashes on the blacksmith’s forge of Jacob Mead. Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in the sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the blood of the then living wife of Captain Burton. It was the month of February and good sleighing. Such was the excitement that from five hundred to one thousand people were present. This account was furnished me by an eye witness of the transaction.

One hundred years earlier in the 1690s, colonial Massachusetts was stricken by a witchcraft scare, with the Salem witch trials infamously at its center.

The Factor Point Cemetery in Manchester contains Rachel’s grave. Her headstone was carved by noted tombstone carver Zerubbabel Collins (1733-1797) who was prolific with his work throughout the broader region.