Barnard is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 992 at the 2020 census.

The town has two unincorporated villages: Barnard and East Barnard, along with the hamlets of Newcombsville, Mountain Meadows, and Fort Defiance.

History

thumb|left|Charles Danforth Library and Holway Community Room

The town was chartered on July 17, 1761, by a New Hampshire Grant. It was named "Bernard" after one of the five grantees of the town, Sir Francis Bernard, 1st Baronet, who was governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1760 to 1769. The town's name was changed to Barnard some time before 1810.

Universalist minister Hosea Ballou was at the local church from 1801 to 1807.

In 1928, Nobel Prize–winning novelist Sinclair Lewis bought Connett Place with a total and adjacent Chase Farm. He named the property Twin Farms and used it as a vacation house during the 1930s and 1940s with his wife Dorothy Thompson.

In 1941, German playwright Carl Zuckmayer, a refugee from Nazi Germany whom Dorothy Thompson had helped to get into the US, rented Backwoods Farm, with its farmhouse from 1783 nowadays owned by Hannah Kahn and a total , from Joseph Ward (of Maynes & Ward hardware store on Main Street in Woodstock, Vermont) for 50 dollars a month. Zuckmayer worked this property as a farmer until 1946 and wrote the play Des Teufels General (The Devil's General) there. His autobiography A Part of Myself (1966) deals extensively with these years. Zuckmayer's wife Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer also wrote a memoir of their time in Barnard: The Farm in the Green Mountains (Die Farm in den grünen Bergen).

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which 48.7 are land and 0.2 is water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 958 people, 383 households, and 276 families residing in the town. The population density was 19.7 people per square mile (7.6/km<sup>2</sup>). There were 629 housing units at an average density of 12.9 per square mile (5.0/km<sup>2</sup>). The racial makeup of the town was 98.43% White, 0.42% Hispanic or Latino, 0.31% Asian and 1.04% from two or more races.

Education

Barnard Academy is a public elementary school located on Route 12. It has educational programs from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Barnard Academy is part of the Windsor Central Supervisory Union.

Notable people

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  • Andrew J. Aikens, newspaper editor
  • Asa Aikens, Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court
  • Hosea Ballou, Universalist minister and author
  • Edward Morris Bowman, organist, conductor, composer, and music educator
  • Sinclair Lewis, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and playwright
  • Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild Austrian Baron
  • Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, American author, political thinker and educationist
  • Lloyd I. Rudolph, American author, political thinker and educationist
  • Carl Zuckmayer, German writer and playwright