In front of you is the Jewett’s General Store, a beautiful heritage home built around 1860. Built in the Second Empire style. This heritage gem in Potton has always housed a business on the first floor, in addition to living quarters. It is home to an old-fashioned general store that the Jewett family has operated with warmth and authenticity since 1944.
Vale Perkins is located in a bucolic setting between Lake Memphremagog and the Owl's Head and Elephant (or Elephantis as it’s also called locally) mountains. Long before its founding, it was a place frequented by the Abenaki, an Algonquian people. The most recent archaeological research places Amerindian presence in the Eastern Townships to over 11,000 years ago and in Potton to at least 3,000 years ago. Chemin de Vale Perkins from Mansonville is thought to follow the original Abenaki portage route from the Missisquoi to Memphremagog.
The Abenaki, also known as the Missisquois, probably occupied the area on a seasonal basis at the time of the American Samuel Perkins' settlement. This settler from New Hampshire founded with his family in 1795 the hamlet that bears his name. For two centuries, the Perkins family contributed greatly to the development of Potton.
The early life of the hamlet revolved around farming and animal husbandry, as the surrounding hills were very fertile. The sap from the many maple trees growing in the surrounding forests was also collected, an activity still practiced today by many locals.
With its dock at Perkins’ landing on Lake Memphremagog, the hamlet was also a relay in the wood transportation chain. The logs were launched at the end of the wharf, assembled into large rafts, called cribs, and tugged south to Newport, Vermont, often the vocation of the large steamers during the off season.
From the second half of the 19th century, Vale Perkins benefited from the emergence of tourism. Nestled in a bucolic and enchanting landscape overlooking the mountains and Lake Memphremagog, the hamlet first saw the appearance of resort hotels frequented by the bourgeoisie of the time, then of vacation camps and cottages that clustered on the lakefront.
As you continue north along Lake Road, you will pass the few old farmhouses that remain, witnesses to Vale Perkins' agricultural past. At the intersection of Peabody Road, is the old Methodist meeting house, now transformed into a residence. It was the home of the Jones School #12, built in 1864, which reminds us of the presence of many families in the hamlet. Opposite the Jones school is a Protestant school built in the late 1840’s to serve the many students of the area, before the school board was able to organize school bussing to Mansonville. This rural school was used only until Mansonville Intermediate School opened in 1953-54.