Cavendish is a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, su ...

, the central village of the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares ...

of Cavendish,

Windsor County Windsor County is a county located in the U.S. state of Vermont. As of the 2020 census, the population was 57,753. The shire town (county seat) is the town of Woodstock. The county's largest municipality is the town of Hartford. History Wind ...

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the ...

, United States. Until the midnineteenth century it was known as Duttonsville. As of the 2010 census, the population of the CDP was 179, compared to 1,367 for the entire town of Cavendish. Cavendish is the site of the 1848 accident where

Phineas Gage Phineas P. Gage (18231860) was an American railroad construction foreman known for his improbable survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and ...

got an iron rod shot through his skull while preparing a railroad bed. He survived, and after treatment became a case study for brain researchers. The town has erected a memorial to Gage. The town is also the birth place of

Nettie Stevens Nettie Maria Stevens (July 7, 1861 – May 4, 1912) was an American geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes. In 1905, soon after the rediscovery of Mendel's paper on genetics in 1900, she observed that male mealworms produced two kinds of sp ...

, the scientist who discovered the

Y chromosome The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes ( allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or a ...

Geography

Cavendish is located along Vermont Route 131 in the Black River valley. Route 131 heads west to Proctorsville, a larger village within the town of Cavendish, then connects with Vermont Route 103 to

Ludlow Ludlow () is a market town in Shropshire, England. The town is significant in the history of the Welsh Marches and in relation to Wales. It is located south of Shrewsbury and north of Hereford, on the A49 road (Great Britain), A49 road which ...

. To the east, Route 131 leads to the village of Ascutney on the Connecticut River.

References

Census-designated places in Vermont Census-designated places in Windsor County, Vermont {{Vermont-geo-stub