Norwich, Vermont, chartered in 1761 and settled beginning in 1763, developed along the Connecticut River as a rural New England town of farms, mills, and early civic institutions. The first meetinghouse rose in 1778, and by the early 19th century the village supported schools, trades, and a growing population. In 1819 native son Alden Partridge founded the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, the precursor to Norwich University, marking the town as an early center of military education. Through the 19th and twentieth centuries Norwich remained a hillside community of wooded ridges, farmsteads, and a village green, later becoming a commuter town linked to Hanover, New Hampshire by the Ledyard Bridge. Its historic district preserves the town's early churches, civic buildings and mid-century architecture, reflecting more than two centuries of settlement along the Connecticut River valley. - AsNotedIn