To Norman D. French belongs the honor of pioneering the settlement in this division of the county, where he made a claim in 1835; broke up some ground in 1836; built a cabin in 1837, and raised his first crop in 1838. Mr. Armour says he had, by his early experience among the hills and mountains of Vermont, become disgusted with them, and while assisting in the United States survey of the lands along the Mississippi, selected the site of his present home. William Dyson, Sr., and his Sons, William, Jr., and Hezekiah; his son-in-law, Russell Colvin, and George Helms, a relative, came in 1836. These new settlers, because of the numerous gushing springs to be found there, made their claims along the bluffs. A year or two later, a man named Edgerly settled near French, and William St. Ores and Jacob Potter settled just west of the centre of town 23, range 4—probably on section 9. No other settlements are recorded until 1838, when Col. Beers Tomlinson located on the lands now occupied by his son, Beers B. Tomlinson. When Col. Tomlinson came to Carroll County to locate a new home his attention was directed to York by Samuel Preston, Sr., who says of him: “Colonel Tomlinson was a man of dignified presence, and would at once be recognized as a man born to lead and not to follow. Yet he had none of those airs of loftiness suggestive of the great ‘I’ and little ‘U’ that characterize some men. His nature was social and jovial, and he relished a joke equal to the best in that line. His wife was a Bailey, and he was soon followed to his new home by that family and their kindred, the Balcoms. His brother, Seymour Tomlinson, and the Athertons came afterwards, but only Daniel B. Kenyon and his sons, and Joshua Bailey, came prior to 1841. Col. Tomlinson was a captain in the war of 1812, and was born almost in sight of old Fort Ticonderoga and, no doubt had some of the Ethan Allen spirit in him. Levi Kent was York’s first school teacher and taught at Bluffville.

From the History of Carroll County by Ketts 1878