On August 18, 1763, the Town of Orwell was chartered and its lands granted to 64 men. No settlement occurred in town for another eight years, however.

The first settler is recorded as John Charter, a Scotsman who took up residence near what was then known as Rattlesnake Hill, now Mount Independence, in 1771.

By the mid-1770's, a few families were living in town, clearing land for fields and building rudimentary shelters for themselves and their livestock. With the start of the Revolutionary War, most residents returned to the safer, established communities to the south.

Further settlement did not commence until the close of the war.

The British burned nearly all of the buildings in town--and indeed the entire area---before the end of the war. No pre-revolution structures survive in Orwell today.