The town of Barre originated on November 6, 1780 when the Vermont Legislature issued a land charter to William Williams and sixty others. The town was named Wildersburgh commemorating a town by the same name in Massachusetts, the home of some of the charter members. The first known settlers of Wildersburgh arrived in 1788. The site of the first wood frame house built in 1800 by William Gouldsbury, a millwright, lies approximately one-third of a mile east of the Jones Brothers site on Richardson Road.

The early settlers of Wildersburgh were apparently dissatisfied with the sound and length of the town name and agreed to change it. According to one legend, the final decision for securing the new town name was awarded to the winner of a bare-knuckled fistfight between Jonathan Sherman from Barre, Massachusetts and Captain Joseph Thompson from Holden, Massachusetts. Sherman was declared the winner and on October 19, 1793, Wildersburgh officially became Barre. In Massachusetts, the town of Barre commemorated Colonel Isaac Barre, a British nobleman and ally of the American colonists.

Unprecedented growth in Barre resulting from the rapid expansion of the granite industry lead to its incorporation as a village in 1886. It became a city in 1895. Jones Brothers lies in the northernmost part of Barre City. This area was formerly known as Twingsville or Thwingsville after James Thwing who settled there about 1795. One of his descendants, Joshua Thwing, established an iron foundry in the early 1800s around which the village grew. This settlement lies less than three-quarters of a mile south of the Jones Brothers site. - NRHP