 It was a supreme irony that the name of the Vermont town (with an 'a' inserted) would derive from a connection to sheep, the animal that would come to define Weathersfield's earliest antecedents and first put it on the map.The man responsible for that feat was a native of Boston who had become a European trader.William Jarvis was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as U.S. Consul General to Portugal, after founding a trading house in Lisbon.