[5] On September 16, 1763, the town received its charter from the royal governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth.

The first European descendants to work the land and stay in the town were three brothers, Daniel, Jacob, and Elijah Hall, along with Jonathan Fowler.

Elijah Hall built the first house in Caledonia County in Barnet, near the base of Stevens Falls.

[6] Colonel Alexander Harvey came from Dundee, Scotland, for those in the town who wished to find new land in the American colonies.

[10] Ocean explorer and scuba inventor Jacques Cousteau[11] had influential experiences on Harvey's Lake as a young boy in the early 1920s.

While attending a summer camp he experimented with staying underwater by breathing through hollow reeds found in the lake shallows.

On January 24, 1784, the town of Barnet voted unanimously to make the Presbyterian denomination the official one of the town, as it was "founded on the word of God as expressed in the Confession of Faith, Catechisms Longer and Shorter, with the form of church government agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and practiced by the Church of Scotland.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, a group of members in Barnet built a new meeting house on the land formerly owned by Walter Harvey, and the property has gone by that name since then.

[14] In 1970, upon his arrival in North America, Chögyam Trungpa established the teaching center "Tail of the Tiger" (now Karmê Chöling).

Neighboring communities are Ryegate to the south, Groton to the southwest, Peacham to the west, Danville to the northwest, St. Johnsbury to the north, and Waterford, Vermont, to the northeast.

This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot summers and cold winters.