Vermont GenWeb Project

Town Records, Probate Records, Archives, Libraries, Societies, Museums

We invite you to help us identify Archives, Libraries, Historical and Genealogical Societies, Museums and the like helpful to the genealogical researcher in Vermont.

Town Clerks

Town records are open to the public without any qualification as far as we are aware. Every town clerk maintains birth, death and marriage vital statistics as well as a raft of other records of value in researching your ancestors. You may be charged $2 an hour to view them. On a number of occasions we have sent a particular query to a town clerk with an SASE and have gotten back helpful responses. Town Meetin' time might be a little dicey, however.

Vermont Land Records

Early land records resulting from Benning Wentworth's grants will be found in volume 26 of the New Hampshire State Papers, a list of the grantees being appended to the name of each town.

Many petitions of New York grantees are given in volume four of E.B. O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York which contains more than 500 pages of Vermont records, many of genealogical importance. Some of the petitions constitute virtual censuses of the several towns.

Vermont land grants are indexed in volume II of the printed State Papers of Vermont and New York Charters are treated similarly in volume VII. Extensive information and names are included in volume VI, relating to the sequestration and confiscation of lands and estates during the Revolution. Petitions for land are printed and indexed in volume VII. Volume V, VI and VII are the work of Mrs. Mary Greene Nye, who has also compiled a monumental and nearly unique name and subject card index to the manuscript state papers in the Office of the Secretary of State.

Land records help to determine relationships and are useful in tracing migration. In Vermont today, land records are kept in the offices of town clerks, most of them with indexes of grantees and grantors. About 1810 one finds a land census giving approximate place of residence. These may be followed up in the land records of neighboring plots. Vermont land records with other town records were carefully inventoried by the Historical Records Survey. Mimeographed bound inventories, accompanied by an introductory historical sketch, were issued for several towns before the Survey dissolved in 1943. Copies are in the Vermont Historical Society. The manuscript inventories for other towns were deposited with the Vermont Historical Society, and constitute an invaluable central reference file from which can be discovered the type, extent and condition of the records of any town in the state. There is a guide to the use of the files, compiled by Henry H. Eddy, last Director of the Survey.

Land records, as summarized above, span from the earliest days to the present time in published and unprinted sources. In similar form other records exist that are fundamental to the validity of genealogical research: town, probate, birth, marriage, death, church and cemetery.

Warnings in Early Town Records

To follow a trail through records in their original has all the lure of the chase. One never can foresee what may turn up. To illustrate-names of entire families down to the hired man may often be found in the "warnings" of early town records. This procedure apparently was routine in Vermont when the father and husband, i.e. the bread winner, died, even if he left property. In these cases frequently subsequent records show that the "warned" continued to reside in town, a circumstance suggesting that the "warning" to leave town had no reference to the desirability of the "warned" as residents but constituted a public notice that the town would not be responsible for the support of the widow and fatherless children.
 
 

Probate Clerk

Probate includes wills, guardianships, name changes, adoptions and other proceedings of the probate court.
 

Office	Address	Town	Phone(802)+	Dates from
Washington Probate Office	10 Elm Street #2	Montpelier 05602	223-3405	1811

 

Archives and Libraries

Kreitzberg Library @ Norwich University
Northfield, VT 05663
802-485-2070

Eliot Pratt Center Library @ Goddard College
Plainfield, VT 05667
802-454-8311

 

Aldrich Public Library
6 Washington Street
Barre, VT 05641
802-476-7550

State Archives and Libraries
Public Records Division
General Services Department
U.S. Route 2, Middlesex
PO Drawer 33
Montpelier, VT 05633-7601
802-828-3700

Vermont State Archives
Office of the Secretary of State
26 Terrace Street
Redstone Building
Montpelier, VT 05609-1103
802-828-2308

Vermont Department of Libraries
Reference and Law Services Pavilion Office Building
109 State Street
Montpelier, VT 05609-0601
802-828-3268

University of Vermont
Special Collections
Bailey/Howe Memorial Library
Burlington, VT 05405
802-656-2138

Family History Center
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
RR#1 Box 2560
Montpelier, VT 05602
802-229-0898

Local Historical and Genealogical Societies

Genealogical Society of Vermont
P.O. Box 1553
St. Albans, VT 05478-1006

Vermont Historical Society Library and Museum
Pavilion Office Building
109 State Street
Montpelier, VT 05609-901
802-828-2291

Vermont Old Cemetery Association
P.O. Box 105
Underhill, VT 05490

 

 
 
 

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