Vermont Archives, Societies & Publications

It is a good idea to familiarize personally with just about any repository in Vermont that you simply might travel to by communicating with to the best suited archive or library in advance.

Most, if not all, Vermont repositories have written and published content that present its collections as well as research policy.

Vermont archives and historical organizations usually have On-line sites that provide equivalent details. Several also contain down loadable data for some or parts of their collections.

List of Vermont Archives

  • National Archives – North East Region, Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center, 380 Trapelo Road, Waltham, Massachusetts, 02452-6399; Phone: (781) 663-0130; Fax: (781) 663-0154; E-mail: waltham.archives@nara.gov . Serves Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
  • Vermont State Archives, 109 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05609-1103;802-828-2308; The archives consist of state government records, the bulk of which relate to the executive and legislative branches. Collections include maps, plans, governors’ papers, election records, deeds, and photographs.

List of Vermont Libraries & Museums

List of Vermont Historical & Genealogical Societies

For almost every state there is a state genealogical society, a state genealogical council, or both.

In addition to their own work, Vermont groups many times help coordinate the efforts of local societies throughout the Vermont.

Their unique publications, newsletters and quarterlies, supplement those created through the area societies.

Regional and State Societies

  • Genealogical Society of Vermont, P.O. Box 1553, St. Albans, VT 05478; Membership organization publishing quarterly journal, Vermont Genealogy (with query column for members), quarterly newsletter, and books & sponsoring semi-annual meetings and occasional workshops.
  • Vermont Historical Society, 60 Washington Street, Barre, Vermont 05641-4209; 802-479-8500

County, Township and City Societies

Religious and Ethnic Societies

Vermont Newspapers & Publications

Vermont Genealogical publications (magazines, newsletters, periodicals, books, etc.) contain all types of invaluable information about specific ancestors, whole lineages and families, places in time, and about all sorts of genealogical records and repositories.

Newspapers

The Vermont Department of Libraries, State Office Building, 109 State St., Montpelier, VT 05609 has a microfilmed collection of all Vermont newspapers known from 1781 onward. The card catalog there shows the available issues and the locations of each publication under the “Newspapers” heading. Certain libraries around the state also have newspaper collections available. For example, the Swanton Public Library has a collection of issues of the Swanton Courier from 1877 through 1953. Obituaries were not widely included in newspapers until the 1900s and not many birth records were included either, but there are several other vital records and important bits of information that can be found in various state newspaper collections.

The state library’s “Vermont Room” holds a transcript index of the Burlington Free Press from 1848 to 1870. Those records are full of accidents, deaths and other information, which is listed alphabetically according to the names of the people involved and according to the type of event.

Copies of the transcript to the Burlington Free Press index for 1848 to 1870 are also available at the University of Vermont Bailey-Howe Library, along with several other newspaper collections.

The Vermont Historical Society has a scrapbook of the Boston Evening Transcript genealogical column on file.

  • Vermont Historical Newspapers
  • Vermont Newspapers Directory Listings
  • Historical Newspapers from Vermont (1783–2006) – Easily locate names and keywords in over 450 million content articles, obituaries, marriage notices, birth notices along with other items printed in over 2,800 historical U.S. newspapers. Completely new content and articles added on a monthly basis!
  • Extracts from “The Repertory,” 9 Mar 1826–29 Dec 1831. Published at St. Albans, Franklin County, Vermont. Bloomington, Minn.: C. Mertz, 1991. Includes marriage and death notices from those issues.
  • Vermont Newspaper Abstracts, 1783–1816. Salt Lake City: Ancestry, Inc., 2001. Includes 11,000 references from the Vermont Gazette, The Vermont Gazette: Epitome of the World, Epitome of the World, The World, and The Green-Mountain Farmer.
  • Vermont Newspaper List

Periodicals

Genealogical journals provide you with plenty of sources of information and facts, they are generally overlooked by genealogy and family history researchers and genealogist in looking around for family history.

Many regional and county genealogical and/or historical societies produce periodicals which have records relating to the region or vicinity they operate.

Frequently these publications have articles involving records that are not obtainable somewhere else.

  • Vermont History is published quarterly by the Vermont Historical Society (see Archives, Libraries, and Societies) and has excellent articles on Vermont history, rarely genealogy. It is indexed annually.
  • Branches and Twigs is published quarterly by the Genealogical Society of Vermont. It is not indexed and not easy to use but is filled with bits and details on Vermont ancestors.
  • Across the Border, P.O. Box 31010, Bloomington, Minnesota 55431, covers northern Vermont and Quebec’s eastern townships.
  • Vermont Genealogy (1996– ; formerly Branches and Twigs, 1972–95) is published quarterly by the Genealogical Society of Vermont (see Archives, Libraries, and Societies). The Index to Branches and Twigs, 1972–1995, edited by Robert M. Murphy (St. Albans, Vt.: Genealogical Society of Vermont, 2000), covers all of the years of its publication under that title.
  • Rooted in the Green Mountains is a quarterly newsletter focused on Addition and Rutland counties, available from Danielle Roberts, P.O. Box 81, Fair Haven, Vermont 05743.

Books