Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Tuesday's Tip - Vermont Record Collections on FamilySearch

This week's Tuesday's Tip is to:  If you have Vermont ancestry, check out the Vermont record collections on FamilySearch.

You can see the list of Vermont record collections at https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list (put "vermont" in the search box at the upper left):


The include (by record type):

1) Vital Records:

*  Vermont, Births and Christenings, 1765-1908 (221,547 indexed records)

*  Vermont, Marriages, 1791-1974 (15,363 indexed records)

*  Vermont, Deaths and Burials, 1871-1965 (74,099 indexed records)

*  Vermont, Vital Records, 1760-1954 (1,868,775 indexed and imaged records)

2)  Town Records:  

*  Vermont, Town Records, 1850-2005 (browse images only)

*  Vermont, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1732-2005 (browse images only)

3)  Probate Records:

*  Vermont, Probate Files, 1791-1919 (10,225 indexed and imaged records)

*  Vermont, Bennington County, Manchester District Estate Files, 1779-1935 (browse images only)

*  Vermont, Franklin County Probate Records, 1796-1921 (browse images only)

Vermont, Washington County, Probate Estate Files, 1862-1915 (browse images only)

*  Vermont, Windham County, Westminster District, Probate Records, 1781-1921 (browse images only)

4)  Military Records:

Vermont, Enrolled Militia Records, 1861-1867 (4,350 indexed and imaged records)

5)  Land Records:

*  Vermont, Land Records, Early to 1900 (browse images only)

Note that not all collections are complete, and it's difficult to tell sometimes what is included in a specific collection.  The user has to intentionally look to determine coverage.

In my opinion, the "gem" in this state's records online are the Vermont Vital Records collection, which are images of cards filled out by town clerks from their town records over many years.  For example:


The other "gems" are the collections of land and town records which are "browse images" collections, meaning that the searcher must find the records of their research target, similar to turning microfilm reels at the FHC, but this research can be done in the privacy of your genealogy cave.

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/07/tuesdays-tip-vermont-record-collections.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Found Franklin County probate records easily even though they weren't indexed. The images are divided by date and surname so extrapolation to the desired page is fairly easy, especially if what you are looking for is actually there. Don't hesitate to use these records.

Stephanie Nichols Bateman said...

Yes this is a huge find! It has helped me to find many of my Blanchard relatives and actually revealed that my ggrandfather was married 3 times!

Anonymous said...

I have had trouble with some of the indexes on familysearch not matching with the records. Book "A" in the Guilford records seems to be missing and a record I'm looking for should be in book "A".

I have made incredible finds in their records, and I'm thrilled that they're there. I'm just hoping to find a blog that perhaps discusses some of these issues.