Hi Fletch and all, My wife and I were back in Vermont in Essex County and surrounding areas in October of 1985 and talked to a 90 year old ex-town clerk of Victory, Mr. Leon Stanley, who had been town clerk for 50 years plus, and he took us around showing us that the area had at one time been a big booming town with factories and houses and land that had been cleared for farming. When we said that it was really hard to believe that there was population there, as all the area was wooded and there were very few houses, whereby he said that lots of people had moved on to seek better climate, and that there were stories about distant places being better for making a living. As it happens, one of his relatives had married my great grandfather's daughter, Almira Blancher, and he was living on the property and in one of the houses that the Blancher's had build, and he proceeded to show us the foundations of houses that my great great grandfather had built. Mr. Stanley said that the Blancher's were s! tone cutters, and showed us the work shop that still stood across from an old house, which the Blancher's had also built. What was really unfortunate, was the fact that he had some of the towns records in safes out in his barn, and he could not remember the combinations, and he would not turn the safes over to the newly elected town clerk, as politics entered in the picture, and since 1985, Mr. Stanley has passed away, and his nephew took over the property, and we do not know what happened to the town safes. According to Mr. Stanley, they contained lots of history in them. I would like to hear from some other Blancher's. Ed Blancher