I just got back from VERMONT! My Word, it is beautiful, wonderful and more. I was able to locate many of the sites my ancestors lived at and some are local celebrated landmarks in Rutland County, Town of Pittsfield. As far as researching, I found most of the information I was lacking at the Local town Clerk's offices in several communities in Vermont. I gathered that if it is not in the town Clerk office, it might be in Montplier in the state Archives, or possibly some churches as well. I do beleive personally that some times we have to accept family lore to a certain degree if we cannot pin down a death or a birth certificate. Sometimes they have disappaeared or never exisited. I learned that in many townships the head of the family would come to the clerks office and record in his hand, his family and such in the early days, 1780's up to 1820-30 in the isolated areas. If they did not do so, nothing was probably never recorded on the family with the exception of the census, which starts in 1790 and lists head of family and numbers of age groups and sexes. Churches often times mergerd, or burned and so those records are either lsot ro you can be confused. I discovered that in one community the church was at first congreational, then that started to fizzle so they merged with a methodist and that stated to fizzle int he 1930's and several small scattered protestant group merged and formed a "Federated" chruch, and they had records for some of the groups that merged but not all, so that is another way of searching. It appears that msot locales have newspaer that go way back, as thanks to those whosearch them for us we find things. I am looking for someone to search for some obits in the Rutland Hearald by the way. My vist was well worth the money so to speak to find inofrmation and confirm legend and lore that had been kept alive since 1844 when when my people left. I found superb land records as well at the town clerks and a document that had my ggg grandfather's signature on it in 1797!, not to mention his grave and more in the local cemetery. And if you are going now, Riding the green Mountain Express or any of the several tourist railroads, it will blow you away... And the covered bridges and Woodstock and........wonderful! One last thing, I would be interested in information on the Unversalsit church and their doctrine in the early days, vs Methodists, episcopals and Congregational, in New England. Rob Bowe Vermont to Wisconsin, and now Minnesota.