Dear Vermont researchers, I am a native Vermonter (7 generations in Huntington and Hinesburg!) presently living in Chicago. I have done a great deal of genealogy research in Vermont and want to tell you all a little bit about their system. Vital records and deeds in Vermont are mostly kept by the TOWN, not the COUNTY, as most other non-New England states do. Most towns began keeping some vital records as soon as the town was organized, but this was strictly voluntary, people were not REQUIRED to register their births, marriages and deaths until much later (about the turn of the century). You are much more apt to find a marriage record than a birth, and very few deaths were recorded. You can get any vital record from the town, but the response time and price charged vary greatly (call first). Most towns do not have an index for their vital records and you will get a much better response if you know the date as closely as possible. About 1918 the town clerks of every town in Vermont were required to transcribe all of their Vital Records onto cards and send them to the state, where they were assembled into a grand alphabetical index. These cards contain in most cases all of the information in the original record, including birthplaces and parent's names etc. If it is not on the card, it is not in the original record (in nearly every case). It is these cards (now on microfilm to protect the originals) which are consulted when you send a request to Montpelier. The state Vital records facility is now located in Middlesex (about 5 miles away), but any request to Montpelier is forwarded there automatically. You can go to Middlesex and consult the cards yourself and when you do you will be working in the same room as the 3 vital records clerks and can observe them. I have done so many times and can tell you 1)they try to answer most requests the same day they come in. 2)they check the cards as carefully as they can, trying different spellings, etc. 3)if they report back that they cannot find the record, it means they have probably spent a long time looking. If you get a response of "no record" does that mean it does not exist? Not necessarily. Some towns made a real effort to get all their old records onto the cards and even went out to the old cemeteries and transcribed from the old stones. Other towns weren't so careful and some of their records did not get transcribed. Also, the cards are hand-written copies of hand-written old books and so may be so badly mis-spelled that the clerks cannot find your person in a reasonable time. What to do? Do your own looking, and you don't have to go to Vermont to do it, either. Fortunately, the Mormons have filmed ALL of the vital records and early town records of EVERY Vermont town, and they have also filmed the index cards that the Montpelier clerks are using. You can go into any LDS Family History Center and have a film of that town's records or that part of the grand index sent to you for about $3.50, then look for yourself and make any copies you like. That's the only way to be sure. Check every page of the early town records as you will often find marriages just stuck in among the town meeting minutes and tavern licenses and stock ear marks, etc., just as the town clerk added them in. You can look up what the Mormons have available for your town on their website: www.familysearch.org Click on "Custom Search" and then search the Family History Library Catalog. Or pay a visit to Vermont. It's beautiful. Valerie George