Hello, I am responding to the notice, posted yesterday, of a website, http://www.emory.edu/HISTORY/BELLESILES/new.Vermont.html which included material on gun ownership in Revolutionary Vermont. The statistics and summarizing material on the above website appear to be from Michael Bellesiles book "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture." And thereby hangs a tale. Subscribers to this list should be aware that academic historians have been unable to verify the accuracy of the statistics on which he based his conclusions. Other historians simply cannot find the documents he said he consulted, at the libraries where he said he used them. Quite simply, he is accused of doctoring (manufacturing?) statistics to make a case, for political reasons, that gun ownership was low at the time of the Revolution. If memory serves me, Emory University, where Bellesiles teaches, has recently launched a third investigation of Bellesiles, this time with outside scholars. You can check it all out via google. Bellesiles's Vermont examples--the chart on that website--may be 100% correct; I have no way of knowing. But his generalization regarding the percentage of households which owned guns in the Revolutionary Era has been called into question by serious historians, and is surely wrong--very likely by a great magnitude. I don't mean to criticize or embarrass the person who posted this website; I have no doubt that it was done in good faith. For that matter, anything that gets us to look at original documents is all to the good. And when the secondary source is Michael Bellesiles, one should always consult the original records. Edith Lillie Bartley [email protected] At 07:06 PM 9/14/2002 EDT, you wrote: >Vermont Probate Records, 1770-1790 > >http://www.emory.edu/HISTORY/BELLESILES/new.Vermont.html > >This region was known by several names, and was claimed by New York, New >Hampshire, Massachusetts, and itself. It became an independent republic in >1777, holding that status in opposition to its neighboring states, the United >States, and Great Britain until 1791, when it joined the United States as the >fourteenth state. >