If you flip through the pages of an old town book in Vermont, you might find, tucked away between tax records and town meeting minutes, something like this example from Putney, in Windham County, with a few pages of identical entries, each with the statement, “I do not agree in Religious Opinion with a Majority [...]
If I give you the title of the book I could just stop there. It pretty much is self-describing: The Town Officer: Or, The Power and Duty of Selectmen, Town Clerks, Town Treasurers, Overseers of the Poor, Assessors, Constables, Collectors of taxes, Surveyors of Highways, Surveyors of Lumber, Fence Viewers, Field Drivers, Measurers of Wood [...]
You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in ’75 and 1812, but [...]
