Vermont Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system

Vermont's law came from England. The state adopted the common law — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — by statute, in words that barely changed for two centuries. English common law is Vermont law, the statute says, so far as it suits conditions here and does not conflict with the state constitution or with Vermont statutes¹. The courts read that as taking in the unwritten law of England together with the acts of Parliament Vermont has adopted since². The Republic-era rule carried a date: the act of 1782 adopted the English statute law passed before 1 October 1760 that suited the circumstances of the state³.

England was the sole source. Coverture, dower, and curtesy — all English institutions, explained below — governed throughout the period. One feature of the statute book shapes every section that follows: Vermont sorted people by age and by marriage rather than by race, so marriage, landholding, testimony, and jury service stood open on the same terms to every free resident.

Three jurisdictions, one territory

Settlement started at Fort Dummer in 1724, but for fifty years the land was governed from outside it:

• 1724 to about 1764 — New Hampshire law governed, and New Hampshire granted the townships. These are the New Hampshire Grants, and the town charters are New Hampshire records.
• About 1764 to 1777 — New York law governed, and New York regranted land New Hampshire had already granted. Deeds, probates, and court papers for these years are New York records.
• From 1777 — Vermont declared independence and governed itself as a republic, entering the Union as the fourteenth state in 1791.

Every rule below is a Vermont rule and begins in 1777 or later. Because both New Hampshire and New York granted the same land, a single parcel can carry two chains of title.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Twenty-one for men, eighteen for women

Vermont set two ages of majority, and they were not the same for men and women. Males of twenty-one and females of eighteen were of full age for all purposes, and below those ages they were minors⁴. A Vermont woman of 18 could make a valid will, convey her own land, marry without her parents' consent, and end her guardianship, all at an age when her brother was still a minor.

The same two ages came out of the Constitution of 1777, the first in America to bar adult slavery. No male was to be held as a servant, slave, or apprentice after 21, nor a female after 18, unless bound by their own consent after reaching that age, or bound by law to pay debts, fines, or costs⁵. Those exceptions were real, and a small number of people were still held in Vermont for decades afterward⁶.

The two figures were brought together at 21 in 1929⁷, five years after a constitutional amendment put men and women on the same footing as to servitude⁸. The Attorney General drew the dividing line by date of birth, since a woman already 18 when the act took effect kept the older rule⁹.

The age dropped to 18 for both sexes in 1971¹⁰.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property. What the law limited was the minor's power to part with it:

• Contracts could be avoided by the minor, and stood only if confirmed after coming of age. A minor remained bound to pay a reasonable price for necessaries actually received¹¹.
• A deed made by a minor was voidable (valid until the minor chose to undo it): it stood unless the minor, after reaching full age, elected within a reasonable time to avoid it¹².
• Marriage did not end minority. It did end a girl's guardianship: the marriage of a female minor under guardianship worked as a legal discharge of her guardian¹³. From 1896 the discharge was partial — it released the guardian from the right to her custody and education, but not from the care of her property¹⁴.

Full legal capacity could be granted early only by a special act of the General Assembly.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

Through the nineteenth century the common-law ages governed capacity: a boy could marry at 14 and a girl at 12. Vermont's marriage statutes left those ages alone and regulated who could marry whom, and who had to consent. The law had that shape as early as the revision of 1797. Its marriage act sets no minimum age. What it does instead is list the forbidden degrees of kinship, require the intention to be published, name who may perform the ceremony, and fine an officiant who marries a minor without the consent of a parent, guardian, or master¹⁵. Consent ran on the same two figures that fixed majority.

A magistrate or minister could not marry a male under 21 or a female under 18 without the consent of the parent or guardian who had custody — provided one lived in the state and was able to act¹⁶. A justice or minister who married people contrary to the chapter forfeited between ten and seventy dollars, recoverable by a parent, guardian, master, or next friend of either party¹⁷.

Read together, these two rules explain a pattern in the records: a Vermont bride of 18 married on her own authority, while a groom of 20 needed his father at the town clerk's counter.

Those consent ages outlasted the change in majority. When Vermont equalized full age at 21 in 1929, the marriage rule kept its old figures, so men married at 21 and women at 18 without parental consent through 1950, and written consent was required below those ages. A minimum age was added underneath, and by the Revision of 1947 the rule stood in three tiers. No license could issue at all where the groom was under 16 or the bride under 14. Between those ages and 21 for a man or 18 for a woman, written parental consent was required. And where the male was under 18 or the female under 16, a judge's certificate that the public good required the license had to be filed in addition to the parent's consent¹⁸.

Marriages the law forbade

The prohibited degrees of kindred — the relatives too close to marry — were listed twice over, once for men and once for women, and reached blood relations and relations by marriage alike. A man could not marry his mother, grandmother, stepmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, or aunt, nor his wife's mother, daughter, or granddaughter, nor his son's or grandson's wife; the corresponding list bound a woman¹⁹. Where the relationship rested on a marriage, the bar continued even after that marriage ended by death or divorce, unless the divorce was for a cause showing the marriage had been unlawful from the start²⁰.

A marriage contracted while either party had a former husband or wife living was void, unless the earlier marriage had been dissolved²¹.

Vermont's list stops there, and both bars — kindred and a living spouse — applied to everyone alike.

Marriage required a ceremony

A valid Vermont marriage required a public announcement beforehand and a ceremony before an authorized official. The subject was regulated by statute from the beginning, and a couple acquired the status of husband and wife by going through the statutory form and in no other way²². Living together, however long, left a couple unmarried in Vermont.

Under the older system the intention to marry was published — the banns. A minister or the town clerk announced it at a public meeting in the town where each party lived. It could be posted instead, in a public place and in clear handwriting, signed by the minister, the town clerk, or a justice of the peace. Either way it had to happen at least eight days before the wedding²³. The person publishing it gave the parties a certificate, which had to be handed to the minister or magistrate before the ceremony²⁴. That certificate, and the posting behind it, are the reason an intended marriage can appear in town records days before the wedding.

A justice of the peace could solemnize — perform — marriages anywhere in the county he was appointed for. An ordained minister living in Vermont could do so anywhere in the state, so long as he was still preaching and carrying out his other duties²⁵. Marriages among the Friends, or Quakers, were solemnized in the manner used in their own societies, and the clerk of the meeting kept the record²⁶.

The published intention outlasted the Civil War. It is still the rule in the General Statutes, passed at the session of October 1862. That marriage chapter says how and by whom an intention of marriage is to be published, and has the publisher hand the parties a certificate of publication. That paper is a receipt showing the banns were called, not a permission to marry²⁷.

The system of publishing an intention to marry ended in 1869. An act of that year forbade any justice, minister, or other person authorized to solemnize marriage from doing so unless there was placed in his hands beforehand a certificate signed by a town or city clerk, and it printed the form that certificate had to take²⁸. That form is the reason Vermont marriage records improve sharply at this date. It called for each party’s full name, residence, age, occupation, place of birth, the number of the marriage — first, second, and so on — and the names of both parents. A Vermont marriage record from 1869 onward will usually name four parents; one from 1865 usually will not.

The Revised Laws of 1880 carry that system forward, and the older one has vanished from the statute book: the words “publish” and “publication” appear nowhere in the marriage chapter. An officiant had to require a certificate issued from the office of the clerk of the town where the groom resided — or, if he lived out of state, the bride’s town, or the town where the ceremony took place²⁹. The town clerk could not issue it to a minor without the written consent of a parent or guardian competent to act, nor to a person who was insane or under guardianship without the guardian’s written consent³⁰. This is the document that became the marriage license.

By the last decades covered here a couple applied to the town clerk, each filed a physician’s certificate of a blood test taken within the previous thirty days, and the ceremony could not be performed until five days after the license issued³¹. That waiting period is why a license and a marriage return can sit a week apart.

One saving rule protects a great many marriages, and is worth knowing before you conclude that an irregular ceremony left a couple unmarried. A marriage was not void merely because the man who performed it turned out to have no authority, or because the banns had been published carelessly or not at all. Two things had to hold: the marriage had to be lawful in every other way, and the couple had to have believed in good faith that they were properly married³².

Within sixty days the officiant returned a certified copy of the marriage to the clerk of the town where it was performed, or where the intention had been published³³. The marriage record is therefore a town record, and it sits where the wedding or the banns happened, which need not be where either party lived. Because making the return was the officiant's own duty, a marriage that certainly took place sometimes has no town entry, and the officiant's book is then the fallback.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

The right to acquire, hold, and convey land belonged to every free man in Vermont. Conveyances could be made by deed, executed by any person having authority to convey, without any other act or ceremony³⁴. Free Black and Native residents bought, held, and conveyed land on the same terms as anyone else, and their deeds sit in the same town books.

A foreign-born man stood on the same footing. Vermont passed no statute barring an alien from owning land, and the courts declined to supply one, so a man who had never naturalized could buy, hold, and pass on Vermont land³⁵.

Vermont records deeds with the town rather than the county, subject to two qualifications: in the first years after independence the counties held that jurisdiction, and it passed to the town clerks during the 1780s; and land lying in an unorganized town or gore has always been recorded by the county clerk instead. Otherwise a deed took effect against the world only once it was recorded at length in the clerk's office of the town where the land lay, and unrecorded it bound the grantor and his heirs alone³⁶. Vermont land titles are therefore traced through the town clerk's records.

Witnessing a deed

A witness of any age could serve, provided the witness was credible. Every deed had to be signed and sealed by the grantor — the person making the deed — and signed by two or more witnesses³⁷. If the grantor later refused to acknowledge his deed, it could be proved instead on the oath of the witnesses who had signed it³⁸. Competency, not age, was the test. In practice deed witnesses were adults, since a witness might have to appear years later to prove the deed.

Single women and widows

For a woman, everything turned on whether she was married. A single woman or widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could. A woman transacting freely in the town deed books is almost always unmarried or widowed. Remember that in Vermont she reached full age at 18.

Married women before 1847

A married woman was a feme covert, "covered woman," under coverture — the common-law rule that a wife's legal identity merged into her husband's. Her husband took the rents and profits of her land during the marriage and owned her personal property, and her contracts had no force on their own. She kept the ownership of land she brought to the marriage or inherited during it, but she could not deal with it alone.

Married women from 1847

The Act of 1847 made the first substantial change, and it is the one to date deeds against. It covered land a married woman owned before her marriage or acquired afterward by gift, grant, devise (a gift of land by will), or inheritance. Two things followed. Her husband's creditors could no longer seize the income from that land, or his interest in it, to satisfy what he owed alone. And the husband could no longer convey that income, or any interest in the land, by his own deed: the deed had to be made by the wife jointly with him, and acknowledged by her³⁹. The same act let a married woman leave her land by will⁴⁰.

A run of later acts — 1850, 1861, 1867, 1884, and 1888 — widened what she held separately. By the end of them everything she brought to the marriage or gained during it was hers alone, including the right to bring a lawsuit. Her husband could not dispose of it and his creditors could not reach it. Gifts from him were the one exception⁴¹.

Her power to convey land alone came last, and it came with a date stamped on it. A married woman could convey or mortgage by her sole deed the land she held in her own right to her sole and separate use; and she could convey by her sole deed any other real estate acquired by her on or after 13 February 1919⁴². Land she acquired before that date still needed the joint deed, as did a homestead interest and land she held jointly with her husband.

The deserted wife

There was a legal way out of coverture, and it leaves a court record. Where a married man left the state, abandoning his wife and making no sufficient provision for her, the supreme court could act on her own petition if she was 18 or over. It could authorize her to sell and convey her real estate, to collect money held in her right, and to keep the earnings of herself and her children. A wife whose husband was in the state prison was treated as a feme sole⁴³. A petition of this kind names both spouses and dates the desertion.

The wife's separate acknowledgment

Vermont required a private interview with the wife, and the certificate it produced sits on the face of an old Vermont deed. Every deed by husband and wife had to carry an acknowledgment by the wife, made apart from her husband before a judge or a justice of the peace, that she signed freely and without any fear or compulsion of him. The certificate was endorsed on the deed and recorded with it, and a deed lacking it was void as against her⁴⁴. The rule reached deeds made by husband and wife together, which in practice meant the wife's own land and the homestead.

When a wife had to sign a deed

The driver is dower: a widow's life estate in one-third of her husband's land — the use of that third for her lifetime, with the ownership passing to the heirs. In Vermont, dower reached the real estate the husband owned and held at his death⁴⁵. Her claim therefore attached at his death to what he still held then, so a buyer took a clear title from the husband alone and the wife stayed off his deed.

The courts made the reason explicit: Vermont treated the older English rule — dower in every parcel the husband held at any point during the marriage — as an unreasonable clog on the sale of land. One limit went with it. If a husband sold land in order to cheat his wife out of her dower, the sale did not count against her: she could still claim her dower third in that land, exactly as if he had never sold it⁴⁶ — a rule later written into the statute book, where it stayed past 1950⁴⁷.

So a Vermont deed from a married man ordinarily carries his signature alone, and on its own it tells you nothing about whether he had a wife. Where a wife did sign, the homestead is usually the reason.

Dower, curtesy, and the change in 1896

A widow was entitled to dower unless she was barred⁴⁵. Three things barred her⁴⁸:

• A jointure — property settled on her in advance to stand in place of dower — or another money provision expressed to be in its place.
• A provision in her husband’s will that the probate court found was meant in its place.
• Her husband dying with no children or grandchildren, in which case she took one-half of the estate instead.

Within eight months after the will was proved, or after letters of administration were granted (the probate court's written authority to settle an estate left without a will), she could elect in writing to waive that provision and take her dower⁴⁹. That written election is a probate record, and it names her.

Setting out dower produced a second record, in two places. The probate court appointed three disinterested freeholders — men who owned land outright and had no stake in the estate. They marked out the widow's third by metes and bounds, describing its boundaries on the ground, and reported back to the court. Once the court accepted the report, a certified copy went to the town clerk⁵⁰. A dower assignment therefore appears in the probate district file and again in the town land records. Until it was set out, the widow could occupy the land with the family of the deceased, or take one-third of the income⁵¹.

Curtesy was the husband's version. Where a wife owned land outright and a child had been born alive of the marriage, a widower held that land for the rest of his life as tenant by the curtesy⁵².

In 1896 both interests changed character. The widow's share stopped being a life estate and became one-third in value of the real estate her husband owned at his death, held outright; the husband's interest in place of curtesy was recast the same way⁵³. After 1896, then, a widow in the deed books is selling land she owns, not merely a life use — a distinction that decides whether her children had to join her. By the last decades covered here she took one-half in value instead of one-third where her husband left only one heir and that heir was her own child, or a child both spouses had adopted⁵⁴.

The widow’s third had been set against the homestead rather than alongside it since 1866, thirty years before that act, and the balance moved twice more after 1896:

The 1896 act also ended the minor children's right in the homestead⁵⁶. An estate settled between 1896 and 1929 gives a widow noticeably less than one settled after 1929. Dower and curtesy themselves outlasted this guide by a long way: they were not swept away until 2009⁵⁷.

The homestead

From 1849 Vermont set aside a homestead — the family dwelling, its outbuildings, and the land occupied with it — beyond the reach of creditors. The homestead of every housekeeper or head of a family, to the value of five hundred dollars, was exempt from attachment and execution — that is, creditors could neither hold it as security for a debt nor have it sold to pay one — on contracts made after 1 December 1850⁵⁸.

Two rules follow from it, and both leave records. A married man could not sell or mortgage the homestead on his own. The deed had to be a joint one, signed by husband and wife together, and she had to acknowledge it separately, just as she would a deed of her own land. There was a single exception: a mortgage given at the time of purchase to secure the purchase money⁵⁹. A deed of a Vermont homestead signed by the husband alone is therefore defective, and a wife's signature on a deed of the family farm is usually explained by the homestead rather than by dower.

On the owner's death the homestead passed wholly to his widow and children, free of his debts unless specially charged on it, and the probate court appointed three commissioners to set it out where necessary⁶⁰. That setting-out is a probate record naming the widow and the children.

Which children could own land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase just as an adult did. Conveying it was the constraint: a minor's deed stood until the minor, after reaching full age, chose within a reasonable time to avoid it¹². In practice a minor's land was managed by a guardian, and any sale went through the probate court on a license to sell. Own at any age; convey freely at full age — 21 for a son, 18 for a daughter before 1929.

Inheritance

Two separate provisions for the widow

When a person died without a will (intestate), Vermont settled the estate in the probate court. The widow's position rested on two separate rules, and confusing them will throw off a family reconstruction: she took dower — a life use of one-third of the land, described above — and, separately, a share of the personal property. The children took the land itself.

Vermont probates by district rather than by county, and a county could hold two districts under names of their own, so knowing the county is not enough to find an estate file⁶¹.

Land: the rules of descent

When a person died owning land that no will covered, the debts and the costs of settling the estate were paid first. Whatever land was left over passed in the order set out below. The table states the law from 1850, when the graduated “set sum” was introduced; the column on the right gives the earlier rule where it differed, so an estate settled before 1850 can be read against the right line⁶²:

The 1850 dividing line matters more than any other date in this section. An estate settled before it, where the deceased left a widow but no children, gave her a flat half and nothing more; after it, she took a fixed sum off the top and then half the remainder, which on a small estate could be the whole of it⁶².

Before 1821 she did worse still, and a probate file from the Republic and early statehood years should not be read against the later rule. The widow of a man who left no children took nothing of his land outright: her provision out of the real estate was dower and dower only — the use of one-third for her lifetime — and the land itself went to his kindred. Out of the personal estate, after debts and funeral charges were paid, the judge of probate decreed her one-third outright, or one-half if her husband left no children or grandchildren⁶⁴. Some land could not be split without ruining it. There the judge offered the whole of it to one heir at a time, in a set order: the eldest son first, then the other sons, then the eldest daughter and her sisters, and, where there were no children, the nearest collateral relatives, men before women. Whoever accepted had the land appraised and paid the others their shares in cash⁶⁵.

The set sum rose repeatedly, so the same rule produces very different divisions across the period:

These rules began as rules for land alone. By the Vermont Statutes of 1894 the same section governed what was left of the personal estate as well, so from then on the table above divides whatever remains after the widow's third of the personal property and the debts have been taken out⁶².

A son's share was not always a daughter's. Under the revisions of 1787 and 1797 each son took an equal share, each daughter took an equal share, and a son's share was twice a daughter's⁶⁸. The probate act of 1821 changed it, directing that the land descend equally to the children or the representatives of a deceased child⁶⁹, and equal shares held from then on. An estate divided before 1821 that gives a brother twice his sister is following the law, not slighting her.

Kinship was counted by the civil-law method, which measures the steps from one relative up to the nearest common ancestor and back down to the other. Relatives of the half blood — kin who shared only one parent — inherited equally with those of the whole blood standing at the same distance⁷⁰. Where no kindred could inherit, the estate escheated to the town where the land lay — that is, it fell to the town for want of an heir — for the use of schools there⁷¹, so a failed line can end in the town records rather than the probate file.

Shares were adjusted for advancements: property given by the intestate during his lifetime to a child or other direct descendant counted toward that heir's share. A gift counted only where it was expressed to be an advancement or given for love and affection, charged as such in writing by the deceased, acknowledged as such in writing by the heir, or delivered expressly as an advancement before two witnesses asked to take notice of it. An heir advanced beyond his share took nothing further but refunded nothing⁷².

Personal property and the widow's allowances

The widow took at least one-third of her deceased husband's personal property, and her husband could not leave it to anyone else in his will without her permission⁷³. The Vermont courts put her three statutory rights together plainly: homestead, dower, and at least one-third of the personal estate⁷⁴. That third vested in her the moment her husband died, so where she died before the probate court assigned it, it passed to her own estate rather than back to his⁷⁵.

On top of her share, the probate court could allow the widow and children maintenance out of the estate while it was being settled⁷⁶, and could make allowances to the children⁷⁷. These allowances are separate probate records, and they usually name the widow and each child.

Minors, guardians, and the age of fourteen

The father of a legitimate minor child was the guardian of that child for all purposes, and on his death the mother, while she remained unmarried, became guardian until another was appointed⁷⁸. The mother of a child born outside marriage was guardian on the same terms while she remained unmarried⁷⁹. By the twentieth century the father and mother of a legitimate child were joint guardians, and the survivor became sole guardian⁸⁰.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property. The probate court appointed one in four situations⁸¹:

• Where a minor had no parent authorized to act.
• Where a minor with an interest in an estate being settled had to be given notice.
• Before any part of an estate was assigned to a minor, even one with a living parent.
• Where a minor with a living parent owned real or personal estate, or the parent was shown to be unsuitable.

Where a child inherited nothing, often no guardianship record was created at all.

Fourteen is the age to watch, and it brackets a birth year. A minor under 14 could have a guardian appointed without notice to the minor⁸². A minor of 14 or over living in the state could choose his own guardian, subject to the court's approval. He could make that choice before the probate court, or before a justice of the peace, whose certificate was proof enough for the court⁸³. Where a guardian had been appointed for a child under 14, the child could choose another after reaching 14⁸⁴. A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is therefore evidence that the child had reached 14.

The guardian had the custody and tuition of the minor — the care and schooling — and the care and management of the estate until the child arrived at full age⁸⁵: 21 for a boy, 18 for a girl before 1929. The final account filed at that point is one of the most valuable documents in Vermont genealogy. It dates the child's coming of age, and so approximates a birth year, and it frequently reveals a girl's married surname.

A surviving parent kept custody of the child and charge of his education, so long as the court judged the parent fit. The court settled that question when it appointed the guardian⁸⁶. So the guardian of the estate and the guardian of the person can be two different people, in two different records. A father could also name a guardian by his will⁸⁷.

Children born outside marriage

At common law a child born outside marriage was filius nullius, "nobody's child," and could inherit from no one. Vermont changed that early and on both sides.

From the mother, inheritance ran both ways: children born outside marriage inherited their mother's estate as if born in lawful wedlock, and the mother inherited the estate of such a child⁸⁸.

From the father there were two routes. Where the parents married after the birth, the child, if recognized by the father as his child, was legitimate to all intents and capable of inheriting⁸⁹. Alternatively the putative father (the alleged father) could adopt the child, and the child then stood as legitimate toward him. That took an instrument in writing⁹⁰:

• Made with the consent of the child, or of the child’s guardian.
• Signed and sealed by the father.
• Attested by three credible witnesses.
• Acknowledged before the judge of probate of his district, and recorded in that court.

That recorded instrument is a probate district record naming both father and child. The child could enter a dissent to the adoption in the same court within one year after reaching full age, and the adoption then became void⁹¹.

Bastardy proceedings, brought by the mother or by the overseer of the poor, generated their own records in the county court and in the town poor records⁹². They fixed support rather than inheritance, but they name both parents and date the birth.

Wills, executors, and the three witnesses

The age to make a will was full age — 21 for a man and 18 for a woman before 1929. Every person of full age and sound mind could devise land by will⁹³, and every person of full age and sound mind could bequeath — leave by will — personal property⁹⁴. Vermont set the same age for both kinds of property, so the common law's lower ages for wills of personal property never applied here.

Vermont required three witnesses, and this is the most distinctive feature of its wills. A will had to be in writing, signed by the testator (the person making the will) or by another in his presence and at his express direction, and attested and subscribed by three or more credible witnesses in the presence of the testator and of each other⁹⁵. That requirement held through 1950 and was reduced to two only in 2005. It stands unchanged in the Revised Laws of 1880, in the same words⁹⁶.

A gift to a witness who was not an heir at law was void so far as that witness was concerned, unless there were three other competent witnesses to the will; the witness whose gift failed was then admitted to testify as if the gift had never been made⁹⁷. In practice this pushed families toward three wholly disinterested witnesses.

A Vermont will needed those three witnesses however it was written, so a will in the testator's own hand was signed and proved like any other. One narrow alternative existed: a nuncupative will — one spoken rather than written — could pass personal property worth no more than $200, and only where someone present put a memorandum of it in writing within six days⁹⁸.

The age to serve as executor was full age, and the statute says so by providing for the alternative. Sometimes the person named executor was still a minor when the will was proved. The court then put the estate in the hands of an administrator until he grew up, unless a second executor named in the will took the job and gave bond. Once the minor came of age he could give bond himself and join as executor⁹⁹. So when the person running the estate changes some years after probate and the name from the will reappears, the minor named as executor had reached full age — and the record dates it.

One quirk catches researchers out. Where an unmarried woman appointed executrix married, her marriage extinguished her authority as executrix¹⁰⁰, so an abrupt substitution of administrator is often explained by her wedding rather than by her death.

Taxation

The grand list

Vermont taxed through the grand list — an annual valuation made by town officers called listers, in which each taxpayer's polls and property were entered and against which every state, county, town, and school tax was then assessed. The grand list is the backbone of Vermont tax research, and it is a town record.

All real and personal estate owned by inhabitants of, or situated in, the state was set in the list at one per cent of its value¹⁰¹. Property was listed to its owner, of either sex and any age, so a minor's land appears in the grand list under the minor's own name, and a widow's under hers.

The poll tax

The poll tax is the prize for genealogy, because it lists men who owned nothing and so turns the tax lists into a census substitute.

The upper age of sixty held from the start, but the lower age did not. Under the state's first code, passed at the session of February 1779, every male person in the several towns from sixteen years old to sixty was set in the list at six pounds, and only ministers of the gospel, the president and tutors of the college, year-round schoolmasters, and college students were left off. The revision of 1787 raised the lower age to twenty-one, keeping the upper age of sixty and the valuation of six pounds. The revision of 1797 restated that window and valued the poll at twenty dollars, dropping all the exemptions but two — ministers and recent college graduates¹⁰². The valuation moved again, to one dollar in 1841 and two dollars in 1842¹⁰³, but the window of ages did not. In 1850 the word "citizens" in the section was construed to mean inhabitants¹⁰⁴, which widened it beyond men who could vote.

That first figure matters for the Republic years. A man set as a poll in a Vermont list of the early 1780s could be as young as 16, so an early list is no evidence that the man named in it had reached 21. From 1787 the youngest poll is 21, and the lists begin to work as a rough age bracket.

From 1787 through 1850 the taxable window for a Vermont man ran from his twenty-first to his sixtieth birthday. The town-meeting chapter takes the same line from the other side, giving the vote both to a man of twenty-one whose list was taken the year before and to those exempt from taxation by reason of having reached sixty¹⁰⁵.

The upper age then moved twice, and for one stretch it disappeared altogether. The act of 1855 that rewrote the grand list kept the upper age at sixty¹⁰⁶. The revisers who drew the General Statutes, passed at the session of October 1862, dropped it: their section sets in the list the polls of all male inhabitants “over the age of twenty-one years,” with no upper age named¹⁰⁷. It came back thirteen years later at a higher figure. An act of 1868 amended that section to reach male inhabitants, “whether citizen or alien,” over twenty-one and under seventy, taking effect on 1 March 1869¹⁰⁸, and that is the rule the Revised Laws of 1880 carry¹⁰⁹.

So the same disappearance means three different things depending on the year:

A man vanishing from an 1840 list may simply have turned 60. A man of 65 sitting in an 1865 list is not an error — there was no upper age that year. A man vanishing from an 1885 list had to reach 70 for the same explanation to work.

The exemptions changed along the way, and each one removes from the list a man who was plainly living in the town. Under the law of 1850 the listers passed over the polls of men they judged too infirm to tax¹¹⁰. The act of 1855 replaced that test with two others, leaving it to the listers’ discretion to omit men who were extremely poor and men likely to leave town before a tax could be collected¹⁰⁶. By 1880 the statute exempted the polls of men actually poor or from whom a tax was not likely to be collected, the polls of militiamen, and the polls of Union veterans who had lost an arm, a leg, or their eyesight, or had suffered an equivalent disability in the war. None of these exemptions cost a man his vote¹⁰⁹. A man who disappears from a poll list in the later 1860s while still appearing elsewhere in the town records may be a disabled veteran rather than a man who moved.

The two exemptions left standing in 1797 each remove from the list a man who was plainly living in the town. A settled minister of the gospel was not set as a poll at all, and a college student was exempt for three years after taking his first degree. A third ran alongside them from the 1780s: a man serving in a properly equipped company of light infantry, cavalry, or artillery was exempt from poll tax, an exemption cut back before 1791 to state taxes only. None of the three survives into the taxation chapter of the Compiled Statutes of 1850, so for a man listed after that date, check the compilation current for the year¹⁰².

A further exemption explains most gaps. Among the property and persons exempt from taxation were the polls of such persons as the listers deemed so infirm as to be unfit subjects of taxation¹¹⁰. When a man drops off a poll list while still alive elsewhere in the record, an infirmity exemption — or simply his sixtieth birthday — is usually the explanation.

Courts

Jury service

Vermont chose its jurors at town meeting, which makes the jury list a genealogical record in its own right. At the annual town meeting the board of civil authority agreed on the number of grand and petit jurors that would be the town's proportion for the coming year, nominated them, and the inhabitants present at the meeting chose them¹¹¹. The town clerk kept the names, and the sheriff drew from them when the court called for a jury¹¹².

The statute called for judicious men of the county, eighteen of them as grand jurors and as many petit jurors as the court directed¹¹³. Jurors were men, and a man reached full age at 21⁴. The jury act itself set no age, so 21 is the general age of majority applied to jury service rather than a figure the jury statute named. The jury chapter still read that way thirty years later: in the Revised Laws of 1880 it names no age, no property qualification, and no sex¹¹⁴.

A property requirement stood behind the word "judicious" for the earlier part of the period, and then fell. Jurors had to be freeholders — landowners — until 1842. That year the General Assembly swept the requirement away for every office and public duty in the state at once¹¹⁵. The requirement went for the whole panel at once, not merely for bystanders, so after 1842 a man on a Vermont jury need not have owned land. Where too few jurors attended to fill a panel, the court could order the sheriff to summon enough judicious men on the spot to complete it, on the same terms as the panel itself¹¹⁶.

One title in the town records is easy to misread: a "grand juror" chosen at town meeting was a town officer who made complaints and presentments — formal accusations — before a justice, not a member of a grand jury¹¹⁷.

Women as jurors and witnesses

Women could testify throughout the period, but they could not sit on a jury until 1 February 1943¹¹⁸. From then on they served on the same terms as men¹¹⁹.

Witnesses

No Vermont statute set a minimum age for a witness. The compilations of 1850 and 1880 both say who could testify, and both answer by asking whether the witness stood to gain from the case, had been convicted of a crime, or was a party to it. Neither mentions age at all¹²⁰. So a child’s age bore on how much his testimony was worth, not on whether the court would hear it. The common-law test applied: did the witness understand what taking an oath meant, and could he describe what he had seen? That reading rests on the silence of the statute books rather than on a Vermont case, and a researcher who needs the point settled should look for one.

What could keep a person off the witness stand was a personal stake in the outcome, not age or social standing, and Vermont removed those bars one after another. Residents of a county, town, city, borough, village, or school district could testify in a case involving that body, even though they stood to gain from the result¹²¹. From 1850 the same held for railroad stockholders in a case involving their company¹²². Interest was the whole of it: a person of color testified and sat on a Vermont jury on the same terms as anyone else, throughout the period.

Criminal responsibility

Before 1912 the common-law ages governed, since Vermont's statutes fixed none¹²³:

• Under 7 — a child was legally incapable of committing a crime.
• 7 to 14 — the court started from the position that the child could not commit a crime, and the State had to prove otherwise by showing the child knew right from wrong and understood that what he did was wrong.
• 14 and over — full criminal responsibility, tried and punished as an adult.

From 1912 a statute changed this. Vermont's juvenile court act gave the juvenile courts exclusive jurisdiction over every child under the age of sixteen charged with violating a criminal law, and treated the proceeding as protective rather than punitive — the question was custody, not guilt. A minor of sixteen and over stayed in the criminal courts and was tried as an adult¹²⁴. So from 1912 a child under 16 leaves a juvenile file rather than a criminal one, and those files are closed to public inspection.

Sources & Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Vermont Constitution, ch. I, art. 1, as amended 1924. Equalizes at twenty-one the age to which a person may be held as a servant or apprentice. Numbered Amendment 37 in the Source note printed under the article in the Vermont Statutes Annotated, and Amendment 40 in the Secretary of State's list of proposals; the number printed in the code is followed in this guide. Digital text. Public.Resource.Org. https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-vt/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Vermont Constitution of 1777, Declaration of Rights, art. I. Servitude to 21 for males and 18 for females. Printed in the front matter of The Compiled Statutes of the State of Vermont, below.
• Vermont Secretary of State, Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. "List of Proposals." Constitutional amendments by year of proposal, with their fate. https://sos.vermont.gov/vsara/learn/constitution/amending-the-constitution/proposals (accessed 2 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• The Compiled Statutes of the State of Vermont: Being Such of the Revised Statutes, and of the Public Acts and Laws Passed Since, as Are Now in Force. Compiled by Charles L. Williams. Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1851. The essential volume for this guide, and the source of most rules stated above: common law, juries, towns, probate districts, wills, dower and curtesy, descent, guardians, conveyances, homestead, marriage, married women, children born outside marriage, and the grand list. Each chapter prints its own derivation from the Revised Statutes of 1839 and the session laws. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/compiledstatute00willgoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Laws of the State of Vermont: Revised and Passed by the Legislature, in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety Seven. Rutland: Josiah Fay, 1798. The revision of 1797, cited in the notes as R. 1797; the volume itself was printed the following year. The earliest Vermont text to state several rules above in the form they kept: the reception of the common law (ch. I, § 1), the will ages of twenty-one and eighteen and the three attesting witnesses (ch. XVII, § 1), dower as a life use of one third (§ 32), advancements (§ 35), and a minor's choice of guardian at fourteen (§ 93). The scan is in two parts, the revision and a separate appendix of session acts, paginated separately. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Revised Laws of the State of Vermont. Passed by the General Assembly of the Representatives of the Freemen of the State, at Their Sessions in June and October ... One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Two. The Republic-era revision, carrying "An Act adopting the Common and Statute Law of England," passed 22 June 1782. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp62822122 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880: With the Public Acts of 1880, and the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Vermont. Published by Authority. Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881. The one intervening compilation available in full view online, and the volume that fixes the law between the Compiled Statutes of 1850 and the acts of 1896: the marriage certificate issued by the town clerk (ch. 121), the descent of real estate and the $2,000 set sum (ch. 115), and dower and curtesy (ch. 114). Each section prints its own derivation through the General Statutes of 1863, the Revised Statutes of 1839, and the session laws. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Statutes of the State of Vermont: Revised and Established by Authority, in the Year M,DCC,LXXXVII, Including Those Passed Since That Period Until the Session of the Assembly ... Holden at Bennington in January 1791. Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, 1791. The revision of 1787, cited in the notes as R. 1787. It adopts the common law of England at p. 28, sets the double portion for sons at p. 57, requires three witnesses to a devise at p. 55, and empowers the probate courts to allow a guardian chosen by a minor at p. 65 without naming the age. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp173652984 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Thompson, Daniel Pierce, comp. The Laws of Vermont of a Public and Permanent Nature, Coming Down to, and Including the Year 1834. Montpelier: Knapp and Jewett, 1835. A continuation of William Slade's compilation, covering the acts passed since 1824 rather than the whole body of Vermont law. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsvermontapub00thomgoog (accessed 2 August 2026).
• Vermont Statutes Annotated (current). Each section is printed with a Source note giving its descent through the Revised Statutes of 1839, the General Statutes of 1863, the Revised Laws of 1880, the Vermont Statutes of 1894, the Public Statutes of 1906, the General Laws of 1917, the Public Laws of 1933, and the Revision of 1947. This is the fastest route backward from a modern rule, and the source of the chains printed in the notes above. Apart from the Revised Laws of 1880, those intervening compilations are absent from the open-access Internet Archive run for Vermont and are read on HathiTrust or in a law library. The same Source notes, including those under repealed sections, are mirrored at Public.Resource.Org, https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-vt/. Vermont General Assembly. https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/ (accessed 2 August 2026).

Session Laws and State Records

The Internet Archive holds the annual volumes from 1779 to 1857 in a single item, one scanned file per session. The links below open the individual volume rather than the item. Each volume numbers its public acts and its corporation acts in separate sequences, so one number can appear twice in a year: No. 37 of 1847 is both the married women's act and the Orleans Iron Company.

• Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at Their October Session, 1842. Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Sons, Printers, 1842. No. 1 (polls set in the list at two dollars) and No. 12 (freeholder requirement abolished). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1842.100.pdf (accessed 6 August 2026).
• The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1847. Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1847. No. 37, the married women's act, at pp. 26–27. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1847.100.pdf (accessed 6 August 2026).
• The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1849. Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Son, 1849. No. 20, the homestead act. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1849.100.pdf (accessed 6 August 2026).
• The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1850. Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Son, Printers, [1850]. No. 15 (the widow's share) and No. 37 (polls; “citizens” construed as inhabitants). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1850.100.pdf (accessed 6 August 2026).
• The General Statutes of the State of Vermont: Passed at the Annual Session of the General Assembly, Commencing October 9, 1862. Published by the state of Vermont. The compilation governing the 1860s. It briefly left the poll tax with no upper age (ch. 83) and still ran marriage on published banns (ch. 69). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104852498 (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1866. Montpelier, Vt., 1866. No. 33, dower set out after the homestead and reduced by it. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053907 (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1868. Montpelier, Vt., 1868. No. 5, the poll tax ceiling restored at seventy. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053923 (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1869. Montpelier, Vt., 1869. No. 1, the town clerk’s marriage certificate and its printed form. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047693 (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1870. Montpelier, Vt., 1870. No. 30, the set sum doubled to $2,000; No. 31, descent to a surviving husband. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047701 (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, at the Eighth Biennial Session, 1884. Rutland: The Tuttle Co., Official Printers to the State of Vermont, 1885. No. 140, married women's property. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047776 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, at the Fourteenth Biennial Session, 1896. Burlington: The Free Press Association, Printers and Binders, 1896. The volume for the acts that reshaped a widow's position: No. 44 (dower, curtesy, and the homestead), No. 45 (descent), and No. 53 (guardians of female minors). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047594 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the Twenty-second Biennial Session, 1912. Montpelier: Capital City Press, Printers, 1913. No. 113, the juvenile court act. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047685 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the Twenty-fifth Biennial Session, 1919. Montpelier, Vt.: Capital City Press, 1919. No. 90, married women's conveyances. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047479 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont. 1929 and 1941. No. 1 and No. 46 of 1929 (age of majority; dower, curtesy, and the homestead) and No. 31 of 1941 (jury service for women). The text of these three acts is given here as it is printed in the Source notes under the corresponding sections of the Vermont Statutes Annotated, in In re Estate of Cooke, and in the Vermont State Archives records, all cited in the notes above.
• Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at Their October Session, 1821. Middlebury: Printed by Copeland and Allen, 1821. Ch. 3, the probate act, whose § 75 replaced the double portion for sons with equal shares among the children. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1821.100.pdf (accessed 6 August 2026).
• Slade, William, comp. Vermont State Papers; Being a Collection of Records and Documents, Connected with the Assumption and Establishment of Government by the People of Vermont. Middlebury: J. W. Copeland, printer, 1823. The Republic-era records, including the constitution of 1777 and the laws of 1779 through 1786 complete. The source for the first poll tax rule, at p. 297, where the taxable age begins at sixteen. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/vermontstatepape00verm (accessed 2 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Abell v. Warren. 4 Vt. 149 (1832).
• Bigelow v. Kinney. 3 Vt. 353 (1830).
• Blanchard v. Blanchard's Estate. 109 Vt. 454 (1938).
• Dunnett v. Shields. 97 Vt. 419 (1924). The proof required to upset a husband's conveyance as a fraud on his wife's rights.
• E. B. & A. C. Whiting Co. v. City of Burlington. 106 Vt. 446 (1934).
• Estate of Johnson v. Estate of Johnson. 41 Vt. 467 (1868).
• In re Estate of Cooke. 117 Vt. 336 (1952). Traces the history of dower and the homestead through the acts of 1866, 1896, and 1929.
• In re O'Rourke's Estate. 106 Vt. 327 (1934). The widow's three statutory rights.
• Morrill v. Palmer. 68 Vt. 1 (1895).
• Rafus v. Daley. 103 Vt. 426 (1931). The age of majority for women before the act of 1929.
• State v. Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad. 25 Vt. 170 (1853). Cited for the absence of any bar on alien landholding.
• State v. Learnard. 41 Vt. 585 (1869).
• State v. O'Brien. 106 Vt. 97 (1934).
• Thayer v. Thayer. 14 Vt. 107 (1842). Why a Vermont husband could convey without his wife's signature, and when he could not.

Secondary and Reference Works

• "Do Sixteen and Seventeen Year Old Criminal Defendants in Vermont Need a Transfer Hearing?" Vermont Law Review 5 (1980): 361. Sets out the history of the juvenile court from the act of 1912 and the age-sixteen line. https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/5VtLRev361.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Vermont. Bulletin 157-44, revised. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949. Digests majority, marriage, contracts, property, inheritance, homestead, guardianship, and jury service as they stood on 1 January 1948, with section numbers to the Revision of 1947. The edition to prefer for this guide, since it falls inside the period. Digital images. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-44-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Vermont. Bulletin 157-44 (revised), as of 1 January 1959. Prepared by Laura H. Dale. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959. The later revision, showing which rules had moved after 1948. Digital images. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-44-rev_dolwb_1959.pdf (accessed 2 August 2026).
• Vermont Secretary of State, Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. "1942: Jury Service for Women." Act 31 of 1941, the referendum of 3 November 1942, and the vote by which women became eligible. https://sos.vermont.gov/vsara/learn/general-assembly/referendum/history/1942 (accessed 2 August 2026).
• Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. Research guides to probate district, land, vital, and town records — the authority for which district or town office holds a given record. https://sos.vermont.gov/vsara/ (accessed 2 August 2026).
• Virtual Underwriter. "Aliens and Aliens' Investments." A state-by-state digest of alien landholding law, cited above for the absence of any Vermont bar. https://www.virtualunderwriter.com/en/underwriting-manuals/2005-8/UM00000035.html (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Whitfield, Harvey Amani. The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777–1810. Barre, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 2014. On the persistence of slaveholding in Vermont after the constitutional ban.

Citations

1. The Compiled Statutes of the State of Vermont (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1851), ch. 30, § 1; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledstatute00willgoog : accessed 5 August 2026). Cited below in short form as the Compiled Statutes of 1850, after the compiling act of 13 November 1850, though the volume was printed in 1851. Carried from ch. 27 of the Revised Statutes of 1839 through the successive revisions to the Revision of 1947, § 1263, now 1 V.S.A. § 271 ↩
2. State v. O’Brien, 106 Vt. 97 (1934); E. B. & A. C. Whiting Co. v. City of Burlington, 106 Vt. 446 (1934) ↩
3. Revised Laws of the State of Vermont ([1782]), “An Act adopting the Common and Statute Law of England,” passed 22 June 1782, §§ I–II; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62822122 : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
4. Vermont Constitution of 1777, Declaration of Rights, art. I, as printed in the front matter of the Compiled Statutes of 1850 ↩
5. Harvey Amani Whitfield, The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777–1810 (Barre, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 2014), on the persistence of slaveholding in Vermont after the constitutional ban ↩
6. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 1; from ch. 65, § 1, of the Revised Statutes of 1839, carried through the General Statutes (1863), ch. 72, § 1, the Revised Laws (1880), § 2421, the Vermont Statutes (1894), § 2736, the Public Statutes (1906), § 3143, and the General Laws (1917), § 28 ↩ ↩
7. Laws of 1929, No. 1, §§ 1–2, confirmed by the Source note printed under 1 V.S.A. § 173, which places 1929, No. 1 between the General Laws (1917), § 28, and the Public Laws (1933), § 21. That the section then read twenty-one for both sexes is fixed by the amendment note recording that the act of 1971 substituted “eighteen” for “twenty-one.” The marrying ages of 21 and 18 were not disturbed; they sat in the marriage chapter, later 18 V.S.A. § 5142 ↩
8. Vermont Constitution, ch. I, art. 1, as amended in 1924, striking the separate age of eighteen for females. The amendment is numbered 37 in the Source note printed under the article in the Vermont Statutes Annotated, and 40 in the Vermont Secretary of State’s “List of Proposals”; the number printed in the code is followed here. Digital text, Public.Resource.Org (https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-vt/ : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
9. 1938–40 Op. Att’y Gen. 327, read in the annotations printed under 1 V.S.A. § 173, Vermont Statutes Annotated; digital text, Public.Resource.Org (https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-vt/ : accessed 2 August 2026). The opinion is cited here as printed in those annotations; the full text is in the Attorney General’s biennial report for 1938–40. For the rule before 1929 see Rafus v. Daley, 103 Vt. 426 (1931) ↩
10. Laws of 1971, No. 90, § 1, and No. 184 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, substituting eighteen for twenty-one in 1 V.S.A. § 173 ↩
11. Abell v. Warren, 4 Vt. 149 (1832) ↩
12. Bigelow v. Kinney, 3 Vt. 353 (1830) ↩ ↩
13. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 59, headed “Marriage of female ward to discharge guardianship”; from ch. 65, § 21, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 ↩
14. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, at the Fourteenth Biennial Session, 1896 (Burlington: The Free Press Association, Printers and Binders, 1896), No. 53, § 1, approved 30 October 1896; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047594 : accessed 5 August 2026). The act is the break in the chain printed under 14 V.S.A. § 3002: everything above it carries the full discharge, everything below it the partial one ↩
15. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, the whole chapter, which regulates the prohibited degrees, publication, consent, solemnization, and record, and sets no minimum marrying age. The same scheme is already in R. 1797, ch. XXIV, “An Act regulating marriage and divorce”: § 1 lists the forbidden degrees twice over, once for men and once for women, and voids a marriage contracted while a former husband or wife is living; § 2 empowers ordained ministers and justices of the peace to solemnize; § 3 requires the intention to be published in the towns where the parties ordinarily reside; and § 4 fines an officiant seventy dollars for joining any person in marriage without a certificate, or “before such minister or justice is certified of the consent of the parents, guardians or masters, (if any there be) if either party be a minor,” recoverable by a parent, guardian, master, or next friend; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
16. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 8 ↩
17. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 16 ↩
18. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Vermont, Bulletin 157-44 (rev.; Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), p. 13, heading 18, “Age of Consent to Marriage — Men and Women,” citing the Revision of 1947, §§ 21, 4131: no license or certificate could issue where the groom was under 16 or the bride under 14; parental consent in writing was required below 21 for a male and 18 for a female; and below 18 for a male and 16 for a female the certificate of a designated judge was required in addition; digital images, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-44-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 2 August 2026). Cited below in short form as Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948) ↩
19. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, §§ 1–2 ↩
20. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 3 ↩
21. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 4 ↩
22. Morrill v. Palmer, 68 Vt. 1, 7 (1895), cited in Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948), heading 19: the subject being regulated by statute, common-law marriages have never been recognized in Vermont ↩
23. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, §§ 5–6 ↩
24. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 7 ↩
25. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 9 ↩
26. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, §§ 10, 12 ↩
27. The General Statutes of the State of Vermont: Passed at the Annual Session of the General Assembly, Commencing October 9, 1862, ch. 69, “Marriage,” §§ 5–7; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104852498 : accessed 6 August 2026). The section headings read “Intention of marriage, how and by whom to be published,” “If no town clerk or minister reside in the town, publication to be in adjoining town,” and “Certificate of publication, by whom and for what purpose given.” Section 7 has the person publishing the intention deliver to the parties “a certificate under his hand, that the intention of marriage between them has been published as above provided.” The certificate of publication should not be mistaken for the later clerk’s certificate: it records that banns were called ↩
28. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1869 (Montpelier, Vt., 1869), No. 1, “An Act to Amend Chapter Seventeen of the General Statutes, Relating to Births, Marriages and Deaths and for the Better Registration Thereof,” § 1, pp. 3–4; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047693 : accessed 6 August 2026). Every justice, minister, and other person authorized to solemnize marriage was to “require to be placed in their hands, previous to the solemnization of such marriage rite, a certificate, signed by a town or city clerk.” The act prints the form, which numbers its fields: the groom’s full name, place of residence, age, occupation, number of marriage, place of birth, father’s name, and mother’s name, and the same series for the bride. The Revised Laws of 1880 cite this act in the margin of the corresponding sections as 1869, No. 1, § 1 ↩
29. The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), ch. 121, “Marriage,” §§ 2310–2314, pp. 467–68; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026). § 2311 requires the officiant to obtain “a certificate issued from the office of the clerk of the town where the groom resides,” or of the bride’s town where the groom is not a resident, or of the town where the marriage is solemnized where neither is. The chapter contains no provision for publishing an intention to marry. The marginal derivations run to 1869, No. 1, § 1, and behind that to ch. 69 of the General Statutes, ch. 62 of the Revised Statutes of 1839, and R. 1797 ↩
30. The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), ch. 121, “Marriage,” §§ 2310–2314, pp. 467–68; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026), § 2314, headed “Not to be issued to minors, insane persons, or paupers, unless”: a town clerk was not to issue a marriage certificate to a minor without the written consent of a parent or guardian competent to act, nor where a party was insane or under guardianship without the guardian’s written consent. The 1880 text says simply “a minor,” which at that date still meant a male under 21 or a female under 18 ↩
31. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Vermont, Bulletin 157-44 (rev. as of 1 January 1959; Washington: U.S. Department of Labor), headings 20–21, citing V.S. 1947, T. 18, sec. 5145 (no ceremony until five days after the license issues) and secs. 5132–5138 (physician’s certificate of a test taken within the preceding thirty days); digital images, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-44-rev_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 2 August 2026) ↩
32. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 18 ↩
33. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 66, § 13 ↩
34. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 63, § 1 ↩
35. Vermont enacted no statute barring an alien from holding land. Neither R. 1797, whose ch. XXI regulates the conveyance of real estate, nor the Compiled Statutes of 1850, whose ch. 62 governs estates in real property and ch. 63 their conveyance, contains any disability of alienage; the word “alien” appears in both volumes only in the sense of “alienate” and, in the limitations chapter, of an alien enemy. The Vermont Supreme Court likewise declined to read such a bar into the constitution: State v. Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad, 25 Vt. 170 (1853), noticed in the digest of state alien-land law in Virtual Underwriter, “Aliens and Aliens’ Investments” (https://www.virtualunderwriter.com/en/underwriting-manuals/2005-8/UM00000035.html : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
36. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 63, § 7. Two qualifications sit outside the general rule. Deeds of land in an unorganized town, gore, or grant are recorded by the clerk of the county in which the land lies, a rule still carried at 27 V.S.A. § 403. And in the first years after independence the recording jurisdiction lay with the counties, passing to the town clerks during the 1780s, so for the 1770s and 1780s the county records should be checked alongside the town's ↩
37. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 63, § 4, requiring a deed to be signed and sealed by the grantor, signed by two or more witnesses, acknowledged by the grantor, and recorded at length in the town clerk’s office. The rule is the same in R. 1797, ch. XXI, “An Act regulating the conveyances of real estate,” requiring that all deeds of lands lying in the state be “signed and sealed by the party granting the same, having good and lawful authority thereunto, and signed by two or more witnesses, and acknowledged by such grantor” before a justice of the peace; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
38. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 63, §§ 14–18, 21 ↩
39. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 68, § 15, from § 1 of No. 37 of the Laws of 1847; The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1847 (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1847), No. 37, §§ 1–2, approved 15 November 1847, pp. 26–27; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1847.100.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
40. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 68, § 14, from § 2 of No. 37 of the Laws of 1847 ↩
41. 15 V.S.A. § 66; carried from ch. 64, § 6, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 and the acts of 1847, No. 37, § 1, 1850, No. 22, 1861, No. 25, 1867, No. 21, 1884, No. 140, § 2, and 1888, No. 84, § 1, through the successive revisions to the Revision of 1947, § 3166 ↩
42. 15 V.S.A. § 64, which still carries the date of 13 February 1919, and its exceptions for a homestead interest and for land held jointly with the husband; carried from § 1 of No. 37 of the Laws of 1847 through No. 140 of the Laws of 1884, No. 90 of the Laws of 1919, and the Revision of 1947, § 3164. Those two acts are read in the annual volumes on HathiTrust — 1884, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047776; 1919, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047479 (accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
43. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 68, §§ 1–5 (petition of a wife abandoned by a husband who has left the state) and § 13 (wife deemed a feme sole while her husband is confined in the state prison) ↩
44. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 63, § 8; from § 7 of ch. 60 of the Revised Statutes of 1839. The requirement is already in R. 1797, ch. XXI, § 12, which calls for an acknowledgment “made by her separately from her husband, before a judge of the supreme court, or a judge of the county court, or some justice of the peace … that she executed such deed, freely, and without any fear or compulsion of her husband,” the certificate to be endorsed on the deed and recorded at large with it, and declares every alienation not so acknowledged and recorded “utterly void”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
45. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, § 1. The rule is already settled in Laws of the State of Vermont: Revised and Passed by the Legislature, in the Year … One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety Seven (Rutland: Josiah Fay, 1798), § 32, p. 225, entitling the widow “to dower, or the use of one third of the real estate of which such intestate died seized and possessed in his own right … for and during the term of her natural life”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 5 August 2026). Cited below in short form as R. 1797 ↩ ↩
46. Thayer v. Thayer, 14 Vt. 107, 118–19 (1842), holding that a husband could convey in good faith, because Vermont treated the common-law rule of dower in all the lands the husband held during coverture as “an unreasonable and unnecessary clog upon the free alienation of estates”; but that a conveyance made to defeat the wife’s dower was void as against her, and as to her the husband would die seized. On the proof required, Dunnett v. Shields, 97 Vt. 419, 428 (1924) ↩
47. Former 14 V.S.A. § 473 (2008), “Conveyance to defeat widow’s share,” repealed by 2009, No. 55, § 4, which made void a voluntary conveyance by a husband of his real estate, made during coverture, not to take effect until after his death, and made with intent to defeat his widow’s claim ↩
48. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, § 5 ↩
49. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, § 6 ↩
50. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, §§ 8–9 ↩
51. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, § 11 ↩
52. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 54, § 15 ↩
53. Acts and Resolves, 1896, No. 44, approved 24 November 1896. Section 1 gives the widow one-third in value of the real estate of which her husband died seized in his own right, diminished by the amount of any homestead; § 15 gives the husband one-third in value in fee in lieu of curtesy; and by § 26 the act does not reach the estate of anyone who died before it took effect. Construed in In re Estate of Cooke, 117 Vt. 336, 340–41 (1952) ↩
54. Former 14 V.S.A. § 461, as digested in Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948), heading 15 ↩
55. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1866 (Montpelier, Vt., 1866), No. 33, “An Act Relating to Estates of Homestead and in Dower, and in Amendment of Section Six of Chapter Sixty-eight of the General Statutes,” § 1, pp. 46–47; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053907 : accessed 6 August 2026). Commissioners were to set out the homestead first and the dower from what was left, and the dower was to be “diminished by the amount of the interest of such widow in such homestead,” that interest being reckoned as the share she would take if the homestead were divided equally among her and the minor children. Where her homestead interest equaled or exceeded one-third of all the real estate, “no dower shall be assigned to such widow.” This is the offset often dated to 1896; it is thirty years older ↩
56. Acts and Resolves, 1896, No. 44, §§ 18–19, directing the commissioners to set out the homestead first and the widow’s one-third from the residue, and providing that where the homestead equals or exceeds that one-third no further share is assigned to her; and No. 46 of the Laws of 1929, codified as the Revision of 1947, § 3027, giving her the one-third and the homestead in addition. Both changes are traced in In re Estate of Cooke, 117 Vt. 336, 340–41 (1952); and see Blanchard v. Blanchard’s Estate, 109 Vt. 454 (1938) ↩
57. Former 14 V.S.A. §§ 401, 402, 461, 465, 474 (2008), repealed by 2009, No. 55, § 4, which replaced dower, curtesy, and the separate treatment of real and personal property with a single intestate share and elective share, 14 V.S.A. §§ 311, 319 ↩
58. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 65, §§ 1, 8, being No. 20 of the Laws of 1849; The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1849 (Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Son, 1849), No. 20, § 1; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1849.100.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
59. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 65, § 5, being § 5 of No. 20 of the Laws of 1849, now 27 V.S.A. § 141 ↩
60. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 65, § 4 ↩
61. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 14, §§ 1–8, naming the towns in each district and the district of Georgia at § 1; compiled from ch. 12 of the Revised Statutes of 1839 and No. 8 of the Laws of 1847. Districts were added and dissolved afterward, so for a date far from 1850 confirm the boundaries in the code volume for that year ↩
62. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 1, as amended by No. 15 of the Laws of 1850, setting the sum at $1,000; The Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1850 (Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Son, Printers, [1850]), No. 15, § 1; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1850.100.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026). By the Revised Laws of 1880 the sum already stood at $2,000 and the section already reached a surviving husband as well as a widow; see the note to the table of set sums below. Acts and Resolves, 1896, No. 45, approved 7 November 1896, § 1, gives the father and mother equal shares where the deceased left no descendants and no surviving spouse ↩ ↩ ↩
63. Acts and Resolves … 1870, No. 31, “An Act Relating to the Descent and Distribution of Intestate Estates,” §§ 1–2, pp. 69–70; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047701 : accessed 6 August 2026). Where a married woman died leaving real estate not devised by will and no issue, it was to descend to her husband “in the same proportion as from husband to widow,” and § 2 carried the same rule to her personal estate. Nos. 30 and 31 together are why the Revised Laws of 1880 speak throughout of “the survivor” and “the surviving husband or wife” rather than of a widow ↩
64. Laws of the State of Vermont, Revised and Passed by the Legislature, in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety Seven, ch. XVII, “An Act for the Probate of Wills and the Settlement of Testate and Intestate Estates,” § 31, pp. 224–25; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026). Goods and personal estate not bequeathed were distributed as real estate descended under the act, but charged first with debts and funeral expenses; the judge of probate then decreed “one third part of the surplusage… to the widow of the intestate forever, unless he died without issue, in which case she shall have one half thereof forever.” The same chapter, § 1, fixes the age to make a will at twenty-one for a male and eighteen for a female and requires three or more credible witnesses, which is the earliest Vermont statement of both rules ↩ ↩
65. Laws of the State of Vermont… 1797, ch. XVII, § 42; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026). Where real estate could not be divided among the children “without great prejudice to, or spoiling the whole,” the judge of probate could decree the whole to the eldest son, or to other sons successively, and failing sons to the eldest daughter and her sisters successively, “and in case the intestate left no issue, upon any one or more of the collaterals in equal degree, preference being given to the male heirs,” the taker paying the co-heirs their proportionate shares on an appraisal ↩
66. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1870 (Montpelier, Vt., 1870), No. 30, “An Act in Amendment of Section One of Chapter Fifty-six of the General Statutes, Relating to Estates of Deceased Persons,” § 1, p. 69; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047701 : accessed 6 August 2026). The re-enacted section descends the estate first “in equal shares to his children,” and then, “if he leave no issue, his widow shall be entitled to the whole of his estate forever, if said estate shall not exceed two thousand dollars,” and above that sum to two thousand dollars and one-half of the remainder. This is the act that doubled the set sum from the $1,000 fixed in 1850. The figure is still $2,000 ten years later in The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), ch. 115, § 2230, subdiv. Second, p. 453, which gives the survivor “the whole of the deceased’s estate forever, if it does not exceed two thousand dollars.” Both figures correct the $2,000 often dated to 1896 ↩
67. $4,000 on 1 January 1948 — Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948), heading 15, citing the Revision of 1947, § 3042(II) — and $8,000 on 1 January 1959 after 1955, No. 39 — same bulletin, rev. 1959, heading 15 ↩
68. Statutes of the State of Vermont: Revised and Established by Authority, in the Year M,DCC,LXXXVII (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, 1791), p. 57, “An act for the settlement of testate and intestate estates,” passed 8 March 1787, dividing the residue among the children “provided that the portions or shares of the sons (if any be) shall be double to the shares of the daughters”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp173652984 : accessed 5 August 2026). Cited below in short form as R. 1787. Repeated at R. 1797, § 27, p. 223 ↩
69. Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at Their October Session, 1821 (Middlebury: Printed by Copeland and Allen, 1821), ch. 3, § 75, passed 15 November 1821: land of an intestate “shall descend, equally, to his, or her children, or their legal representatives”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1821.100.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
70. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 2 ↩
71. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 3 ↩
72. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, §§ 8–10; carried from R. 1797, § 35, p. 226 ↩
73. Former 14 V.S.A. § 401; carried from ch. 47, § 1, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 through No. 76 of the Laws of 1888, No. 83 of the Laws of 1906, and the successive revisions to the Revision of 1947, § 3018; earlier at R. 1787, pp. 58–59, and R. 1797, § 31, p. 224 ↩
74. In re O’Rourke’s Estate, 106 Vt. 327, 331, 333 (1934), naming the widow’s three statutory rights and holding her interest in the personal estate inchoate during her husband’s life and vested at his death ↩
75. Estate of Johnson v. Estate of Johnson, 41 Vt. 467 (1868) ↩
76. Former 14 V.S.A. § 404; carried from ch. 45, § 29, and ch. 47, § 1, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 to the Revision of 1947, § 3021 ↩
77. Former 14 V.S.A. §§ 405–406; carried from ch. 47, § 1, and ch. 53, § 1, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 to the Revision of 1947, §§ 3022–3023; earlier at R. 1797, § 34, p. 225 ↩
78. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 2 ↩
79. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 3 ↩
80. Former 14 V.S.A. § 2641, as digested in Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948), heading 25 ↩
81. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 4, first through fourth ↩
82. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 4, fifth ↩
83. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 4, sixth and seventh, now 14 V.S.A. § 2650; earlier at R. 1787, p. 65, empowering the probate courts “to allow of guardians, who shall be chosen by minors of age by law for choosing guardians,” and R. 1797, § 93, p. 257, which fixes that age at fourteen ↩
84. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 4, ninth, now 14 V.S.A. § 2652 ↩
85. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 5 ↩
86. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, §§ 6–7 ↩
87. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 69, § 8 ↩
88. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 4 ↩
89. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 5 ↩
90. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 6 ↩
91. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 55, § 7 ↩
92. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 71, §§ 1–3, compiled from ch. 67 of the Revised Statutes of 1839 and No. 24 of the Laws of 1843 ↩
93. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 48, § 1. The two ages are express in R. 1797, ch. XVII, § 1, p. 209, which gives the power to devise to a person “being of full age, to wit, a male of the age of twenty-one years, and a female of the age of eighteen years, and upwards, and of sound mind” ↩
94. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 48, § 4 ↩
95. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 48, § 6; from ch. 45, § 6, of the Revised Statutes of 1839 and No. 14 of the Laws of 1836, § 1, carried through the successive revisions to the Revision of 1947, § 2823, now 14 V.S.A. § 5; the three witnesses became two only by the act of 2005, No. 106 (Adj. Sess.), § 1. Earlier at R. 1797, ch. XVII, § 1, pp. 209–10, and already at R. 1787, p. 55, refusing probate to a devise of real estate not “witnessed by three witnesses, all of them signing in the presence of the testator” ↩
96. The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), § 2039, p. 418; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026). A will was to be in writing, signed by the testator or by another at his express direction and in his presence, and “attested and subscribed by three or more credible witnesses” in the presence of the testator and of each other. The derivation runs through the General Statutes (1863), ch. 49, ch. 45 of the Revised Statutes of 1839, No. 14 of the Laws of 1836, the acts of 1821, and R. 1797 and R. 1787 ↩
97. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 48, § 11 ↩
98. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 48, § 8 ↩
99. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 49, § 6, headed “If executor be under age, administration to be granted during his minority” ↩
100. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 49, § 8 ↩
101. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 80, § 4, from § 1 of No. 16 of the Laws of 1841 ↩
102. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 80, § 1, from § 4 of No. 16 of the Laws of 1841. The same two ages are already express half a century earlier in R. 1797, ch. LXVIII, “An Act ascertaining the principles on which the list of this state shall be made, and directing listers in their office and duty,” § 2, p. 506, setting in the list “all male persons residing in this state, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, and under the age of sixty years … at twenty dollars, for their polls respectively; except ministers of the gospel, and students of colleges, until three years from the time of their taking their first degrees respectively”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp62840055 : accessed 6 August 2026). The lower age of twenty-one first appears in R. 1787, “An act directing listers in their office and duty,” pt. II, § 1, p. 269, setting in the list all male persons “from twenty one years old to sixty” at six pounds each, excepting ministers of the gospel, the president and tutors of colleges, annual schoolmasters, and students of colleges until three years after their first degree; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp173652984 : accessed 6 August 2026). Before that the figure was sixteen. The act of the same title passed at the session of February 1779 set in the list all male persons “from sixteen years old to sixty” at six pounds each, with the same classes excepted, in William Slade, comp., Vermont State Papers (Middlebury: J. W. Copeland, 1823), p. 297; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/vermontstatepape00verm : accessed 6 August 2026). Slade prints the laws of 1779 through 1786 complete and carries no amending act on the point, so the change comes with the general revision of 1787, whose highway act of 9 March 1787 makes the same shift from sixteen to twenty-one. The militia act in that revision exempted from poll tax every properly equipped officer and private of a light infantry, cavalry, or artillery company, an exemption a later act in the same volume cut back to state taxes only. The valuation changed repeatedly; the age window did not, after 1787 ↩ ↩
103. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 80, § 3, from § 1 of No. 1 of the Laws of 1842; Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at Their October Session, 1842 (Montpelier: E. P. Walton & Sons, Printers, 1842), No. 1, § 1, headed “Polls set in the list at two dollars,” pp. 5–7; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/download/esrp422695083/1842.100.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
104. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 80, § 2, from No. 37 of the Laws of 1850 ↩
105. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 15, § 1, making a legal voter in town meeting every male person of twenty-one whose list was taken in the town the preceding year, together with “all persons exempt from taxation in consequence of having arrived at the age of sixty years” ↩
106. Acts and Resolves Passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont, at the October Session, 1855 (Montpelier: E. P. Walton’s Steam Press, 1855), No. 43, “An Act Relating to the Grand List,” § 1; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp422695083 : accessed 6 August 2026), volume for 1855. The section sets in the list the polls of male inhabitants “over the age of twenty-one years and under the age of sixty years… at two dollars each,” and lets the listers in their discretion omit the polls of persons “extremely poor” and of others likely in their judgment “to leave the town before a tax could be collected.” The ceiling of sixty is still standing in 1855; the older infirmity test is gone ↩ ↩
107. The General Statutes of the State of Vermont: Passed at the Annual Session of the General Assembly, Commencing October 9, 1862, ch. 83, “The Grand List,” § 1, p. 515; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104852498 : accessed 6 August 2026). The section reads in full: “All polls of the male inhabitants of this state over the age of twenty-one years shall be set in the list at two dollars each,” with the listers’ discretion to omit the extremely poor and those from whom a tax is not likely to be collected. No upper age appears in the section or anywhere in the chapter. The marginal derivation still credits 1855, No. 43, § 1, but the revisers dropped that act’s sixty-year clause, so the change was made by the revision itself ↩
108. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont at the October Session, 1868 (Montpelier, Vt., 1868), No. 5, “An Act in Amendment of Section One of Chapter Eighty-three of the General Statutes, Relating to the Grand List,” §§ 1–2, p. 10; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053923 : accessed 6 August 2026). The amended section reaches “all polls of the male inhabitants of this State, whether citizen or alien, over the age of twenty-one years and under the age of seventy… at two dollars each,” and keeps the listers’ discretion over the actually poor and the uncollectible. Section 2 sets it running from 1 March 1869; approved 20 November 1868 ↩
109. The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), ch. 22, “Polls and Taxable Property, Where and to Whom Taxed,” § 266, p. 117; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026). The section sets in the list “the polls of the male inhabitants of the state, citizens and aliens, over twenty-one and under seventy years of age … at two dollars each,” excepting the polls of persons “actually poor or from whom a tax is not likely to be collected,” and of men disabled in United States service in the Civil War, and provides that the exemption shall not deprive a person of the right to vote; § 269 exempts the polls of militiamen. Its derivation runs through 1868, No. 5, the General Statutes, ch. 83, § 1, and 1855, No. 43, back to No. 37 of the Laws of 1850 and No. 1 of 1842. Each of those stages is cited separately above ↩ ↩
110. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 80, § 7, third ↩ ↩
111. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 15, § 74, from § 71 of ch. 14 of the Revised Statutes of 1839 ↩
112. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 15, § 75 ↩
113. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 35, §§ 1, 4, requiring the sheriff to summon “eighteen judicious men, [being freeholders]” as grand jurors and such number of judicious men as the court directs as petit jurors, the bracketed words carrying a cross-reference to ch. 15, § 14. The chapter fixes no age for a juror ↩
114. The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), ch. 50, “Summoning of Grand and Petit Jurors,” §§ 884–898, pp. 223–25; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026). The chapter calls for a venire to summon “eighteen judicious men” as grand jurors and such number of judicious men as the court directs as petit jurors. It states no age, no freehold or other property qualification, and no express restriction by sex ↩
115. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 15, § 14, from No. 12 of the Laws of 1842; Acts and Resolves, 1842, No. 12 ↩
116. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 35, § 13 ↩
117. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 15, §§ 71–73, headed “Town Grand Jurors,” and § 13, listing “one or more grand jurors” among the officers chosen at the annual town meeting; the selection of jurors to attend the county court is a separate heading at §§ 74–75 ↩
118. No. 31 of the Laws of 1941, approved 11 March 1941, establishing jury service for women and referring the commencement date to the voters. At the general election of 3 November 1942 they chose 1 February 1943 over 1 February 1947, the measure carrying every county. Vermont Secretary of State, Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, “1942: Jury Service for Women” (https://sos.vermont.gov/vsara/learn/general-assembly/referendum/history/1942 : accessed 2 August 2026) ↩
119. Legal Status of Women … Vermont (rev. 1948), heading 32, citing V.S. 1947, T. 12, secs. 1401, 1431, 1433, 1451, 1501, 1503 ↩
120. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 34, §§ 21–22, and The Revised Laws of Vermont, 1880 (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., Official Printers and Stationers to the State of Vermont, 1881), digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007053451 : accessed 6 August 2026), whose competency provisions turn on interest, on conviction of crime, and on a party’s standing in the cause. Neither volume states an age for a witness, and a full-text search of the 1880 volume returns no age qualification for witnesses ↩
121. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 34, § 21, from § 18 of ch. 31 of the Revised Statutes of 1839 ↩
122. Compiled Statutes of 1850, ch. 34, § 22, from No. 62 of the Laws of 1850 ↩
123. State v. Learnard, 41 Vt. 585, 589 (1869); the common-law rules applied because the reception statute carried them in and no Vermont statute fixed an age of criminal capacity ↩
124. Laws of 1912, No. 113, §§ 1–15, read in Acts and Resolves, 1912; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007047685 : accessed 5 August 2026); carried through the acts of 1915 and 1917 to the General Laws (1917), §§ 7323–7337, the Public Laws (1933), §§ 5443–5470, and the Revision of 1947. For the age line and the protective character of the proceeding, see “Do Sixteen and Seventeen Year Old Criminal Defendants in Vermont Need a Transfer Hearing?,” Vermont Law Review 5 (1980): 361, at 363 and nn. 14–18 (https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/5VtLRev361.pdf : accessed 2 August 2026) ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.