Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The revolutionary frontier, 1763–1800
- 2 The failure of the covenanted community and the standing order, 1791–1815
- 3 Religion and reform in the shaping of a new order, 1815–1828
- 4 From an era of promise to pressing times, 1815–1843
- 5 A clamor for reform, 1828–1835
- 6 The great revival, 1827–1843
- 7 A modified order in town life and politics, 1835–1850
- 8 Boosterism, sentiment, free soil, and the preservation of a Christian, reformed republic
- Conclusion: Religion, reform, and the problem of order in the Age of Democratic Revolution
- Appendix A Church records
- Appendix B Types of towns
- Appendix C Occupational groups
- Appendix D Statistical methods
- Notes
- Index
Appendix A - Church records
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The revolutionary frontier, 1763–1800
- 2 The failure of the covenanted community and the standing order, 1791–1815
- 3 Religion and reform in the shaping of a new order, 1815–1828
- 4 From an era of promise to pressing times, 1815–1843
- 5 A clamor for reform, 1828–1835
- 6 The great revival, 1827–1843
- 7 A modified order in town life and politics, 1835–1850
- 8 Boosterism, sentiment, free soil, and the preservation of a Christian, reformed republic
- Conclusion: Religion, reform, and the problem of order in the Age of Democratic Revolution
- Appendix A Church records
- Appendix B Types of towns
- Appendix C Occupational groups
- Appendix D Statistical methods
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Church records
The statistics in this study are drawn primarily from nine towns (Map I). They are the only towns in the valley that have lost no more than one set of church records and were identified with the help of the inventory of Vermont church records compiled by the Historical Records Survey of the Works Progress Administration. The inventory indicates the contents of all records located by the survey and their location in 1940, and it lists all records known to have been lost or destroyed. The inventory is not perfect. A handful of unlisted records still exists, and several records have been lost or destroyed since 1940.
Almost all church records in the towns studied intensively have survived, and few of these are incomplete. Still, the use of these records poses several problems. First, evangelical denominations (Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Freewill Baptist, Christian) and nonevangelical denominations (Unitarian, Universalist) had different criteria for determining membership. Evangelicals distinguished between membership in a church, which was open only to those who experienced conversion, and membership in a religious society organized to support worship locally, which was open to all who attended church regularly and contributed a designated fee annually for support of the minister and maintenance of church property. Nonevangelicals, by contrast, had no separate “church” organization. People who attended regularly, paid religious levies, and joined religious societies were recognized as members.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Democratic DilemmaReligion, Reform, and the Social Order in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, 1791–1850, pp. 311 - 315Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987