Researching People

First check our catalogue using your family surname as the search term and see what we have cataloged. Note that we may have newspaper articles, yearbooks, etc. that include information about your family members and have not been catalogued. We have alphabetized “people” boxes in our archives where photos and articles about people are filed. We are happy to check those boxes for you.

Check Choice White Pines and see if they are mentioned.

If your family has deep roots in Plainfield, they may be included in the Plainfield Genealogy, which we hope to get on the website soon. In the interim, you can contact us from the website and ask us to look them up.

Under Maps, look at the 1860 and 1892 maps, which name the owners of each dwelling. If you discover your ancestor lived on (for example) Colby Hill, search for Colby Hill in our catalogue.

Newspapers.com (now owned by Ancestry.com) offers a free one-week trial subscription and may also be available in your local library. The Valley News, which began publishing in 1952, has been digitized by newspapers.com. If you search using first and last name, try entering both New Hampshire and Vermont under “location” because there were newspapers printed in VT in the mid to late 1800s that included news from Plainfield.  Use a broad date range. If you know your ancestor was born in 1850 and died in 1920, use those dates. You may be amazed at how often your ancestor made the paper, as there were weekly social columns from every town, full of news and gossip.

Ancestry is also a terrific resource.  Philip Read Memorial Library has an Ancestry subscription and computers you can use to sign in and search. Use “Advanced Search” and put your ancestor’s name and Plainfield, NH in the search. You will find vital and census records there that will tell you when your family lived in town, names of family members, occupations. Family trees may also be posted on Ancestry for your ancestor.

If your ancestor was a prominent person in town in the 1800s, you may find their biography in the 1899 (Sullivan County) Biographies.

The town hall has a remarkably intact collection of town vital and tax records going back to the late 1700s. Taxpayers records are bound, sometimes with up to five years in one volume. You will need to go to the town office and ask the clerk to bring out the volumes from the safe. Taxpayers are listed alphabetically, so it is easy to quickly find your ancestor, and see what property and livestock they were taxed for, and when they purchased and sold property in town.