One of the longest, most colorful stories involved one of the favorite New England Revolutionary War story subjects – Loyalists in the midst, plotting against the rebels.  (I would quote verbatim if it weren’t apparently currently misfiled, but the copy is not in the file where it should be.)  In summary, there was a family, the Roses, living in the area of Manchester, Bennington County, Vermont, that had at least a few young men in the family.  One of those young men was entertaining a young lady when he let slip of a plot his brother and some other men had against the troops that were fighting for independence, and that the plot was currently underway.  The young lady distracted the young man briefly and alerted another woman, who got on her horse and rode through the swamps of the area to Major Ormsby’s house.  The young lady proceeded to keep the young man occupied while Major Ormsby rounded up some of the other pro-independence men in the area and set out to capture the Roses and the others involved.  The capture was successful.  The real story, in the talk, is much longer and uses much more colorful language than I have used here.

I thought it was a great story, but who was to say whether it was true?  Then I discovered that the Vermont State Archives has their earliest manuscripts indexed in an online version of the Nye Index, and further discovered that there are a good number of papers in the index relating to the Ormsbys, including one that mentioned the capture of someone named Samuel Rose, which has this amusing description in the Nye Index: “Record: Account of, for taking and guarding Samuel Rose (including charge for ’2 pair of hand Cufs’).”  The Archives will send scans of documents from the Nye Index for free upon request (limit of two documents per request), so I requested a scan of this document.  This is part of the document I received:

Vermont State Archives, Manuscript Vermont State Papers 1777-1946, bulk 1777-1861 (Record Series SE-118), Vol. 8, p. 151 (Record ID: 49110); record created 18 May 1780.

You can see that a pair of handcuffs was  as expensive in those days as guarding a man for 12 hours.  You can also see that the state was still paying people in pounds at that point.

And you can see that someone named Samuel Rose, and some other men, really were captured by Gideon Ormsby.  The document doesn’t specify why, but seconds spent searching the Nye Index for “Rose, Samuel” shows several documents indexed by his name that identify him as “A Tory” (this notation is first in many of the descriptions of the records) and say that his land was confiscated and purchased by Samuel Pettibone, and that someone else submitted an invoice in May 1780 for taking him to “goal” (jail) in Northampton.  The fact that Samuel Rose was a landholder indicates that he was probably more likely to be the story’s young man’s father or uncle, if any relation at all, and it still doesn’t necessarily mean that they were in the process of implementing a plot against the town’s independence fighters when captured – but it at least indicates the likely reason they were captured and guarded.

The Nye Index also shows a record that is almost surely related to Samuel Rose’s capture by my research subject, Gideon Ormsby:  “Order on treasurer and receipt, Noah Smith, Clerk of Superior Court, to defray expenses of a guard for Samuel Rose and others, prisoners confined for Treason” (Record Series: SE-118, Vol. 8, p. 152).  This last record is dated in the index as being created on 17 May 1780, one day before the invoice I have included in this entry, and indicates to me that the Court was raising money to reimburse Gideon and his men, even though Gideon’s name is not mentioned in the index entry.  If I had limited my index search to Gideon, I would not have found any references to this document.

While I haven’t followed up yet by requesting some of the other documents involving Samuel Rose, I plan to do so.

Many of today’s researchers don’t bother to consult this index as they feel it is archaic and unnecessary due to the introduction (and growing collections) of Google Books http://books.google.com/ and the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/.

I disagree!!!  Read on……

The AGBI is an ongoing project started in 1942; the owner and publisher is the Godfrey Memorial Library in Middletown, CT.  In over 225 volumes there are more than 850 sources mentioned, equating to over 12 million records which include over 2 million records from the Boston Transcript  (a genealogy newspaper column dating from 1896 to 1941). 

   According to Wikipedia (quoting Gary Boyd Roberts of NEHGS):

“The Boston Evening Transcript was a newspaper of record. Its genealogical column, which usually ran twice or more a week for several decades in the early twentieth century, was often an exchange among the most devoted and scholarly genealogists of the day. Many materials not published elsewhere are published therein.

The AGBI includes items such as town and county histories, biographies, vital records, Revolutionary war records and the 1790 census to name a few…. Much of this material has never been indexed elsewhere.

So let’s try an EXPERIMENT with one of my Pinder (sometimes spelled Pindar) ancestors from Ipswich, Massachusetts:

1.  Search in Google Books and Internet Archive for:

• “Joanna Pindar” OR “Pindar, Joanna” OR “Joanna Pinder” OR “Pinder, Joanna”  Ipswich

 - reveals 0 records in the Internet Archive and 5 records in Google Books, none written by Caldwell.

- Note that a search of Pinder OR Pindar AND Ipswich in Google Books reveals 2,880 results…1,320 “full view”…too many for me!

2. Search in both databases for

• “Caldwell Family Records”,  Augustine Caldwell

- Google Books doesn’t have the original book but offers a number of places where it can be found – libraries and historical societies.

- Internet archives has actual copies of two Caldwell family books by Augustine Caldwell searchable and available for FREE download:

There are a number of Pinder/Pindar’s mentioned, references I may never have found without the aid of the AGBI:

“John Caldwell and Sarah Dillingham Caldwell, his wife, Ipswich, Mass., 1654 : genealogical records of their descendants, eight generations, 1654-1900 (1904)”

Caldwell records : John and Sarah (Dillingham) Caldwell, Ipswich, Mass., and their descendants, sketches of families connected with them by marriage, brief notices of other Caldwell families

• Page 30 - Benj. Pindar. iv. Deborah, m. Daniel
• Page 41 – . Benjamin Pindar, Feb. , . She
• Page n92 – Sarah Caldwell Pindar Thomas and Elizabeth Sweet Francis
• Page 19 – , John Pinder, Samuel Wait. Mary Caldwell, widow
• Page 46 – and Benjamin Pinder, bap. Jan. , .
• Page 47 – . John Pinder, who has a general oversight of the
• Page 73 – and Lucy Pinder, m. ( ) Susanna

A large number of the sources indexed are related to New England (since that is where the index was created) but there are other listings: early history of families from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland; entries for the first twelve colonies;  records from parts of the Pennsylvania Archives; and sources related to Vermont, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Alabama.

Only published sources are included in the index, so most of them are likely to be found at a number of libraries (but since most are out of copyright, check Google Books and the Internet Archive). If not online, the two libraries that are likely to have all the sources indexed are: The Godfrey Memorial Library and the Family History Library.

The entries are alphabetical and most index entries includes full name, birthplace, volume, page, biographical information and reference information (when known). 

You can search for names listed in the index at Ancestry.com, http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3599&enc=1

Their website explains how the included names were selected:

Names that Were Indexed—The index is of all persons according to set standards, rather than every name. The following persons have been included in the index: (1) person mentioned as wife, husband, father, mother, son, daughter, or other relative, of some person mentioned; (2) person mentioned as being born or married, or those mentioned dying; (3) person mentioned as having performed military or public service, or mentioned in connection with other facts of biographical importance; (4) person mentioned in a deed or legal document; (5) person mentioned as one of the founders of a settlement, a passenger on an immigrant ship (before 1850), a member of a church (before 1850), etc.

Name the Were Omitted—Omissions include: (1) persons (such as ship captains, ministers, army officers, etc.) mentioned only casually and not related to the family line being followed; (2) all casually mentioned names of well-known persons (e.g., George Washington or Benjamin Franklin); (3) witnesses, and similar incidental names, that appear in legal documents; (4) authors of works cited, or persons cited as authorities for statements.

Also the following information may be useful when structuring your Ancestry.com search:

Entry Construction—Each entry consists of the following: (1) Person’s surname, spelled as it appears in the indexed text (Note that names are, in general, written and filed as one word, e.g., “Van Derbilt” and “Van Der Bilt” would be written as “Vanderbilt”; also, surnames with apostrophes have been indexed and alphabetized without the apostrophe, though it does appear in the actual name, e.g., “O’Connor” would be filed as “Oconnor.”); (2) The person’s first name (or initial) and middle names (or initials), if any (Note that if there is no given name, we have substituted a long dash in that area, and where an abbreviated name is given in the text, we have substituted the full name indicated if it is clear (e.g., for “Dan” we write “Daniel”); (3) The person’s birth year, as it appears in the indexed text; (4) The person’s state (or states) of residence (including the states of birth and death, if they are known); (5) Biographical data, abbreviated; (6) The page citation of the text being indexed; consisting of the abbreviated title and page number.

Or you can submit search and photocopy requests to the Godfrey Memorial Library (copies are fairly inexpensive) by using this form: http://www.godfrey.org/agbiform.pdf

 So give it a try and share your successes with us!!

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