Skip to main content

Fitch Family Papers

 Collection
Identifier: mss-976

Scope and Content

The Fitch Family Papers contain an interesting blend of family and town history manuscripts. The papers of Jabez Fitch include some of his diaries for 1757-1792 (including two of French and Indian War campaigns), a court transcript book from Norwich and Preston, Connecticut, for 1780-89, as well as correspondence, deeds and other 18th - 19th century material. The second generation of Hyde Park Fitches is represented by correspondence, deeds, poetry, school essays an debates, account books and miscellaneous other papers. Material for later Fitch Family members includes correspondence, deeds, insurance and estate papers, bills and receipts, and newspaper clippings. The post-1840 papers in the collection are a blend of Fitch material and manuscripts from other local families, some of whom were related to the Fitches and each other by marriage. These later papers include: two letters from June - Oct. 1844 by a Fitch who joined the Millerites; a substantial block of correspondence 1860-62 of Samuel Sumner, jr., who lived in Kentucky just before the Civil War and then served as a Lieutenant in the 5th Regiment Vermont Volunteers from August 1861 until his death in battle in July 1862; Sumner, Child, Noyes correspondence; letters from Herbert Macy Sherwin while he was stationed in the Philippines from 1914 to 1918; and a miscellany of various other family papers and material.

In addition to the family papers, the collection also contains a group of Hyde Park town papers. These include early proprietors' records, local school papers for 1798-1845; individual and town tax records for 1798-1840; material from 1799 to 1844 pertaining to town roads and highway taxes, militia papers for 1840-41, Civil War enslistment rolls, and a variety of other town records.

The collection has been divided into the following categories: correspondence and miscellaneous papers; deeds, poetry; Fitch family papers; papers pertaining to other families; anonymous manuscripts and fragments; and Hyde Park town papers. Each has been arranged chronologically within itself. The Hyde Park town papers have been placed by themselves at the end of the collection, in box one.

Dates

  • 1756-1924

Access:

Collection is open for research.

Publication Rights:

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Curator of Manuscripts.

Biography

Jabez Fitch (1737-1812), a veteran of both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, helped pioneer the settling of Hyde Park when he moved his family there in 1787-88. Fitch and his three sons, Jabez, jr., Darius and Theophilus W., played important roles in the early history of the town, and their descendants maintained the prominence of the Fitch family in Hyde Park throughout the nineteenth century. The Fitches intermarried with a number of leading Lamoille County families during this period, including the Sumner, Child and Noyes families.

See Abby M. Hemenway, The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, II, 636-53, 655-68 and The Town of Hyde Park and its Bicentennial Committee, Hyde Park, Vermont (1976), for more on the Fitch family in Hyde Park.

Extent

1.4 Linear Feet (1 carton, 1 box)

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

The Fitch Family Papers contain family and town history manuscripts.

Physical Location

Silver Special Collections, Library Research Annex; contact uvmsc@uvm.edu for access.

Related Material

For information on the rest of the Jabez Fitch's diaries, see W.H.W. Sabine's The New York Diary of Lieutenant Jabez Fitch (New York: W.H.W. Sabine, 1954), 263-5.

Separated Material

  1. 1) The Vermont School Journal, February 1862 and November 1862; two issues.
  2. 2) Lamoille Central Academy, programs for Semi-Annual Exhibition, Hyde Park,November 16, 1858.
  3. 3) C.W. Piper, "A Sermon, Preached at the Burial of Mrs. Gardner Page, of Bakersfield,February 26, 1860" (St. Albans: Messanger Book and Job Printing Office, 1860).
  4. 4) Book on Masonry, title-page missing; ca. 1830, 106 pp. missing.
  5. 5) An Impartial Relation of the Hail-Storm on the Fifteenth of July and the Tonado onthe Second of August 1799 (Norwich: Printed by John Trumbull, 1799). 30 pp. pamphlet.
  6. 6) A Narrative of the Sufferings of Seth Hubbell and Family, in His Beginning a Settlementin the Town of Wolcott, in the State of Vermont (Danville: E. and W. Eaton, Printers,1829).
  7. 7) Whig Party circular, "Harrison and Reform! To [Ira Allen] ... Montpelier, February20, 1844."; campaign flyer asking for canvass of area Whigs and voters.
  8. 8) "Express -- Extra. Newport, 10 a.m., July 7, 1865." small newspaper broadsidegiving sentences of those convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Lincoln.
  9. 9) One folder Hyde Park, VT, printed ephemera; for Reference File under Hyde Park.
  10. 10) One folder non-Vermont printed ephemera.
Title
Guide to the Fitch Family Papers, 1756-1924
Status
Completed
Date
1998
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the University of Vermont Libraries, Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Silver Special Collections Library
48 University Place, Room B201
Burlington Vermont 05405 U.S.A. US
(802) 656-2138
(802) 656-4038 (Fax)