Henry Stevens Sr. (1791-1867) was the leading Vermont antiquarian of his generation.  He pursued various business interests in Barnet, including farming, local mills, a stage line, and the Passumpsic Turnpike Corporation, but his real passion was collecting Vermont history.  Stevens began accumulating old Vermont books, pamphlets, newspapers, and manuscripts as a young man and never stopped.  He was tireless in his pursuit of historic Vermontiana, writing to descendants of pioneer settlers, combing through attics and barns for anything of interest, and publishing newspaper appeals for Vermonters to send him material.  The results of this one-man publicity campaign for the preservation of Vermont’s past were substantial, and Henry Sr. deserves a good deal of  credit for nurturing an appreciation of our early heritage among the Vermonters of his day.

And Henry Sr. had a significant institutional impact as well.    He helped organize the Vermont Historical Society in 1838 and served as its president for 18 years.  A part of the large collection of books and papers he brought together for VHS burned in the State House fire of 1857, but enough survived to form a solid foundation for the Society library’s subsequent growth and development.  While he sometimes blurred the line between his own collection and the Society’s, Henry Sr. was responsible for saving a rich assortment of early Vermont materials that otherwise would have been lost to us.

            The elder Stevens passed this fascination with the past on to his son and namesake.  Henry Jr. (1819-1887) began buying and selling old books as a college student, then moved to London in 1845 to set up shop there.  In a four-decade career, he became the greatest antiquarian bookseller of his time, building extraordinary Americana collections for individuals and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic.  When younger brother Benjamin F. Stevens followed him to London, Henry trained him as a bookseller and launched him on his own distinguished path as an Americana specialist.  Henry Jr. remained proud of his roots throughout his years in England, sending Vermont rarities home whenever he encountered them, maintaining close contact with Vermont collectors and historians, and always signing his letters GMB for “Green Mountain Boy.”

            The legacy of the two Henrys lives on today.  Henry Sr.’s Vermont Historical Society is one of the best small-state historical societies in the nation, with remarkable library and museum collections, statewide education services, outreach programs to Vermont’s 197 local historical groups, and Vermont History Expo as an annual heritage weekend for Vermonters and Vermonters at heart.  The great Americana archives Henry Jr. helped create 150 years ago at the British Museum, Yale, Harvard, Brown, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress provide unique, essential sources for the study of our national past.  The list of important Vermont and American history titles written from collections the two Henrys assembled is long and impressive.  From their base in Caledonia County, Stevens pere et fils made a lasting historical impact in Vermont, the United States and abroad.  May those who pass the highway marker in Barnet stop, read, and take respectful notice.