Abby Maria Hemenway is remembered chiefly for her editorship of the Vermont Historical Gazetteer, a five-volume compendium of the state's local history, published between 1860 and 1891. As far as historians know, no one else in the whole United States attempted to do what she did--to single-handedly collect and publish the history of every community in her state. Over the course of her years as editor of the Vermont Historical Gazetteer, Hemenway, who never married, engaged hundreds of men and women to write the histories of their towns, churches, businesses, and schools. Hundreds more contributed memoirs of the early days of white settlement or provided sketches of forebears who had braved the terrors of the wilderness to build the first log cabins in their communities. Hemenway accomplished compiling all this material despite innumerable obstacles placed in her path, from money and legal troubles to floods and conflagrations.

Abby Maria Hemenway...