A reflection, in chapters, on the lives of members of the author's family, their friends and neighbours who lived in the counties of Orleans and Caledonia between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries. Hard-working, God-fearing, and often clever, these were literate, respectable, and fairly well-off folks. They were, also, all too human - and certainly not always 'nice' or 'admirable'. The history that spills out from this archive - of documents, letters and postcards, diaries, photographs, and oral history - encompasses family tales, curses and scandals, working lives of farmers, store-keepers and merchants, and railway men, education, teenage life, and courtship, building homes and becoming consumers, serving in the militia and in war, early tourism, and local entertainments, with a discursion on Vermont family names along the way. It is a fascinating story, generously illustrated with reproductions of documents and photographs.