The earliest example of printing from present-day Vermont in the Library is a document printed by Judah Padock Spooner at Westminster in 1781[31]: Acts and Laws, Passed by the General Assembly of the Representatives of the State of Vermont, at their Session at Windsor, April 1781. In four pages, it contains only "An Act for the Purpose of emitting a Sum of Money, and directing the Redemption of the same." The Act provides for a land tax, stating in justification that "The Land is the great Object of the present War, and receives the most solid Protection of any Estate, a very large Part of which has hitherto paid no Part of the great Cost arisen in defending it, whilst the Blood and Treasure of the Inhabitants of the State has been spent to protect it, who many of them owned but a very small part thereof."
The Library of Congress copy bears the following inscription: "Secry's Office 10th August 1785. The preceding is a true Copy of an Act passed by the Legislature of the State of Vermont April 14th 1781—Attest Micah Townsend, Secry." Although a loyalist, Micah Townsend served as secretary of state in Vermont from October 1781 until 1789.[32] The Library's copy also bears the autograph of a private owner, Henry Stevens of Barnet, Vt., first president of the Vermont Historical Society. After his death in 1867, his son Henry Stevens, the bookseller, wrote that he left his home "full of books and historical manuscripts, the delight of his youth, the companions of his manhood, and the solace of his old age."[33] To judge from its present library binding, this thin volume has been in the Library of Congress collections since the 19th century.
[29] See no. 12 in Marcus A. McCorison's Vermont Imprints 1778-1820 (Worcester, 1963).
[30] No. 3146 in U.S. Library of Congress, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent Sowerby (Washington, 1952-59). See also no. 498.
[31] Imprint information supplied in McCorison, no. 47.
[32] See Chilton Williamson, Vermont in Quandary (Montpelier, 1949), p. 133. On Townsend's divulging secret intelligence to the British in April 1781, see J. B. Wilbur, Ira Allen (Boston and New York, 1928), p. 183-186.
[33] See W. W. Parker, Henry Stevens of Vermont (Amsterdam, 1963), p. 21.