Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Its Register listings are the Indian Stones, the South Reading Schoolhouse and the Reading Town Hall. Below: 2 old photos and papers, maps from 1929 on, and the census since 1790.
The Reading post office opened in 1818, the earliest record of the town by name. Two smaller post offices, Felchville (1830) and South Reading (1832), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Reading’s history is told.
Reading had its own post office from 1818 to 1903. Two other post offices opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Peaked at 1,603 in 1820; 687 people lived here in 2020.
24 censuses, 1790–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Reading’s Wikipedia page.
From Wikipedia’s history of Reading.
On August 30, 1754, after being captured by Abenakis at Fort at Number 4, Charlestown, New Hampshire, and being force-marched to Montreal, Susannah Willard Johnson gave birth to a daughter about .5 miles (0.80 km) up Knapp Brook. A marker beside Vermont Route 106 commemorates this event.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Passages that mention Reading, cut from the printed page as they were published.
The town of Reading has four villages, or trading centers, — Reading Center, or Reading, Hammondsville, South Reading, and Felchville, of which that last named is the largest and most important. Felchville was named in honor of William Felch, a native of Royalton, Mass., born February 3, 1797, but who came to this county at the age of fourteen years, and to the locality named for him in 1826. He was a generous, public-spirited, and industrious citizen, through whose labors the town was greatly benefited, and to whose energy the village owed its very ex-
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
The town of Reading has four villages, or trading centers, — Reading Center, or Reading, Hammondsville, South Reading, and Felchville, of which that last named is the largest and most important. Felchville was named in honor of William Felch, a native of Royalton, Mass., born F"ebruary 3, 1797, but who came to this county at the age of fourteen years, and to the locality named for hmi in 1826. He was a generous, public-spirited, and industrious citizen, through whose labors the town was greatly benefited, and to whose energy the village owed its very ex-
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
resplendent manner in which he has held his shoulder to the chariot wheel of the country's onward and upward movement speaks in no uncertain terms for the credit and honor of his own native town of Reading ; the State of Vermont ; for New England ; and for the country at large. Thus the farmer boy from the eastern slope of the Green Mountains, left at four without a father, must have been born as possessed of unusual natural traits
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Under the authority of the provincial government of New Hampshire the town of Reading was chartered on Juh' 6, 1761, but its first settlement was not commenced until the year 1772, when Andrew Spear came to the locality and began an improvement in the northeastern part of the town, east of the hamlet called Reading Center.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Born hereSamuel Emery Adams is born here
In the archive1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions - Vermont - Windsor County - ED 14-21, ED 1…
In the archiveFelchville Library ca1899 Vermont
BuiltReading Town Hall is built
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey2 decades in the archive, from the 1850s to the 1900s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
2024HAF VT
2019Hall Art Foundation
2016ReadingElementary School
2014ReadingVT WatrobasGeneralStore
2014ReadingVT VacantChurch
2014ReadingVT TownHall
2014ReadingVT SouthReadingStoneChurch
2014ReadingVT SouthReadingSchoolhouse
2014ReadingVT Library
2014ReadingVT CommunityChurch
2012Bennett House
2004Reading vt highlightEvery edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Reading. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Reading.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Reading’s page.
Retake this view · +15The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Reading post office opened in 1818, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
Three places: the Indian Stones (listed 1974), the South Reading Schoolhouse (1983) and the Reading Town Hall (1996).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (14), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (3), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
