LISTERS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LISTERSAuthored

The Law Mind • 638 words

Definition

Local officials appointed to prepare lists of taxable persons and property for assessment purposes. Listers are essentially the enumerating arm of the local tax administration: they identify who and what is subject to taxation within a jurisdiction, compile the relevant lists, and submit them as the foundation for formal assessment. The role is largely ministerial, focused on accurate identification and listing rather than valuation or collection. The term was used primarily in New England states, with Vermont's statutes providing the clearest surviving statutory definition.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of "lister," which in ordinary English refers generically to one who makes a list, or to a device that tilts or lists.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who makes a list or roll; also, an agricultural implement for furrowing soil (a "lister plow").

The legal meaning is narrower and official: a lister is not merely any list-maker but a formally designated local government officer with defined statutory duties in the tax system. Researchers encountering "listers" in historical legal documents should not treat the term as generic.

Why It Matters in Research

This is a term of regional and historical specificity. Researchers working with New England local government records — particularly Vermont, but also neighboring states — will encounter "listers" in tax records, town meeting minutes, and statutory compilations from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. The role predates and is distinct from later consolidated assessment offices; understanding what listers did helps situate a document within the pre-modern local tax administration structure.

The primary trap: "listers" does not appear uniformly across all states. A researcher assuming the term is universal will miss it in jurisdictions that used different titles — assessor, lister, commissioner of the revenue — for functionally similar roles. Cross-referencing state-specific statutory language is essential when working across jurisdictions or time periods.

The secondary trap: because the role is ministerial (listing, not valuing), listers' records and assessors' records are not always the same document or the same office. Conflating the listing function with the valuation function can send a researcher to the wrong set of records.

Vermont's Revised Statutes are the anchor citation across all four historical dictionaries, making Vermont the most accessible jurisdiction for tracing the statutory development of this office.

Historical Dictionary Support

All four sources — Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's — are in complete agreement on the definition, which is itself telling: this is a narrowly defined, regionally specific term that generated no doctrinal controversy or evolving meaning. The definitions are nearly identical across all sources, suggesting they were drawing from a common statutory reference rather than from case law or common law development.

Rapalje & Lawrence is the only source to embed "listers" within a broader entry, sandwiching it between Latin legal terms (literae, literae dimissoriae, literae humaniores), which reflects the alphabetical coincidence of placement rather than any conceptual relationship. Researchers using Rapalje should not be distracted by the surrounding entries.

None of the historical dictionaries discuss what happened to the office over time, how listers were appointed or removed, or what liabilities attached to errors in listing. For those questions, the historical dictionaries are silent and researchers must go directly to state statutory sources.

Jurisdictional Note

Vermont is the jurisdiction most clearly and consistently associated with the term in historical legal sources. Other New England states used similar enumeration functions but may have applied different titles. Outside New England, the term is rarely if ever used in a legal tax-administration context. Researchers working in southern or western states should not expect to find the term in local tax records from those regions.

LISTERSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

This word is used in some of the states to designate the persons appointed to make lists of taxables. See Rev. St. Vt. 538.

LISTERSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

This word is used in some of the states to designate the persons appointed to make lists of taxables. See Rev. St. Vt. 5388. —

LISTERSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

- Persons who make out tax lists are so called in some of the States. LITERÆ.-Letters. A term applied in old English law to various instruments in writing, official and private. LITERÆ letters (q. v.) DIMISSORIÆ.---Dimissory LITERÆ HUMANIORES.- Greek, Latin, general philology, logic, moral philosophy, metaphysics; the name of the principal course of study in the University of Oxford. - Wharton. LITERÆ MORTUÆ. - Dead letters; fulfilling words of a statute. Bacon says that, "there are in every statute certain words which are as veins, where the life and blood of the statute cometh, and where all doubts do arise, and the rest are literæ mortuce, fulfilling words." Bac. Read. Uses Works iv. 189. LITERÆ PATENTES.-Letters-patent; Literæ patentes regis non erunt vacue (1 Bulst. 6): The king's letters-patent shall not be void. incumbrance on the property, but merely literally, open letters. gives intending purchasers or mortgagees notice of the litigation. (See an article on the subject in the Jurist, 1865 (part ii.), 383; Bull v. Hutchins, 32 Beav. 615; 9 Jur. N. s. 954.) Provision is made by Stat. 30 and 31 Vict. c. 47, for vacating a lis pendens if the litigation is not prosecuted bonâ fide, and the same may be done by statute in many of the States. LIS PENDENS, (general doctrine as to). 4 Cow. (N. Y.) 667; 1 Wend. (N. Y.) 618. (what is). 2 Atk. 174; 2 Ball & B. 170; Barn. 407; 1 Vern. 286; 2 Com. Dig. 718. (what is not). 11 Wend. (N. Y.) 442; 1 Vern. 318. (effect of). 1 Desaus. (S. C.) 170 п.; 3 Atk. 242, 243; 3 Swanst. 535. (general rule as to notice). 13 Ves. 120. (when notice). 1 Johns. (N. Y.) Ch. 576; 15 Johns. (N. Y.) 309; 1 Yeates (Pa.) 574: 7 Wheel. Am. C. L. 82; 8 Id. 303; 11 Ves. 197. when not notice). 3 Ves. 314, 317; 19 Id. 439. * Per Lord Mansfield, Berkeley Peerage Case, 4 Camp. at p. 415; Best Ev. 633. "Prove that it [the pedigree] was made post litem motam, not meaning thereby a suit actually pending, but a controversy existing, and that the person making or concocting the declaration took part in the controversy. Shew me even that there was a contemplation of legal proceedings, with a LITERA PROCURATORIÆ.-Letters procuratory; letters of procuration; letters of attorney. Bract. 40, 43. LITERÆ RECOGNITIONIS.-A bill of lading. LITERÆ SIGILLATE. - Sealed letThe return of a sheriff to a writ. ters.

listersnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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plural of lister

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