"I cannot imagine the ease you must have once you get to each of those 250 separate sets of records - that is an average of 2,400 individuals per set of land records. "

Well, yes, I guess it's easy compared to the HUGE land records systems y'all deal with.  Just for fun, let me mention that most Vermont town clerks are open limited hours of the week: some one morning a week, some one evening a week, some a couple mornings a week, some a couple evenings a week.... Scheduling is a nightmare.  If I get 20 searches in a day, chances are excellent they will all be in different towns, not 19 in one and 1 in another.  And of those 20, at least half will be either closed on the day I need to visit, or more than a two-hour round-trip drive in the opposite direction from the others.  Ask me why I drive a MiniCooper.  We Vermont abstractors average 120-150 miles a day, five days a week, visiting about 4-6+ town clerks a day.  Plus, my Saturday mornings are taken up going to the couple of land records that are open Saturday mornings, which luckily are only about 25 miles away (one way, in opposite directions) from my house. 

Once we get to the land records, we have to know, as do all abstractors everywhere, how that particular clerk likes to index.  Basically, none of our land records are computerized, much less accessible from outside that office.  And we have to know how the previous clerk(s) indexed, too.  I am still laughing about the recent SOT discussion on indexing assignments.  One of my town clerks has used three, no four, different ways of indexing assignments in the 25 years she has been in office.  That's just one set of land records covering, as you point out, Lisa, a mere 2,400 or so property owners. 

I'm trying to give you some idea of the joys of researching records kept by Vermont's phobically individualistic town clerks.  And I have to say, I'm not complaining.  This is my stock in trade, my job security, if you will.  Plus, how lucky can anyone be to get paid to drive a MiniCooper?