Author Archive
Today we’re announcing four new sketches in Early Vermont Settlers, 1700-1784. These sketches feature heads of families from Strafford, Vermont.
Scott Andrew Bartley’s study project tracks heads of families who lived in Vermont prior to the Revolutionary War. His sketches so far have focused on Windham and Windsor counties.
The new sketches are listed below:
Pennock, William (Strafford)
Smith, Frederick (Strafford)
Thomas, Peter (Strafford)
West, Daniel (Strafford)
Two sketches were updated: Parish, Ezekiel (Strafford) and Pennock, James (Strafford).
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added eight new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 from St. Mary in Dedham. This update adds over 11,700 records and over 48,100 names to search.
St. Mary (Dedham) was established as its own parish in 1866. It had previously been a mission of St. Joseph in Roxbury since 1846. The mission volumes for this parish also include records for St. Raphael (East Dedham) and St. Theresa of Avila (West Roxbury).
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making these parishes available online.
The new volumes are listed below:
St. Mary (Dedham) Baptisms, 1866-1876
St. Mary (Dedham) Baptisms, 1877-1880 (Mission)
St. Mary (Dedham) Baptisms, 1877-1885
St. Mary (Dedham) Baptisms, 1885-1904
St. Mary (Dedham) Baptisms, 1900-1909
St. Mary (Dedham) Marriages, 1866-1876
St. Mary (Dedham) Marriages, 1877-1879 (Mission)
St. Mary (Dedham) Marriages, 1877-1908
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’re announcing three new sketches in Western Massachusetts Families in 1790 featuring Joshua Crosby (Greenwich), Elijah Smith (Bethlehem) and Benjamin Kelton (Leyden).
This study project focuses on individuals enumerated in the 1790 census in historic Berkshire and Hampshire counties, also including modern Franklin and Hampden counties. Sketches for this project are submitted to editor Helen Schatvet Ullmann, CG, FASG by NEHGS members and other interested researchers. If you are interested in submitting a sketch for Volume 5, please review our project home page.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making this update possible.
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added eight new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 from St. John the Evangelist in Hopkinton. This update adds over 14,600 records and over 49,700 names to search.
Hopkinton’s Catholics initially were served by the priests of Milford. St. Mary’s in Milford is now part of the Diocese of Worcester. It is worth consulting 100 Years of Progress by James S. Sullivan for his explanation of the changing parish boundaries in the western end of the Archdiocese in the late 1800s–according to Sullivan, the Milford priests were initially responsible for Catholics of at least ten different towns. As the population grew, these towns gradually split off into individual parishes. In the early 1850s, the first Catholic church was built in Hopkinton, initially called St. Malachi’s. In 1878, the first Mass was celebrated in the building that would be come St. John the Evangelist Church.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making these parishes available online.
The new volumes are listed below:
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Baptisms and Marriages, 1851-1866
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Baptisms and Marriages, 1866-1871
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Baptisms, 1870-1881
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Baptisms, 1881-1908
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Confirmations, 1867-1882
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) First Communions and Confirmations, 1870-1881
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Marriages, 1870-1881
St. John the Evangelist (Hopkinton) Marriages, 1881-1908
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added five new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 from St. Stephen in Framingham. This update adds over 9,900 records and over 40,000 names to search.
St. Stephen was established as a parish in 1878. St. George in the Saxonville neighborhood of Framingham was the first Catholic church in the area. St. Bridget and St. Stephen (in South Framingham) branched off from St. George.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making these parishes available online.
The new volumes are listed below:
St. Stephen (Framingham) Baptisms, 1877-1920
St. Stephen (Framingham) Baptisms, 1887-1901
St. Stephen (Framingham) Confirmations, 1888-1920
St. Stephen (Framingham) Marriages, 1877-1887
St. Stephen (Framingham) Marriages, 1887-1920
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added three new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 from St. Michael in Lowell. This update adds over 12,900 records and over 46,400 names to search.
St. Michael’s parish began in 1883 when Lowell’s churches were mandated to become geographically-arranged parishes. It was initially served by the priests of St. Patrick’s before it became officially independent. This church was built in Lowell’s Centralville neighborhood, across the river from downtown Lowell.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making these parishes available online.
The new volumes are listed below:
St. Michael (Lowell) Baptisms, 1884-1908
St. Michael (Lowell) Confirmations, 1884-1900
St. Michael (Lowell) Marriages, 1884-1908
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1620-1850 is one of our most popular databases. In the past three months it has consistently been one of our top 10 most-accessed databases; in July it was 5th on the list, in August it was 9th, and in September it was 8th. I’m sure it will stay on the list for October!
This database builds on the work of transcribers from the early 1900s– at that time original town records that were often in varying states of disrepair due to problems such as age. In 1902, NEHGS used the bequest of a benefactor, Robert Henry Eddy, to set up the Eddy Town-Record Fund. Read Sam Sturgis’ Vita Brevis post, “Who was Robert Henry Eddy and Why Should You Care?” to learn more about this project. In summary, the Eddy fund and the Massachusetts “Vital Records Act” provided resources to transcribe and preserve many of the early vital records of Massachusetts that are now presented in this database.
This database offers the vital records of many (but not all) towns in Massachusetts. The volumes that comprise this database come from a variety of different sources including vital records published by NEHGS (thanks to the Eddy Fund), vital records published by other individuals or organizations (such as Franklin P. Rice, the Essex Institute, or the General Society of Mayflower Descendants), and manuscripts from the NEHGS collection.
Since each volume in this database comes from a different source, we have created a new resource to help researchers understand exactly what they are looking at and trying to cite. We’re offering a new “Source Citation PDF” that lists the volumes in this database with a citation in Chicago style to the physical source from which they come. Each of these physical sources is available in the NEHGS Research Library.
This PDF is now available in the Database Description, which you can find on the Database-specific search page (scroll down), and on any image, record display, or transcript page (again, scroll down underneath the image).
We’re always trying to use the Database Description to provide context for researchers, so that they understand the links between digital words on a screen and the physical source that they come from. This is another tool towards this goal!
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis and Linda Weaver for their work on this project.
Please note: This database is available to all NEHGS members. Membership options.
Today we’re featuring a recent online webinar that occurred–What’s New at AmericanAncestors.org. This webinar is the first in a new series that will highlight new resources for researchers on our site. Each webinar will focus on additions from the past three months.
Last week, I presented this webinar live. We record each of our webinars so that anyone can listen to them at their convenience after the fact. “What’s New at AmericanAncestors.org” is meant to help you stay up to date with all of our new digital resources. You will hear about new databases, search features, and resources only available at AmericanAncestors.org, from both our databases and our digital collections. The database section of this presentation summarizes and expands upon information presented in this blog, Database News. The digital collections portion may be new to Database News subscribers. If you’d like to learn more about the distinction between Databases and our Digital Collections, be sure to watch the webinar!
To access this webinar, choose “Webinars, Lectures, and How-to Videos” under the “Learn” menu on our homepage. You will need to log in as a Guest Member; access to our archived webinars is free. Webinars are listed in chronological order, starting with the most recent, so “What’s New at AmericanAncestors.org” should be near the top–it aired on October 10, 2019.
This webinar’s purpose is really to showcase new resources for researchers; it’s not a full explanation of how to use our site. In 2017, my colleague Don LeClair presented a webinar that dives into how to search our databases. It was called “Searching Databases on AmericanAncestors.org”. You can find it by scrolling down in the list of webinars to December 2017.
To register for the next installment of “What’s New at AmericanAncestors.org”, (happening in January 2020) visit Online Events (under the Events tab). All webinars are free and open to anyone.
Today we’ve updated Early New England Families, 1641-1700, adding three new sketches.
The new sketches include:
Alexander Adams (m. 1644)
Joan (Kember) Coffin (m. 1609)
Tristram Coffin (m. 1627)
Joan (Kember) Coffin was Tristram Coffin’s mother. Alexander Adams was one of her sons-in-law, married to her daughter Mary. Alexander’s life in New England was focused around Boston. The Coffins came from Brixton in Devon County, England, and lived in Salisbury, Haverhill, Newbury, and Nantucket upon arrival in New England.
Early New England Families, 1641-1700 is written by Alicia Crane Williams. This study project highlights heads of families mentioned in Torrey’s New England Marriages to 1700. To learn more about this project, you may be interested one of Alicia Crane Williams’ recent Vita Brevis posts on the subject.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help adding these sketches to our database.
Please note: These databases are available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added four new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920 from Immaculate Conception in Revere. This update adds over 10,200 records and over 22,100 names to search.
Revere was initially part of the parish of St. Rose of Lima in Chelsea, and then became a mission of Immaculate Conception in Everett. In 1888, work began on a church of their own for Revere’s Catholics.
The new volumes are listed below:
Immaculate Conception (Revere) Baptisms, 1889-1908
Immaculate Conception (Revere) Confirmations, 1889-1920
Immaculate Conception (Revere) First Communions, 1889-1913
Immaculate Conception (Revere) Marriages, First Communions, and Confirmations, 1889-1909
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.