Archive For The “Uncategorized” Category
Today we are releasing volumes 4, 5, and 6 (1850-1852) of the in-depth re-indexing of all the genealogical records in the database Vital Records from The NEHGS Register. This update adds 32,000 records and 86,000 searchable names.
This ongoing project will unlock the value of all the information captured in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register since the first publication in 1847. We are reviewing every published article and extracting a broad set of records for those articles that are genealogical in nature. So, in addition to birth, marriage, and death records there are now records of type; residence, immigration, military records, church dismissals, and more. The index we create is at the same level we have used for the Archdiocese of Boston and the Mayflower Silver Books. It includes spouses, parents, and locations.
Users of American AncesTREES will also benefit by being able to get hints from the newly indexed volumes in their family trees.
This update is made possible by the efforts of our volunteers: Nancy Borman, Rich Wood, Jan Lundquist, Charlie Watson, Gale Stevenson, Ron Wilson, Karen Ristic, Ray Ristic, Linda Peterson, Erica Yee, Susan Van Allen, Tom Clements, James Cox, Ginny Marshall, Larry Akin, Margaret Sears Lindley, Ellen Anderson, Cannot Release Name, Karen Buchinger, Kay Sencabaugh, Jaimie Williams-Peterson, Randy Hube, Fran Danico, Julie Bliss Hammons, Julie Nathanson, and Pat Harney. If you would like to become part of the team working on this rewarding project to revamp the index to the NEHGS Register, please contact Rachel Adams, Database Services Volunteer Coordinator via email at rachel.adams@nehgs.org.
Published quarterly since 1847, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register is the flagship journal of American genealogy and the oldest journal in the field. The Register has featured articles on a wide variety of topics since its inception, including vital records, church records, tax records, land and probate records, cemetery transcriptions, obituaries, and historical essays. Authoritative compiled genealogies have been the centerpiece of the Register for more than 150 years. Thousands of New England families have been treated in the pages of the journal and many more are referenced in incidental ways throughout. These articles may range from short pieces correcting errors in print or solving unusual problems to larger treatments that reveal family origins or present multiple generations of a family. The indexing for these records includes full names, Publication year (not the year of the record), and article titles and authors.
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added six new volumes to Massachusetts: (Image-Only) Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 from Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton and St. John the Evangelist in Wellesley. This update adds over 800 new pages to browse.
The early history of these two parishes is intertwined. Before St. Mary’s was established in Newton’s Upper Falls, Catholics in both these areas attended St. Patrick’s in Watertown. In the 1860s, St. Mary’s (which would become Mary Immaculate of Lourdes) began to coalesce as a mission. In 1870 it became its own parish. St. John the Evangelist began as a mission of St. Mary’s. Initially, the building in which the Catholics worshiped was in Newton’s Lower Falls, but when they gathered the funds to purchase their own church, and become a parish, the new church was located in Wellesley.
The boundaries between the Newton area parishes were confusing and contentious–in both parishes there is a volume which begins with a description of parish boundaries. To learn more, see page A of St. John the Evangelist (Wellesley) Baptisms, 1890-1900 and pages A and B of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (Newton) Baptisms, 1871-1872.
Newton itself consists of thirteen different villages. Here is a list of the Catholic churches in Newton that are currently available on our website, including the village in which they are located:
St. Bernard–West Newton, Mary Immaculate of Lourdes–Upper Falls, Our Lady Help of Christians–Newtonville, Sacred Heart–Newton Centre
Note: The volume Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (Newton) Baptisms, 1893-1900 is already on our site–it was part of a previous update.
We’d like to thank volunteers Eileen McCarthy, Bill Wolfendale, Max Agigian, Colleen Alm and Kim Bonner for their help making this update possible.
If you need help navigating this collection, please consult our how-to video. The new volumes are listed below:
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (Newton) Baptisms, 1871-1872
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (Newton) Baptisms, 1871-1893
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes (Newton) Marriages, 1871-1900
St. John the Evangelist (Wellesley) Baptisms, 1890-1900
St. John the Evangelist (Wellesley) Confirmations, 1892-1900
St. John the Evangelist (Wellesley) Marriages, 1890-1900
Please note: This database is available to all NEHGS members. Learn more about becoming a NEHGS guest member (free).
Today we’re announcing three new sketches in Western Massachusetts Families in 1790 featuring William Graham (Colrain), Thomson Rawson (New Marlborough) and John Ellis (Pittsfield).
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 six new volumes to Massachusetts: (Image-Only) Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 from Blessed Sacrament (Walpole), St. Brigid (Lexington), and St. Mary (Holliston). This update adds over 600 new pages to browse.
Early Catholics in Walpole traveled to various towns in the southern portion of the Archdiocese to hear Mass. In 1872, Father Gouesse came to Foxborough and Walpole and helped fully establish the church in Walpole. St. Francis was the first church built in Walpole; the first Mass in the sanctuary was said in 1882. By the 1910s, the Catholic population had grown enough that they needed a bigger church, which would become Blessed Sacrament.
The Lexington parish began as a mission of St. Peter’s in Cambridge, then became a mission of Arlington. In 1865, a building was bought to serve as the first Catholic church in Lexington. In 1886 St. Brigid’s became their own parish.
Early Catholics in the Holliston area traveled to Milford and Hopkinton to worship. St. Mary in Holliston became its own parish in 1870.
We’d like to thank volunteers Eileen McCarthy, Ross Weaver, Max Agigian, and Kim Bonner for their help making this update possible.
If you need help navigating this collection, please consult our how-to video. The new volumes are listed below:
Blessed Sacrament (Walpole) Baptisms, Marriages, and Confirmations, 1872-1900
Blessed Sacrament (Walpole) Marriages, 1896-1900
St. Brigid (Lexington) Baptisms, 1886-1900
St. Brigid (Lexington) Marriages, 1886-1900
St. Mary (Holliston) Baptisms, 1870-1900
St. Mary (Holliston) Marriages, 1871-1900
Please note: This database is available to all NEHGS members. Learn more about becoming a NEHGS guest member (free).
69 databases can now provide hints for American AncesTREES. What do we mean by hints? Maybe in your American AncesTREEs family tree you have an ancestor who was born in 1860. Maybe we have a baptism for someone of the same name that also happened in 1860. Thanks to our most recent hinting update, you could get a hint suggesting that our 1860 baptism pertains to your 1860 birth. We’ve just added 47 new databases to the pool of databases offering hints, each of which is unique to AmericanAncestors.org.
You can get a complete list of databases that provide hints from the Database A-Z List. Use the Search menu on our homepage, and chose Browse Databases A-Z. Then if you do a search for the term Hinting, you will see the full list of databases currently providing hints to American AncesTREES.
American AncesTREES is available to all members. You can learn more information about it here.
We are pleased to announce an update to Ireland: The Annals of Beara: the release of the indexed version of Volume 2, which joins the indexed version of Volume 1 and the image-only Volume 3.
In 2009, Riobard O’Dwyer published a three-volume study of the families of the Beara Peninsula (West Cork, Ireland). The work contains information on families from the parishes of Adrigole and Allihies (Volume 1), Bere Island and Eyeries (Volume 2), and Castletownbere and Glengarriff (Volume 3). Volume 3 also contains a brief history of the O’Sullivan clan. The family records range in date from 1776 to 1992, with the majority of records in the period 1822-1956. Many of the families and descendants are traced from their origins in Beara to the United States and other countries.
Bere Island is about 1.5 km off the coast of County Cork. It was originally in the parish of Killaconenagh but became a separate parish in 1890. “As of 2012, the population was approximately 200, but the past population was significantly higher. At the time of the 1841 census the population was 2,122. However, by the 1851 census the population had decreased to 1,454 due to the Great Famine. The population decline continued in line with the national trend for emigration throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.” (“Bere Island,” Wikipedia). The main industry, as might be expected, was fishing. In addition, the British Navy had a long presence on the island.
Eyeries Parish is located on the northern coast of the Beara Peninsula. Like Bere Island, it experienced significant emigration as a result of the Great Famine. One of the primary occupations of Eyeries Parish was fishing. It was in Eyeries that “mackerel curing first started for the American markets.” (O’Halloran, W. History of West Cork, 1916) However, this industry declined around 1930. Another major employer of the residents of Eyeries was the copper mines in nearby Allihies, which began to decline in the 1860s and collapsed in 1884.
To research the families of Bere Island and Eyeries Parish, O’Dwyer used the Catholic and Church of Ireland parish records, as well as civil records and interviews of residents. In the case of Bere Island, roughly eight years of marriages and nine years of baptisms were missing from the Catholic Church records of the mid-1860s to early 1870s, but through study of the civil records, O’Dwyer traced 46 missing marriages and hundreds of births. Likewise, in Eyeries Parish, there were 200 people who were never entered in the records, and O’Dwyer had to use alternate methods to find them.
This database is now indexed for Volumes 1 and 2. Volume 3 is currently browse-only. Tables of contents for all three volumes may be downloaded to help locate the volumes and pages for specific towns and parishes in Beara. The NEHGS Library also holds the research papers of Riobard O’Dwyer in its Special Collections, call number Mss 1097.
Special thanks to Sam Sturgis for his help implementing this update and to Jean Maguire for authoring this post.
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added seven new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 from St. Mary in Quincy and St. Paul in Cambridge. This update adds over 13,000 records and over 42,000 names to search.
St. Mary’s is described by James S. Sullivan in One Hundred Years of Progress in sparkling terms, “St. Mary’s Church, West Quincy, was the first church erected outside of Boston for the Catholics living along the South Shore and therefore can justly be considered the mother church of the numerous Catholic churches that now raise their glittering spires in the historic towns of the Plymouth colony.”
St. Paul was established in Harvard Square in 1875, from area that formerly belonged to St. Peter’s in Cambridge.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making this parish available on our site. The new volumes are listed below:
St. Mary (Quincy) Baptisms and Marriages, 1844-1848
St. Mary (Quincy) Baptisms, 1849-1850 and Financial Records, 1864-1866
St. Mary (Quincy) Baptisms, 1900
St. Mary (Quincy) Marriages, 1853-1854
St. Paul (Cambridge) Baptisms, 1875-1900
St. Paul (Cambridge) Confirmations, 1875-1900
St. Paul (Cambridge) Marriages, 1875-1900
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, 1789-1900 from St. Joseph in Boston. This update adds over 9,000 records and over 77,000 names to search. The baptisms for this parish are already part of the searchable collection. This parish was scanned in two parts, so now these 5 volumes complete the set up to 1900.
St. Joseph is located in Boston’s West End. The parish coalesced around 1862 as the Catholic population grew.
We’d like to thank volunteers Kathy Terkelsen, Judy Welna, Amelia Devin Freedman, Patty Ryburn , Bob Rainville, Maddy Silberman , Tim Belgrad, Patrick Henehan, Kiera Breitenbach , Meghan McDonagh , Stacey-Rae McCue, Mathew Murphy , Kathleen Oberley , Arlys LaFehr, Eldon Gay , Greg Thumith , Carolyn Jack , Maureen McCarthy and Mary Alice Yost for their help making this parish available on our site.
The new volumes are listed below:
St. Joseph (Boston) Confirmations, 1895-1900
St. Joseph (Boston) Marriages, 1862-1884
St. Joseph (Boston) Marriages, 1884-1893
St. Joseph (Boston) Marriages, 1893-1899
St. Joseph (Boston) Marriages, 1899-1900
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’ve added new sketches to both Early New England Families, 1641-1700 and Western Massachusetts Families in 1790.
Alicia Crane Williams’ Early New England Families, 1641-1700 highlights heads of families mentioned in Torrey’s New England Marriages to 1700. We’ve added two new sketches to this database, Richard Norcross (m. 1650, 1673) and William Shattuck (m. 1643). Both of these men lived in Watertown–Richard Norcross married William Shattuck’s widow, Susanna.
We’ve added one sketch to Western Massachusetts Families in 1790, which focuses on individual enumerated in the 1790 census in historic Berkshire and Hampshire counties, also including modern Franklin and Hampden counties. Helen Schatvet Ullmann, CG, FASG is the editor of this project. The new sketch features Noble Baggs (Belchertown).
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 nine new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 from Sacred Heart in Boston. This update adds over 19,000 records and over 155,000 names to search.
Sacred Heart was Boston’s second Italian parish, established in the North End from St. Leonard of Port Maurice in about 1889. In 1890, the church building (which had formerly been a Protestant meeting house) was dedicated. From its establishment, the parish continued to grow and grow, serving mostly Northern Italian immigrants and their subsequent American families.
We’d like to thank volunteers Mary Coyne, Alison Fulmer, Debbie Lansing, Erin Lichtenstein, Angela Napolitano, Kate Porter, Diane Rogers, and Willis Whittlesey for their help making this parish available on our site. We’d especially like to thank volunteers Jane Papa and Mirca Sghedoni for their extra help with this parish. The new volumes are listed below:
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1888-1891
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1891-1893
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1893-1895
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1895-1897
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1897-1898
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1898-1900 (Part 1)
Sacred Heart (Boston) Baptisms, 1898-1900 (Part 2)
Sacred Heart (Boston) Marriages, 1889-1899
Sacred Heart (Boston) Marriages, 1899-1900
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.