Archive For The “Uncategorized” Category
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.
Today we’ve added nine new volumes to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 from Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton and St. Francis de Sales in Charlestown. This update adds over 38,000 records and over 156,000 names to search.
Our Lady Help of Christians became an independent parish in 1878 when it separated from the Watertown church.
St. Francis de Sales is the second oldest Catholic church in Charlestown. Situated on Bunker Hill, it was established in 1862.
We’d like to thank Sam Sturgis for his help making this parish available on our site. The new volumes are listed below:
Our Lady Help of Christians (Newton) Baptisms, 1879-1885
Our Lady Help of Christians (Newton) Baptisms, 1885-1898
Our Lady Help of Christians (Newton) Baptisms, 1898-1900
Our Lady Help of Christians (Newton) Marriages, 1879-1885
Our Lady Help of Christians (Newton) Marriages, 1885-1900
St. Francis de Sales (Charlestown) Baptisms, 1861-1879
St. Francis de Sales (Charlestown) Baptisms, 1880-1893
St. Francis de Sales (Charlestown) Baptisms, 1893-1900
St. Francis de Sales (Charlestown) Marriages, 1862-1900
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
Today we’re announcing one new sketch in Western Massachusetts Families in 1790, featuring Jonathan Snow of Goshen.
Jonathan Snow was born in 1730 and died in 1796. He married Mercy or Marcy Wing and they had 11 children.
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.
We are extremely happy to announce a new database today; Massachusetts: Plymouth Colony Deeds, 1671-1673. This database of transcribed Plymouth Colony Deeds, is based on the book Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, Vol. III, pt.2, 1671-1673; which was transcribed and indexed by Scott Andrew Bartley and released in 2019.
This work is a continuation of the series ordered by the Massachusetts legislature, who published 12 volumes of records of Plymouth Colony from 1855 to 1861. The last of these volumes contained Deeds from 1620 to 1651. This book is available in the NEHGS Library with call number F68 .N55. Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs restarted this series by publishing the 13th and 14th volumes covering Deeds, Volume 2 for 1651-1663 (published in 2016), and Volume 3, part 1 for 1663-1671 (published in 2017).
This database is indexed by first and last name, and date of the deed. All records are of the type Deed. The names of Indians involved in these transactions are captured in the first name field, along with any alias that applied. The Preface contains a detailed explanation of the presentation of the transcription. The database has over 250 pages and 2,300 indexed names.
Please note: This database is available to NEHGS members only. Consider Membership.