Archive For The “Uncategorized” Category
Thank you to everyone who participated in Transcription Challenge last week. We had over 150 responses! This week we have 8 more mystery names to decipher and we would love your help! Visit our Transcription Challenge page to offer a suggestion.
Here are the chosen transcriptions from last week’s challenge:
- Kezia M. Ahern
- Timothy O’Driscoll
- Stephen Donovan
- Lenor, Serah Donovan
- Law., Lawrence Traynor
- Annie O’Toole
- James Keane
- Mary Gabily, Cahill
Image Credit: Sally Wilson (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
- Location oriented databases – They are consistently prefixed. For the United States and Canada, they will start with the city and state or province code, followed by the description, and ended with the year range for that collection (when possible). For databases from other countries, they will start with the country name. Examples include:
o Massachusetts: Jewish Cemeteries from American Jewish Historical Society, 1875-2012
o New Castle, NH: Record Book, 1745-1937
o Australia: Fortune Hunters, 1808-1857 - Census – National census start with the country name then year and description, and local censuses have the city and state or provide code followed by the year. Examples include:
o Norway: Census, 1875
o Massachusetts: 1855 State Census
o Framingham, MA: Census of the East Ward, 1837 - Journals and Periodicals – These start with the name of the journal and periodical. If the database contains only extracted records and dates from the journal or periodical, a description and year range is included. Examples include:
o Connecticut Nutmegger
o Albany Argus: Records of Deaths and Marriages, 1826-1828
o New Hampshire Gazette: Vital Records, 1756-1800
Of course, you can always browse the Database List A-Z to search the full range of databases if you don’t immediately find what you are looking for. And if you have bookmarked specific pages or saved search results in your trees – fear not, these references will be automatically redirected to use the new database names.
Image Credit: Daderot (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Also, Alicia has revised the sketches of Joseph Andrews of Hingham., MA (m. 1621, w. unknown, m. 1632, Elizabeth ___); and Samuel Jenney of Plymouth, MA, Portsmouth, RI and Dartmouth, MA (m. 1646, Susannah Wood, m. 1654, Anne/Anna Lettice)
Image Credit: Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), creator (Daderot) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
As NEHGS prepares to publish Scott Andrew Bartley’s first volume of these sketches, we welcome any corrections, especially regarding the children of the principal subjects of the sketches. Send any potential revisions to webmaster@nehgs.org for review.
The latest new sketches are listed below:
We have a new addition to Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900: the records from St. Mary in Charlestown. St. Mary’s was the first parish established as a separate parish from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, in 1828. The Boston Public Library has a Charlestown Flickr page with images of St. Mary’s interior, repairs to the roof, and a fire that happened in the building–scroll about three quarters of the way down the page to view these images.
This addition consists of 10 new volumes:
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1829-1855
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1856-1868
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1869-1887
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1887-1894
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1894-1897
St. Mary (Charlestown) Baptisms 1897-1900
St. Mary (Charlestown) Deaths and Burials 1823-1831
St. Mary (Charlestown) Deaths and Burials 1830-1836
St. Mary (Charlestown) Marriages 1830-1868
St. Mary (Charlestown) Marriages 1869-1900
Thank you to everyone who participated in our very first Transcription Challenge last week. We had over 55 responses, giving us many helpful suggestions for the 8 names we needed to transcribe. This week we have 8 more mystery names to decipher and we would love your help! Visit our Transcription Challenge page to offer a suggestion.
Here are the chosen transcriptions from last week’s challenge:
- Feely
- Philip McDermott
- Mary McDermott
- Timothy Hannifier, Hennifin
- Johanna Gallagher
- Edna Furber
- Divver
- Keat, Kate
Image Credit: TrunkJunk (author) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Explore the new sketches, listed below:
Asaph Butler (Windsor, Weathersfield, Waterbury)
William Chamberlain (Strafford)
Great Migration Begins 3 volume set
We have greatly expanded the index to Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to N.E. 1620-1633, Vols. I-III. There are nearly 15,000 new birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial records that include the person’s full name and event date, as well as spouse and parent names where available. Searchable emigration and residence records for the featured persons in these volumes have also been added. For those people that may have saved URL’s from the original name-only index, these records are still available.
Search Tip: You can now try to include family members to help focus results. For example, a search for records on Priscilla Mullins that includes father of William returns the following:
Priscilla Mullins sample search
Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.
We’re offering a new challenge as part of Database News! As we work on Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1798-1900, we occasionally run into some words or names that are very hard to decipher. Our volunteers and proofreaders do their very best to turn these scribbles into viable names, but occasionally we all get stumped. Sometimes if you stare at the name for a long enough time, you can figure out what name it’s supposed to be, so we’re enlisting your help.
Each week we will post some transcription challenges, with the problem names circled. Each problem name will be numbered. You can comment on the page with your idea of what the problem name should be, referencing the number of the problem name.
The Transcription Challenge page is accessible from Database News Home—you can find it on the right in the navigation bar (see the screenshot above).
Names: #1 (child and father’s last name), #2 (mother’s maiden name)
Here’s an example image with 2 names labelled #1 and #2 (the first name appears twice, hence the 3 circles). I can click on the image to enlarge the page. I’ve looked at it for a while and I’ve come to think the circled names are McCarty and White. I would comment the following, “#1: McCarty, #2: White.”
Thanks for any help, and happy puzzling!
Image Credit: Tichnor Bros. Inc., Boston, Mass. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Make sure you watch our video, How to Search Massachusetts Probate File papers to learn how to search these collections. Don’t get frustrated when the first page you find is just the upper portion of a file folder–this is the first page of every case. Use the blue arrows on the upper right to move to the next pages in the case. You can visit the transcript page to know how many pages are in a given file folder. You can find more tips and resources on searching probate records on our Probate Records Resource Page.