| Early Massachusetts
Vital Records
1600-1849
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| On Monday, December 1, 2008, June Hanson (Bennett) passed away. She had been one of our best transcribers. She will be sorely missed. She had recently enjoyed a vacation in Puerto Rico with her daughter and then visited her sister in Florida for a week.
For 2009, I will donate 15% of all donations to the project to the American Cancer Society in June's name.
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These records were published in the early 1900s and are commonly referred to as the "Tan Books." They were compiled from all of the town, clerk and court records as well as private records, such as Bibles, and gravestone records that could be found at that time. They cover the time period from about 1600 to the end of 1849. (Death records, when taken from gravestones, sometimes are slightly later.)
In addition to the transcriptions, part of the project is putting images of the pages online. Where these are done, they are linked from the transcriptions. These are there for the researcher to print for documentation purposes. The transcriptions are intended to be a research aid and are not the source. Use the images for that. Where images are not yet online, they can be requested from us.
There are two ways to search the vital records transcription:
- By Town, (latest update - 12/14/08) or
- by Surname. (latest update - 12/14/08)
10/10/08
| For those who use this site but are not subscribed to the e-mail list, new formatting is being slowly implemented. These are the basic changes:
- On the transcriptions pages:
- The links to the page images and abbreviations are moving to the right side. This is closer to the scroll bar and will make mouse movements a little easier,
- The Vol. number is now a separate link and will link to the title page for that volume,
- A "Back" button is being added on the right side.
- The abbreviations page "Back" buttons are being moved to the right side,
- On the town index page, the "Back" button is moving to the right, the links to the Explanations & Abbreviations and title pages are being removed because they will be easily accessible from the transcription page,
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Subscribe to the vital records e-mail list in either list mode or digest mode.
You can acquire your own reprint copies of the books in hardcover or softcover. See list of books for a complete list and prices.
Do you need to look up vital records in other areas, or towns that have not yet been done here? Try The Genealogical Gleaner's Award page. They have links to many sites that are working on making vital records available to everyone. You can also try Jane Devlin's or Ray Brown's sites. They are also getting a lot of transcriptions done.
The vital records pages are still under construction and will be for quite a long time. The length of time will be determined by how much time and money I can devote and how many volunteers help in doing this work.
If you feel the
Vital Records Project
is worthwhile,
please help support us.
Make a donation
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ALL pages copyrighted by John Slaughter and Jodi Salerno. They are free to reproduce and distribute but may not be used for any type of commercial purposes.
All images, except those with copyrights on them due to recent publication, are in the public domain and can not be copyrighted.
Copyright ©2005-'08
The Massachusetts
Vital Records Project>
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