Early Vital Records of Massachusetts

From 1600 to 1850

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries several towns and agencies compiled the vital records of over 200 Massachusetts towns and cities. Using the town records, church records, private records, gravestone inscriptions and newspaper articles, one of the finest collections of published vital records was produced. These came to be known collectively as the "Tan Book" series. These records generally comprise all of the known records [ for various Massachusetts towns] from the earliest times to about 1850.

The Massachusetts Vital Records Project, in an ongoing effort, presents here the transcriptions of over 1,500,000 records from over 150 of those towns. Indexed by town and by surname, the transcriptions provide genealogists with an easy to use interface to search for their roots in Massachusetts. For proper documentation the project also provides the images of the books from which the transcriptions are done.

The information from this project is made available totally free of charge

in contrast to sites like AmericanAncestors and Ancestry.com

see the project here:

http://ma-vitalrecords.org/

to search by surname click here:

http://ma-vitalrecords.org/Surnames.shtml

the three main sources of info are:

Cemetery Records, Church Records, Private Records - a significant portion of the private records were Family Bibles.

@FamilySearch Tips and Tricks​ 

@Family Bibles​ 

@Nanney Family Genealogy​ 

@Family History Research​