I am currently documenting and sourcing birth, marriage and death dates for my Haskell, Holbrook and Goodhue ancestors and their spouses and children. Since I am a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) , I am taking advantage of their online databases at
www.americanancestors.org. Their website was updated and enhanced earlier this fall and it is one of my favorites for online research. Since many of my ancestors are from Massachusetts, I have been using the Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 database a lot. This is incredibly handy and saves me a great deal of time from having to travel to a library that has hard copies of the Massachusetts Vital Record books. I start out using the advanced search, but if I cannot find my ancestor that way, then I can view the scanned pages of the original records and scroll through page by page to see if I can find the person that way. This works well, especially since some of the names had interesting spelling variations. I have a lot of information that was compiled by my grandmother, so I generally have a good idea of where the specific event took place for many of my ancestors.
I have also been having success with some more recent ancestors in the Massachusetts Vital Records 1841 - 1910 and 1911 - 1915 databases. Both of these databases also have scanned copies of the original records.
If you are not a member of NEHGS, I highly recommend joining to take advantage of these great online databases.
© 2010, copyright William C. Haskell
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