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March 21, 2012 by Gary Price

Massachusetts: "A New Window on Bay State’s Vital Records"

March 21, 2012 by Gary Price

From The Boston Globe:

Locked away in town vaults and basements for years, the historical records date to 1620 and include the scribblings of town clerks from days of yore and the names of Clara Barton, Paul Revere, John Hancock, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin.
The old public records are slated to go online Tuesday, and for the first time ever, people will be able to browse through millions of them and search for their ancestors by name and location – for a price. The records, totaling approximately 17 million, represent decades of work by a former Massachusetts couple who spent 30 years traveling from community to community, collecting old documents from city and town halls across the state.
“We knew exactly where to look,’’ said Jay Holbrook, 75, a retired researcher who began the project in 1982. “The clerks always have a basement. That’s where the good records are.’’
Holbrook and his wife, DeLene, recently sold their microfiche collection of vital records to Ancestry.com, a for-profit genealogical website based in Provo, Utah, for an undisclosed price. Ancestry.com representatives say the Holbrooks’ trove is the most complete collection of Massachusetts vital records known to exist.
Most of the records are, of course, already public and free, a point that Secretary of State William F. Galvin emphasized when told of the Ancestry.com sale. His spokesman said that vital records and other documents can be made available to anyone who asks for them at their local city hall or town hall. Vital records from 1841 through 1920 are also available at the Massachusetts Archives.

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Got Massachusetts Ancestors? (via Ancestry.com Blog)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Resources

SHARE:

Ancesty.comArchivesDatabasesGenealogyGenealogy DatabasesOnline Research & ReferenceVital Records

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

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