Report: “Boston’s Catholic Archdiocese Expands Effort to Digitize Archives”

From the Religion News Service:

Three years ago, the [Boston] archdiocese became the country’s first to undertake a major effort to make its archive, listing 200 years of baptisms, confirmations, communions, marriages, holy orders and the anointing of the sick — a goldmine for professional and amateur historians and genealogists — accessible online.

The project was originally limited to the years 1789 to 1900, which featured about 154 parishes and 11 million names from 800 volumes of records. That period was one of major growth for the church in Eastern Massachusetts, beginning with the 1788 founding of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston’s first Catholic parish.

Now, the archdiocese announced a major expansion of the project — a collaboration between the archdiocese and the Boston-based organization American Ancestors, also known as the New England Historic Genealogical Society — effectively doubling the number of parishioners whose names will be indexed in the digital archives.

Read the Complete Article (approx. 800 words)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Collections, News