Massachusetts Genealogy

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Massachusetts Genealogy Research Guide

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Massachusetts Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

Massachusetts was one of the original thirteen colonies and became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on February 6, 1788. It grew out of two earlier settlements — Plymouth Colony, founded by the Pilgrims in 1620, and the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded at Boston and Salem in 1630 — which were merged under the royal Province of Massachusetts Bay charter of 1691. Its four centuries of dense town record-keeping make it one of the richest — and most town-dependent — states in which to trace a family.

• Capital: Boston, the seat of government since the colony's founding.
• Statehood: February 6, 1788, the sixth state, formed from the British Province of Massachusetts Bay; its 1780 state constitution is the oldest written constitution still in use.
• Counties: 14. The first were created in 1643 (Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk among them). Eight county governments were dissolved between 1997 and 2000, but all fourteen counties continue as registry-of-deeds and court districts.
• Land type: Massachusetts is a state-land state, not a federal (public-domain) state. Original title passed from the colony, the province, and the towns through their proprietors, so there are no federal General Land Office records for Massachusetts — early grants are documented at the town and colony level and later transfers at the county Registry of Deeds.
• Nickname and motto: the Bay State; the state motto is Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem ("By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty").
• Where records live: the town is the basic unit of record-keeping — vital records and town-meeting records are kept by the town clerk — while deeds are recorded at the county or district Registry of Deeds and probate at the county Probate and Family Court. Boston kept its own vital records separately in the early period, and the city of Boston still maintains its own registry.

Libraries and Archives

Massachusetts's richest collections cluster in Boston, which holds state-government, municipal, and immigrant records, and in Worcester and Cambridge; town clerks, public libraries, and local historical societies hold material for their own areas. The principal Massachusetts repositories include:

• Massachusetts Archives (Boston) — state and colonial government records: pre-1841 and 1841–1935 vital records, passenger and naturalization records, colonial and provincial court records, military rolls, and the historic Judicial Archives.
• State Library of Massachusetts (Boston) — session laws, legislative records, local histories, newspapers, city directories, and manuscripts, with a growing digital repository.
• New England Historic Genealogical Society / American Ancestors (Boston) — founded in 1845, the oldest and largest genealogical society in the country and the flagship resource for New England research, publisher of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.
• Boston Public Library — a major genealogical and local-history collection, newspapers, maps, and city directories, and the host of Digital Commonwealth.
• Congregational Library & Archives (Boston) — the essential repository for the records of the Congregational churches that were the established church of colonial Massachusetts.
• American Antiquarian Society (Worcester) — one of the great collections of early American newspapers, genealogies, and printed records.
• Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston) — manuscripts, family papers, and diaries documenting Massachusetts families and communities.
• National Archives at Boston (Waltham) — federal court, naturalization, passenger-arrival, and military records for New England.
• Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at American Ancestors — the leading repository for New England Jewish family and community history.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive Massachusetts microfilm and digital collections, and town clerks, county Registries of Deeds and Probate, and local historical societies hold records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized Massachusetts records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of Massachusetts vital, town, land, probate, court, and church records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive Massachusetts vital, town, census, naturalization, probate, and passenger collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — Massachusetts vital records, censuses, and immigration collections.
• American Ancestors ($) — the New England Historic Genealogical Society's website and the single most important subscription resource for Massachusetts, hosting the published town vital records to 1850, the 1841–1915 statewide vital records, and the Archdiocese of Boston Catholic records.
• Digital Commonwealth — free; digitized photographs, manuscripts, and records from libraries and institutions across the state.
• Massachusetts Archives Digital Records — free; digitized record series drawn from the state Archives.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, which includes many Massachusetts titles.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized Massachusetts town histories, published record abstracts, and law books.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

Massachusetts's colonial, provincial, and state laws help explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced genealogical records, and many foundational texts have been digitized and are free to read.

• The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) — the first legal code enacted in New England — is reprinted in The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, the compiled colonial laws from the editions of 1660 and 1672, free on the Internet Archive.
• The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (the province laws, 1692–1780) and the state Acts and Resolves from 1780 onward are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust and through the State Library's digital repository.
• The Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Shurtleff, five volumes) and the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth reprint the acts, court orders, and proceedings of the two founding colonies; both are free on the Internet Archive.
• The annual Laws of Massachusetts (session laws) and the several nineteenth-century revisions of the General Laws are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.
• The Commonwealth's index to historical laws and legal documents gathers the colony, Plymouth, and province laws and the 1780 constitution in one place.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Massachusetts was the first state to require statewide civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths, beginning in 1841. Before 1841, vital records were kept by the towns, and for most towns these early records were transcribed and published in the "Vital Records to the Year 1850" series (the familiar tan-bound volumes). The state was slow to enforce the 1841 law at first, so early returns are uneven, and Boston did not begin reporting to the state until about 1850, having kept its own records before then.

Where the records are held. Town clerks hold the pre-1841 records and duplicate copies of later ones; the Massachusetts Archives holds the statewide originals for 1841 through 1935; and the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics holds 1936 to the present, with a block of years transferring to the Archives periodically. Genealogical copies are obtained from the town clerk, the Archives, or the Registry depending on the year. Use these online indexes and images to find a record, then order it:

• Pre-1850 (town records): the published Vital Records to the Year 1850 are browsable free on the Internet Archive and searchable on American Ancestors ($); the underlying town records are also on Ancestry as Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988 ($).
• Births (1841–1915): Massachusetts Birth Records, 1840–1915 ($); the same 1841–1915 births are free on FamilySearch and searchable on American Ancestors.
• Marriages (1841–1915): Massachusetts Marriage Records, 1840–1915 ($); also free on FamilySearch and on American Ancestors.
• Deaths (1841–1915): Massachusetts Death Records, 1841–1915 ($); also free on FamilySearch and on American Ancestors.
• Later indexes: a statewide marriage index for 1921–1955 is on FamilySearch, and records after 1915 are held by the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics.

Boston. Because Boston maintained its own registration before about 1850 and remains a separate registry, its early records appear in the published Boston Births, 1630–1849, Boston Marriages, and Boston Deaths volumes issued by the city's Record Commissioners, which are free on the Internet Archive. More recent Boston births, marriages, and deaths are obtained from the Boston Registry Division of the city.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped Massachusetts's jurisdictions and records:

• 1620 — The Pilgrims found Plymouth Colony and sign the Mayflower Compact.
• 1630 — The Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded at Boston and Salem during the Great Migration of the 1630s.
• 1641 — The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first legal code in New England, is adopted.
• 1643 — The first counties, among them Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk, are established.
• 1675–1676 — King Philip's War devastates many frontier towns.
• 1691–1692 — The royal Province of Massachusetts Bay charter merges Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony, and Maine into one province; the Salem witchcraft trials follow in 1692.
• 1775–1783 — The Revolution begins at Lexington and Concord in 1775 and the siege of Boston follows; Massachusetts is a leading force in the war.
• 1780 — The Massachusetts Constitution is adopted; court rulings in the following years effectively end slavery in the state.
• February 6, 1788 — Massachusetts ratifies the U.S. Constitution as the sixth state.
• 1820 — Maine, long governed as part of Massachusetts, separates and becomes its own state.
• 1841 — Statewide civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths begins.
• 1845–1855 — The Great Famine drives heavy Irish immigration into Boston and the mill cities.
• 1855 and 1865 — The two surviving Massachusetts state censuses are taken.
• 1997–2000 — Eight county governments are abolished, though the counties remain as registry and court districts.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years from 1790 through 1950, and Massachusetts appears in all of them, though the 1890 federal census was almost entirely destroyed and the 1800 census is missing Boston and part of Suffolk County. They are free on FamilySearch and on the National Archives 1950 census site, and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

State censuses were taken by Massachusetts every ten years from 1855 through 1945, but only the 1855 and 1865 population schedules survive in full, and both are valuable because they fall between the federal censuses and name every member of the household:

• 1855: names every person, with age, sex, occupation, and birthplace; searchable on Ancestry ($) and free on FamilySearch.
• 1865: names everyone and adds columns for taxable property and for whether a man was a legal or naturalized voter, which makes it useful for citizenship research; searchable on Ancestry ($) and free on FamilySearch.

Substitutes. Where censuses are missing, the 1771 Massachusetts tax valuation list, which records taxable property for the great majority of towns then in the province, is an unusually complete early substitute; town and city directories (Boston directories survive from the late eighteenth century) and town valuation and tax lists are the best substitutes for placing a family in a given year.

Church Records

Because civil registration is uneven before the mid-1800s, church records are the most important substitute for vital records in the colonial and early national periods. The Congregational church was the established, tax-supported church of colonial Massachusetts, so its town and parish records are the first place to look; Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Quaker records follow, and the Roman Catholic church became the largest in the state with the Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and French-Canadian immigration of the nineteenth century.

• The New England's Hidden Histories project at the Congregational Library & Archives is digitizing colonial Congregational church records from the 1620s onward, including a section devoted to the region's Black and Indigenous parishioners.
• Massachusetts, Church Records, 1630–1943 is a free collection on FamilySearch, and thousands of digitized congregational registers can be found through the FamilySearch Catalog by town.
• Massachusetts, Boston Archdiocese Roman Catholic Sacramental Records, 1789–1920 ($) — baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and other sacraments from the parishes of eastern Massachusetts, digitized with American Ancestors, which also hosts the collection for members.

Court Records

Massachusetts's courts changed as the region passed from colony to province to state, and their records reach well beyond lawsuits into estates, guardianships, naturalizations, divorces, and name changes. The main courts a researcher encounters are:

• Probate and Family Court, in each county — wills, administrations, guardianships, adoptions, and divorce.
• Superior Court, the county-level trial court of general jurisdiction, which historically held many naturalization and civil case files; the earlier Court of Common Pleas and Court of General Sessions did this work in the colonial and provincial periods.
• The Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court, tracing back to the provincial Superior Court of Judicature.

Historic court records from about 1629 to 1860 are held by the Massachusetts Judicial Archives, housed at the Massachusetts Archives, and modern case information is available through the Massachusetts Trial Court.

Ethnic/Minority Records

Massachusetts has been diverse since its founding, and knowing where a group settled points to the records most likely to document a family.

• Indigenous peoples. The Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, the Nipmuc of the interior, and the Massachusett, Pocumtuc, and Mahican peoples lived across the region. The Massachusetts Archives holds distinctive sources such as the guardianship accounts of Native plantations, the 1832 Mashpee census, and the 1861 Earle Report on the condition of the Commonwealth's Native people.
• English Puritans. The founders of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay came in the Great Migration of about 1620 to 1640; American Ancestors' Great Migration Study Project identifies these early settlers in detail.
• Irish. Irish immigration surged with the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s and concentrated in Boston and the industrial cities; Catholic parish and cemetery records are key sources, and the Irish Ancestral Research Association specializes in these families.
• French-Canadians. Drawn to the textile mills of Lowell, Fall River, Worcester, and other cities, Franco-Americans left rich parish records; the American-French Genealogical Society and the American-Canadian Genealogical Society are the leading resources.
• Portuguese. Immigrants from the Azores, Madeira, and mainland Portugal settled New Bedford, Fall River, and Cape Cod; the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth documents this community.
• Armenians. One of the largest Armenian communities in the country grew around Watertown; the Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives preserves its record.
• Jewish families. The Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at American Ancestors is the leading resource for New England Jewish research.
• African Americans. People of African descent have lived in Massachusetts since the colonial period, first enslaved and then free after slavery was ended in the state by court rulings in the 1780s; the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Black and Indigenous materials in the Congregational Library's New England's Hidden Histories project are central resources.

Immigration and Naturalization

The Port of Boston was one of the nation's chief immigrant gateways throughout the nineteenth century. Passenger manifests survive from 1820; a gap from 1875 to 1882 reflects records lost to an 1894 fire, but most arrivals can be traced through the surviving lists.

• Massachusetts, Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820–1963 ($); the Boston manifests are also free on FamilySearch, and the National Archives at Boston holds the originals for New England.
• Earlier Boston arrivals appear in Boston Passenger and Immigration Lists, 1821–1850 ($), also on MyHeritage ($).

Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record — federal, state, county, or local — could naturalize, so records are scattered among the county Superior Courts and the federal courts; after 1906 the process was federalized. The key finding aid is Massachusetts, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798–1950 ($), with free New England naturalization indexes and petitions on FamilySearch. The National Archives at Boston holds the federal naturalizations and a large index to New England naturalization petitions.

Land Records

As a state-land state, Massachusetts granted land itself rather than through the federal government, so there are no General Land Office records. Original title flowed from the colony and the province and, most often, from the towns: the earliest settlers received house lots and divisions of the common land through the town proprietors, whose grant books are usually found among the town records. Later transfers between individuals are recorded as deeds at the county or district Registry of Deeds.

Where the records are kept.

• County and district Registries of Deeds: recorded deeds and mortgages are kept by the Register of Deeds. Several counties are divided into more than one registry district — for example, Essex is split into Northern and Southern districts, Middlesex into Northern and Southern, and Worcester, Berkshire, and Bristol each into several — so it matters which district a town falls in.
• Massachusetts Land Records portal: the statewide masslandrecords.com site provides free digitized images of recorded deeds for all of the registry districts, with coverage reaching back to the earliest surviving books in some counties.
• Registered land: a separate Land Court system, established in 1898, handles land with registered (Torrens) title; those records are kept in a distinct registered-land section of each registry.

Online, county deed images are free at the masslandrecords portal, many town proprietors' and land records are on FamilySearch, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and land papers searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, and witnesses.

Military Records

Massachusetts took part in every American conflict from the earliest colonial wars onward, and the state produced unusually complete published rosters.

• Colonial wars: King Philip's War (1675–1676) and the later French and Indian Wars generated muster and pay rolls, many of them indexed at the Massachusetts Archives among the volumes known as the "Massachusetts Archives Collection."
• Revolutionary War: Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, the seventeen-volume compilation published by the Commonwealth, is free on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust and is also searchable on Ancestry ($).
• War of 1812: muster and pay rolls of the Massachusetts militia for 1812–1815 are held and indexed at the Massachusetts Archives.
• Civil War: Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, the multi-volume compilation of the Adjutant General, is free on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust and searchable on Ancestry ($), with free Union service records on FamilySearch; the 1865 state census also records military service.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — is among the richest sources for family relationships, since the estate file usually names the heirs. In Massachusetts, probate has been handled at the county level since the colonial period, when the county courts and judges of probate first took jurisdiction; today the Probate and Family Court in each county keeps these records through its Registry of Probate.

• Historic probate files are held by the county Registries of Probate and, for the older records, the Massachusetts Judicial Archives at the Massachusetts Archives.
• Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635–1991 ($) on Ancestry is name-searchable across the counties, and county probate file papers are free on FamilySearch for many counties.
• FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific town and year and are valuable substitutes where censuses or deeds are missing; several consecutive years can reveal when a young man came of age, moved, or died and left heirs.

• The 1771 Massachusetts tax valuation list, taken under a province act to assess the rateable estates of the towns, records the taxable property of tens of thousands of inhabitants across the great majority of the province's towns; it has been published and is available online in searchable form.
• Colonial and province valuation and tax lists, and the state's later tax records, survive among the town records and the Massachusetts Archives Collection; the 1798 U.S. Direct Tax originals for Massachusetts are held at American Ancestors.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — the Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and luxury taxes, which include Massachusetts.