Wright Museum depicts life in the military and at home

The sight of a World War II Army tank crashing through a brick wall abruptly reminds us of how far-away military actions affected people on the homefront. In the lakeside resort of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, you’ll find the tank at the Wright Museum, along with artifacts that provide insight into the war and its “significant and lasting impact on American life.”

The museum is divided into two distinct sections—the homefront gallery and the military wing—linked together through an interactive time tunnel highlighting each year from 1939 to 1945.

Depicted in a series of lifesize vignettes, the homefront features a 1940s kitchen, a dentist’s office, and the ubiquitous gathering place, a soda fountain. Other displays highlight student life, sports, entertainment, fashion, science, and technology during the time period. The museum portrays how Americans supported the war effort, the importance of recycling and rationing, and women’s changing roles in times of crisis.

The museum also features fully operational military vehicles that often appear in the town’s 4th of July parades. Among the collection is the only known surviving 42-ton Pershing tank from the 1945 crossing of the Rhine River at Remagen Bridge as well as halftracks, jeeps, an ambulance, and motorcycles. Some exhibit highlights include the uniform worn by one of the men who raised the American flag during the battle of Iwo Jima; a Norden bombsight; a rare Army Air Corps Mission Map; a collection showing the contributions of women in uniform; original artwork from leading magazine illustrators of the times; and the stories and photos that put all these objects in perspective. 

Museums such as the Wright Museum help us to understand the impact of the war on our families, in a very visual and profound way.

Other noteworthy military exhibits in New England:

Battleship Cove, Fall River, MA: the world’s largest Naval Airship exhibit.

Military Museum of Southern New England, Danbury, CT.

Submarine Force Library & Museum, Groton, CT.

USS Albacore AGSS 56, Portsmouth, NH.

USS Salem CA-139, Quincy, MA: the only preserved U.S. Naval Heavy Cruiser.

Samuel Sewall: Salem witch judge

Samuel Sewall by Smybert

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) was a devout Puritan, a Boston merchant, and a magistrate who was actively engaged in his community. The reason we know so much about him was that for most of his life he kept a diary. He detailed the sermons of the day, his travels, his mercantile interests, politics, deaths, and private musings—the minutiae of life in colonial America. But oddly enough, he wrote very little about being one of the nine judges that made up the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts.

Sewall received a Master’s degree in Divinity from Harvard College in 1674, but never became a minister like many of his classmates. Perhaps it’s because in order to become a member of the Puritan church, he had to tell the congregation of a personal conversion, an experience that proved God’s saving grace. Apparently, Sewall believed the more dramatic, the better. He had religious doubts and overcame them, rather than experiencing a change, a leap of faith. Although he became a “visible saint,” with church membership and full communion, he didn’t always feel worthy of the status.

He also believed, like other Puritans did, that bad things happen to show God’s displeasure. It was personal, between man and God. The death of his young son Henry, Sewall believed, was God’s punishment to him as a parent. Since Sewall had 14 children, and only six survived childhood, he had a lot of guilt for earning God’s wrath.

Sewall believed in the existence of witches and probably heard from some Puritan ministers that witches were being used by the Devil to destroy the Puritan church. Even though the witch trials ended in 1693, calamities continued to strike at Sewall and the colony. And for that, the Massachusetts government decided to hold a public day of fasting and prayer in 1697. On that day, Sewall publicly repented for his role as a Salem witch judge and asked God to stop punishing him for it.

The minister of the Third Church in Boston read Sewall’s confession to the congregation. “Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family and being sensible that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this day relates), he is, upon many accounts more concerned than any he knows of, and desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all other of his sins, personal and relative, and according to His infinite benignity and sovereignty, not visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land. But that He would powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future; and to vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of His word and spirit.”

Today, we remember Sewall as the Salem Witch Judge, not because he was an active and vocal member of the court—like William Stoughton and John Hathorne—but because of his confession. Twelve jury members also confessed their guilt on this day, but none of the other judges did. Sewall would have hated the moniker “Salem Witch Judge,” but it was just one more thing he would have to bear, much like the hair shirt Sewall's descendants claimed he wore for the rest of his life to remind him of his guilt in sending innocent people to their deaths.

For further reading:

Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante

Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience by Richard Francis

Massachusetts 1865 state census index and images online

Federal censuses are great tools for finding families at a given time and place, especially when vital records are not available. Some states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, also created their own state censuses for representation purposes midway between federal census dates.

On May 1, 1865, Massachusetts conducted its state census, encompassing 95% of all people living in the Commonwealth. Thanks to the volunteers at FamilySearch, the census index and images are now online. And access is free.

According to the index, there are 5,600 people surnamed Smith in the 1865 Massachusetts census. To make the results more manageable, you can filter your search by first name, gender, event type, and place. For easy access to information, roll your mouse over a name to get a pop-up window detailing name, age, estimated birth year, gender, race, birthplace, marital status, and residence. Click on the name so a split-screen appears. From there, you can copy, print, or share the personal indexing information or view the census image. The images can be resized, rotated, inverted, saved, and printed. You also can browse census pages.

1865 Massachusetts state census search

1855 Massachusetts state census search

Recording the Salem witch trials

Although parts of the Salem witch trial papers appeared in various printed forms (such as Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World), it wasn’t until the 1930s that the government-run Works Progress Administration (WPA) program transcribed the entire collection. To make the work more accessible, in 1977 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum published the WPA transcriptions as a three-volume The Salem Witchcraft Papers (often referred to as SWP).

In 2009, Cambridge University Press published the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt based on the original 17th-century documents. Bernard Rosenthal and his team of 11 editors—historians, linguists, handwriting specialists, a religious scholar, and an archivist—not only corrected serious transcription errors and added newly found documents, they finally put the papers in chronological order. And, as part of the process, the editors discovered more than 250 different people wrote sections of the witchcraft papers—everything from arrest warrants to trial verdicts—based on handwriting analysis, word usage, and phraseology.

So, we have 150 accused witches jailed, 250 court recorders, nine judges, members of the various juries, witnesses, and countless spectators. The numbers give us an overwhelming sense of how many people were intimately involved with some part of the witch-hunt and trials.

With all these active participants, it makes you wonder who was taking care of hearth and home, as well as the farm animals, crops, and businesses. How did the witch trials affect the everyday life of your 17th century ancestors?

Spelling variations in records

In many languages, dictionaries have existed for centuries but it wasn’t until 1604 that the first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall, was written by schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey. Only one copy exists, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, so it probably wasn’t in widespread use. Other dictionaries followed, but it wasn’t until Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), that spelling became more standardized.

It’s no surprise that surnames also lacked standardization. I’ve seen documents where a surname was written one way in the beginning and changed somewhere in succeeding paragraphs, or the signature didn’t match the previous paragraphs. Sometimes clerks phonetically interpreted the sounds of a name. Sometimes handwriting or signatures were illegible or hard to read.

Sometimes surnames changed over time. For example, the How family who in 1707 built the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, eventually added an E to their name, making it Howe. (Perhaps they didn’t want their surname confused with the word “how”?) Purportedly, author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) added the W to his name to disassociate himself with his hanging judge ancestor, John Hathorne (1641-1717).

Sometimes names show up in various ways in early records. John Jepson (1610-1688) and his family are known in early Boston records as Jepson, Jephson, Jebson, Jipson, Gipson, and Gypson. However, in one published record he’s listed as John “Gibson” when he and his wife Emm were admitted as members to the First Church of Boston in 1670. It’s only one record, but that misspelling caused me to do many hours of research on what was really the Jepson line!

Always record the variable spelling in your notes. Keep a list of the different spellings you find to make it easier to check variations in indexes, databases, and documents.

Maine Genealogy site grows from one man's obsession

Five years ago, Christopher Dunham created the Maine Genealogy site to share some of the genealogy resources he had collected—and he’s been adding content ever since.

On the home page, you’ll find a search box for Maine people, with records for marriages, divorces, deaths, court records, cemetery records, passenger lists, enlistment records, pension records, obituaries, and death notices. The search box for Maine Places brings up matches in the Maine Resource Guide, the Legal History Database, and the USGS Feature Names. The site also includes a reference section for books, places, maps, and a census guide. Clicking on a book title within the book search leads you to the referenced tome in Google Books.

“Some of the databases—such as an index of Maine divorces from 1892 to 1903—are the product of days spent at the Maine State Archives, and can be found nowhere else on the web,” Dunham says. “In the past year, I've added a database of almost 23,000 burials in Maine's veterans' cemeteries and an obituary database that is updated daily, and is nearing 50,000 entries.”

Using Ning to create a social network, last summer Dunham “replaced an older genealogy forum with the Maine Genealogy Network, which allows visitors to post queries, upload family photographs and videos, and blog about their research. I'm hoping that it attracts researchers to the site willing to share their resources and expertise, and turn one man's obsession into a collaborative effort.”

Check out the site and help it grow!

John Harvard's statue

You would expect to find truth etched in stone at an institution of higher learning. Not so on the fabled grounds of Harvard yard. Sculpted in 1884 by the well-known artist Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), the John Harvard statue is known as the “statue of three lies.”

The inscription reads: “John Harvard, Founder, 1638.”

John Harvard (1607-1638) was living in England when the new college was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. He and his wife immigrated to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1637 and shortly afterwards he became the minister of the local church. In 1638, he died at age 30 of tuberculosis. Since he and his wife had no children, in his will he bequeathed the fledgling college half of his estate (779 pounds) and his collection of 400 books. With the influx of needed capital, the college started building immediately. The following year, the college was renamed Harvard College to honor its first benefactor.

In 1764, fire destroyed the original college and all but one of John Harvard’s books. If you take an unofficial tour of Harvard led by current university students, you’ll learn how one book was saved (and why you shouldn’t rub the statue’s toe).

The fire also destroyed any known likenesses of John Harvard. According to my tour guide, the model for the statue was a student and descendant of former Harvard president Leonard Hoar (1672-1675), the only president not to have a house named after him.

History & Fiction

You can learn more about Harvard's history, its famous landmarks, and even take a virtual tour online. Or you can discover just as much Harvard lore and journey through 300 years of its history in Harvard Yard by William Martin (2003), a fictional mystery involving a missing Shakespearean quarto.

Further Research

If you have colonial New England ancestors, especially clergymen, find out if they attended the oldest American institution of higher education by searching Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts by John Langdon Sibley. These are available on Google Books:

Volume 1, 1642-1658 (published 1873)

Volume 2, 1659-1677 (published 1881)

Volume 3, 1678-1689 (published 1885)

Clifford Kenyon Shipton continued the series through 1774. You also can find a list of Harvard graduates 1642-1774 online. 

The Massachusetts Historical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) co-published a CD-ROM called Colonial Collegians, which includes almost 5,800 boys and men who attended American colleges through the class of 1774. It comprises all 18 volumes of Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Franklin Bowditch Dexter's Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, James McLachlan's Princetonians, as well as students of Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Rutgers University, the College of William and Mary, among others. Members of NEHGS can access the Colonial Collegians database online.

New Hampshire births to 1900 available online

The FamilySearch site now offers a searchable name index to New Hampshire birth records from 1640 to 1900.

Don’t get too excited yet. Official NH birth records were created by town or city clerks. In 1866, New Hampshire passed a law requiring towns and cities to send copies of birth records to the state. However, some towns and cities didn’t comply until the 1880s, so less than half of the population has birth records at the state level. This online index is from the handwritten card index at the state level. If you don't find what you're looking for, remember that New Hampshire towns and cities have more births recorded than what's available on this statewide card index.

The cards may include child’s name, date and place of birth, name of parents and their place of birth, occupation and ages of parents, name of attending physician or midwife, gender, color or race, living or stillborn, and place recorded. With this information, you will be able to order the original record from the birthplace or state.

For example, the FamilySearch index lists Martha (b. 1654), Ann (b. 1658), and Nathaniel (b. 1660), children of John Huggins (1609-1670) and his wife Bridget (d. 1695) of Hampton, NH. When you click on the individual names, you can view the transcription and the card image. These three cards were created in 1906, and list only child’s name, parents’ names, birth date and place, clerk’s name (transcriber) and creation date.

John and Bridget Huggins, however, had nine known children. Besides the three listed above, two more births and one baptism are listed in Vital Records of Hampton, New Hampshire to the End of the Year 1900, Volume 1, by George Freeman Sanborn and Melinde Lutz Sanborn.

About FamilySearch.org

Thousands of genealogy enthusiasts around the world are making free records available on the Internet through the FamilySearch site. Volunteers extract information from digital images of historical documents (birth, marriage, death, census, and other records) to create searchable indexes online. FamilySearch is a free service of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

New Hampshire births to 1900 available online

The FamilySearch site now offers a searchable name index to New Hampshire birth records from 1640 to 1900.

Don’t get too excited yet. Official NH birth records were created by town or city clerks. In 1866, New Hampshire passed a law requiring towns and cities to send copies of birth records to the state. However, some towns and cities didn’t comply until the 1880s, so less than half of the population has birth records at the state level. This online index is from the handwritten card index at the state level. If you don't find what you're looking for, remember that New Hampshire towns and cities have more births recorded than what's available on this statewide card index.

The cards may include child’s name, date and place of birth, name of parents and their place of birth, occupation and ages of parents, name of attending physician or midwife, gender, color or race, living or stillborn, and place recorded. With this information, you will be able to order the original record from the birthplace or state.

For example, the FamilySearch index lists Martha (b. 1654), Ann (b. 1658), and Nathaniel (b. 1660), children of John Huggins and his wife Bridget of Hampton, NH. When you click on the individual names, you can view the transcription and the card image. These three cards were created in 1906, and list only child’s name, parents’ names, birth date and place, clerk’s name (transcriber) and creation date.

John and Bridget Huggins, however, had nine known children. Besides the three listed above, two more births and one baptism are listed in Vital Records of Hampton, NewHampshire to the End of the Year 1900, Volume 1, by George Freeman Sanborn and Melinde Lutz Sanborn.

About FamilySearch.org

Thousands of genealogy enthusiasts around the world are making free records available on the Internet through the FamilySearch site. Volunteers extract information from digital images of historical documents (birth, marriage, death, census, and other records) to create searchable indexes online. FamilySearch is a free service of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Celebrating Native American history and culture

Explore the rich tapestry of Native American history and culture by visiting these four museums and living history sites.

Teepees, Totem Poles, Tribal Music

On a quiet Sunday morning, the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, exudes a feeling of reverence. Perhaps it's the tribal music playing softly in the background, or the filtered light. As we venture forth, there’s a sense that the past is this mystery to explore—and respect.

My young daughter whispers excitedly and pulls me along. She’s attracted to the dioramas of long houses, round houses, pueblos, teepees, and igloos. These dwellings are unique but somehow similar to having split levels, colonials, and capes populating our town. A few of the diorama children are mostly naked, which reminds her of Mowgli from The Jungle Book. She stops in front of the life-size powwow dancers, a Sioux man and a Kiowa woman, admiring their colorful outfits and ornate jewelry.

We step deeper into the recesses of one room and, suddenly, the massive totem poles light up on automatic light sensors. My daughter hides behind me, momentarily frightened by the carved wooden faces from British Columbia.

Meeting a Native

Following the trail at Plimoth Plantation in the South Shore town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, we search for the Wampanoag Homesite. At a clearing, a cooking fire crackles near a traditional wetu (house). A man dressed in 17th-century deerskin clothing uses fire and tools to carve out the insides of a canoe. He invites us to look inside the wetu, to touch the woven bulrush mats and furs.

Unlike the Plantation's 1627 English Village, this man is not an actor re-enacting history. He's a native Wampanoag living nearby and working at Plimoth Plantation to share his experiences and his culture in this historic setting.

The Circle Quest

To the north is the unexpected treasure of the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum, 20 minutes northwest of Concord, New Hampshire. The museum is divided into galleries that showcase Native Americans of the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Plains, and the Northwest Coast. Each grouping highlights the diverse lifestyles of the tribes, from their shelters, tools, and clothing to their crafts and ceremonial artifacts. Tribes in the Northeast used birch bark containers, for example, while those in the Southwest created painted clay pots. The common threads throughout are the ways in which these people adapted to the land and respected nature.

We follow the Circle Quest, a series of clues to objects in the museum. It makes learning fun, part of a game. Outside, there’s the Medicine Woods Quest with clues to the native plants that the Indians used for food, medicine, and shelter. During the year, the museum offers special events and celebrations that include Native American craft demonstrations, traditional music, and dance performances. During the summers, the Indian Museum also has weekly camp programs for children ages 6 to 14.

Past and Present

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, is known for its maritime and East India trade collections. However, since its founding in 1799, the museum has also amassed thousands of Native American artifacts and works of art, from headdresses, beaded moccasins, spear points, and clay pipes to contemporary paintings, sculpture, and crafts. After viewing the Native American Art gallery, the Contemporary Native American Art gallery allows us to see how today's natives view the past, present, and future through their art works.

Visiting these places helps you put history and culture—and your genealogy—in perspective.

1915 Rhode Island census index available

FamilySearch is a testament to volunteers around the world working together to offer free Internet access to vital records and other genealogical records of value. The Record Search pilot site allows you to “search millions of indexed records for your ancestors. Browse through images of records waiting to be indexed. More records are being added every month.” These are the actual images of records. And it’s free.

FamilySearch published an index to the 1915 state census for Rhode Island. Currently, no images are available. The index includes the following information: name, residence, age, estimated birth year, birthplace, relationship to head of household, gender, race, father’s birthplace, mother’s birthplace, and film number, page letter, and line number. The census date was 15 April 1915. Records for Providence county, Providence enumeration districts (ED) 247-265 (Vol. 253) and 301-320 (Vol. 300) are missing.

The web site also includes U.S. federal censuses, Civil War index pension cards, World War II draft registration cards from 1942, and many international records. However, not all collections are complete. For New England, there are partial indexes for the 1855 and 1865 Massachusetts censuses and partial indexes for the Vermont Probate files 1791-1919. (Look for the percentage completed when searching a specific collection.) You can browse images from Vermont Enrolled Militia Records 1861-1867 and Vermont Land Records Early to 1900, but the name indexes are not available yet.

To help this site grow, you’re invited to help with this massive indexing program. I’ve done some census indexing for the FamilySearch site using their online data entry form. It’s actually fun and easy to do. After all, the more people who volunteer, the faster the collections go online.

Massachusetts Archives offers searchable indexes online

The Massachusetts Archives at 220 Morrissey Blvd. in Boston, holds the “official records created by Massachusetts state government.” You’ll find Massachusetts vital records 1841-1915, pre-1841 vital records, and indexes to 1916-1971 vital records; passenger lists; census schedules; military records; judicial records, including probate, naturalizations, name changes, and divorces; witch-hunt records and Lizzie Borden (1860-1927) trial documents; papers on Maine, Plymouth Colony records, and the Massachusetts Archives Collection 1630-1799, also known as the Felt Collection.

The Mass. Archives also provides online indexes to several collections that are worth checking, whether you visit the Archives in person or not.

Massachusetts Archives Collection Database (1629-1799)

Index to Passenger Manifests 1848-1891

Index to Vital Records 1841-1910 (the index often includes maiden names on later records)

Other Resources

FamilySearch has published Massachusetts birth, christening, marriage, death, and burial records online. The New England Historic Genealogical Society also offers the Massachusetts vital records (birth, marriage, death) online as part of its membership benefits.

If You Visit the Archives

If you visit the Massachusetts Archives, check out the Commonwealth Museum located in the same building as well as the John F. Kennedy Library & Museum, located across the parking lot.

A genealogist's reading list

Some books I’ve read recently have given me insight into a time and place that parallels my New England genealogy research:

• Tess Gerritsen, The Bone Garden (fiction; 1830s Boston medical school and present-day mystery; warning: graphic medical descriptions)
• Kathleen Kent, The Heretic’s Daughter (historical fiction that weaves family lore and detailed research into the story of Martha Carrier and her daughter Sarah, both accused witches in 1692; author is a descendant of Martha Carrier)
• Eve LaPlante, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall (biography; Sewall was one of the great diarists, so the author had much material to mine, as she delves into small-town Boston and its environs; author is a descendant of Samuel Sewall)
• William Martin, Harvard Yard (fiction; a mystery about a Shakespearean manuscript and the story of Harvard University from its founding to the present)
• William Martin, Back Bay (fiction; set against the changing landscape of Boston, a mystery about a lost Paul Revere tea set)
• Adele Crockett Robertson, The Orchard: A Memoir (memoir; one woman single-handedly tries to save the family farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts, during the Great Depression)
• Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (history; from how historians figured out the name of the Pilgrims’ ship to what led to King Philip’s War of 1675)

New England vital records

Where do I find birth, marriage, and death records?

Connecticut

The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records lists most recorded birth, marriage, and death records to 1850. All 55 volumes, which cover 137 towns, were published by Genealogical Publishing Co. Although some volumes are out of print, this series is available at many libraries with New England genealogy collections. The Ricker Compilation of Vital Records of Early Connecticut by Jacquelyn Ladd Ricker is a CD-ROM version, based on the Barbour Collection but including a few more resources. It is alphabetical by surname instead of town.

If you do not have access to the Barbour Collection or the Ricker Compilation, you can contact the Connecticut State Library and request its Genealogical Index Search Service. This service also covers the Bible and Family Records Index, the Hale Collection of Newspaper Marriage and Death Notices 1750-1865, the Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions, and the Church Records Index, among others.

The State Vital Records Office in the Connecticut Department of Public Health maintains a statewide registry of all births, marriages, and deaths since July 1, 1897. If you know the town where the event occurred, however, contact the town directly.

Maine

In 1892, Maine started its statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths. Records from 1892 to 1922 can be ordered from the Maine State Archives. If you visit the Maine State Archives research room in person, you can view records from 1922 to 1955 on microfilm as well.

Check the Maine searchable Marriage Index 1892-1967 and 1976-2009 online.

Check the Maine searchable Death Index 1960-2009 online.

For records from 1923 to the present, contact the Maine Vital Records office.

Massachusetts

At the turn of the 20th century, the Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 series was published. Covering most towns and cities in the Commonwealth, this collection is available at many libraries with New England genealogy collections. It’s also available online to members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

In 1841, Massachusetts started statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The Massachusetts Archives holds microfilmed copies of the 1841 to 1915 vital records. You can view an index to the 1841-1910 records online.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society offers its members online access to the statewide vital records from 1841 to 1915. Unlike the Mass. Archives search above, these are scanned copies of the actual records.

The Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records maintains birth, marriage, and death records from 1916 to the present.

New Hampshire

The New Hampshire State Library has the Sargent Name Index on microfilm that serves as an index to early town records from 1640 to the 1840s. You may find birth and marriage dates listed. Annual town reports often list vital events for the preceding year.

The NH State Archives has some marriage records.

If you know the location of the birth, marriage, or death, you can contact the town or city clerks directly. Or contact the NH Vital Records office.

Rhode Island

The Vital Records of Rhode Island 1636-1850 was compiled by James N. Arnold, starting in 1891. It contains 22 volumes.

From 1879 to 1945, the city of Providence published the Alphabetical Index of the Births, Marriages, and Deaths Recorded in Providence, Rhode Island. It contains 25 volumes.

These collections are available at many libraries with New England genealogy collections. The New England Historic Genealogical Society offers its members online access to both databases.

Birth and marriage records 100 years or older and death records 50 years or older may be obtained from the Rhode Island State Archives.

If you know the location of the birth, marriage, or death, you can contact the town or city clerks directly. Or contact the Rhode Island Department of Health.

Vermont

In 1857, Vermont started statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The Vermont State Archives and Records Administration has all vital records, except those recorded in the last five years. For records created in the last five years, contact the Vital Records office of the Vermont Department of Health.

More Resources

Many vital records have been posted online by FamilySearch or are available on microfilm that can be accessed through a local Family History Center.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society has many vital records available online and in its library in Boston. The society is especially strong in New England and New York records, but also has materials from the United States, Canada, Europe, and around the globe.

You can use credit cards to purchase vital records online using the VitalChek service. This company charges a fee on top of the regular charges, but you may be able to expedite some orders.

Important Tips

Remember, not all births, marriages, and deaths were recorded. Some were recorded and later lost.

Because of privacy issues, some vital records are not always accessible (depending on age of record and/or relationship of person requesting the record).

Sometimes it's easier and quicker to obtain records from town and city clerks rather than statewide vital records offices.

If you need the dates in order to find vital records:

Find church records that contain baptism, marriage, and burial dates. 

 
Look for town, city, or county books that may contain births, marriages, and deaths. See, for example, the History of the Town of Wolfeborough, New Hampshire by Benjamin Franklin Parker (1901).

Search for cemetery inscriptions and grave photographs online for dates, such as at Find a Grave.

Check the Social Security Death Index for birth and death dates. The Index covers most people who died from the 1950s to the present.

If you cannot obtain a death certificate, try to get an obituary. Obituaries sometimes list birth date, birth place, and/or age; parents, siblings, spouse, children, and/or grandchildren; residence; occupation; and other useful information.