Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850

please note that we are currently experiencing problem with this database, limiting your search by town; we hope to have this problem corrected shortly and apologize for the interruption in your research.

At the turn of the twentieth century NEHGS was instrumental in introducing and passing legislation to appropriate funds to purchase books of vital statistics to the year 1850 for the 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Not all Massachusetts towns are included in this database.  For more information about Massachusetts towns and counties and to see which towns are in database see our Massachusetts Town Guides here.  You can choose to search the entire database, or individual localities. Clicking on the name of the town on the search results page will give you details about the original publication date and source citations for that town.

Massachusetts VR to 1850 database enhancement project:

In January, 2007, NEHGS began a program to add the images of the original pages of the VR books to the search results.  This process also involves correcting any transcription errors discovered since the material was originally digitized.  The work of adding images and corrections will continue until all VR's have been revisited.  Those records that have page images available will have the clickable word 'Image' in the Image column of the search results page.  As towns are enhanced and added to the database, they will be announced in the weekly eNews newsletter.

To locate additional genealogy and local history resources, search our library catalog.