The Massachusetts Vital Records Project

Early Massachusetts
Vital Records
1600-1849

 
These records were published in the early 1900s and are commonly referred to as the "Tan Books." They were compiled from all of the town, clerk and court records as well as private records, such as Bibles, and gravestone records that could be found at that time. They cover the time period from about 1600 to the end of 1849. (Death records, when taken from gravestones, sometimes are slightly later.)
In addition to the transcriptions, part of the project is putting images of the pages online. Where these are done, they are linked from the transcriptions. These are there for the researcher to print for documentation purposes. The transcriptions are intended to be a research aid and are not the source. Use the images for that. Where images are not yet online, they can be requested from us.
    There are two ways to search the vital records transcription:
  1. By Town, (latest update - 7/10/08) or
  2. by Surname. (latest update - 7/10/08)
You can acquire your own reprint copies of the books in hardcover or softcover. See list of books for a complete list and prices.

Do you need to look up vital records in other areas, or towns that have not yet been done here? Try The Genealogical Gleaner's Award page. They have links to many sites that are working on making vital records available to everyone. You can also try Jane Devlin's or Ray Brown's sites. They are also getting a lot of transcriptions done.

The vital records pages are still under construction and will be for quite a long time. The length of time will be determined by how much time and money I can devote and how many volunteers help in doing this work.





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Vital Records Project
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ALL pages copyrighted by John Slaughter and Jodi Salerno. They are free to reproduce and distribute but may not be used for any type of commercial purposes.
All images, except those with copyrights on them due to recent publication, are in the public domain and can not be copyrighted.

Copyright ©2005-'08
The Massachusetts
Vital Records Project>