Massachusetts Vital Records Project FAQ's

Q: Where can I obtain a copy of the original birth, marriage or death record I find transcribed on your site?
A: Town clerk - not Jodi or John. See List of MA Town Clerks offices.

What is the level of credibility of these records?
A. These records are considered secondary sources and are, on the whole, very reliable. Records that indicate they came from sources such as church records, gravestones, court records, etc. should be considered tertiary records. Births taken from headstones are suspect unless an age is given and shows an infant death. There is no way of knowing just from the gravestone if the person was born in the town where buried.

Are there other records to be found?
A. As far as the vital records as kept by the town clerks, no. The people who collected all of the records and put them together in this series of books did an extraordinarily good job. The chances of finding something missed is virtually nil.

Q: I am looking for an ancestor that I have in my files saying was born in a specific town but their name is not listed on your site. Are you missing some of the vital records from any of the towns?
A: Transcriptions on this web site are taken from the tan books, a series of published vital records made in the early 20th century. Each town that published records used all available resources, town records, church records, gravestone inscriptions, etc. Various Town Clerks have stated that there are few, if any, records missing from the published books.

Q: I found a record online which I think has the wrong date or name, how do I get this fixed?
A: Write us and give us the town name, record type and page. We will compare the transcription to the actual page image and make any necessary corrections.

Q: I found an ancestor in your transcriptions and would like to add it to my GEDCOM. How do I properly document the record?
A: Be sure to click on the page image link and print out the page for your documentation. Print out a copy of the title page of the book (title pages are linked from the main town page) and enter the book, volume and page number in your GEDCOM.

Q: What do I do if I am getting a page missing error message.
A: Click the link provided on the error page and request a copy of the page image. Be sure to include the county, town, record type and page number. Adding the surname being researched is helpful.

Q: Why are only partial records online for a town?
A: Transcriptions take a while to complete. Updates are made periodically, but once a town has been started, our best effort is made to have the enrire town completed within a reasonable period of time.

Q: The town I am interested in is paritally done. Is there a way to be notified when a town is updated or completed?
A: We have a mailing list set up for information regarding this project and we post updates to the list when they are made. The list can be used for discussion of all MA vital records. To subscribe to list mode or digest mode.

Q: How come there are page images for a certain town, but no transcriptions available?
A: We try to get the images online when we put the starter pages online. This allows researchers to check the records even though they're not yet transcribed.

Q: What does it mean when a town is listed, but it is not linked to anything?
A: Four possibilities:

We haven't put the starter pages together, yet,
The town was incorporated after 1850 and has no published records,
The published records were done after about 1940 and are under copyright and we haven't been able to get permission to put them online
Worst case, there were no published records for that town. The four western counties of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire have a number of towns in this category.

Q: Why are there no records for Suffolk County online?
A: Suffolk county means mainly Boston. It is probably the worst records of all that were done. However, they will be done.

Q: What can I do to help out on this project?
A: Write to Jodi. She's the one in charge of that stuff.

Q: I have proof that one of the records in the tan series is wrong. Why should we be leaving incorrect information on this web site?
A: We will add in additional information to the transcriptions - in certain cases - If you think you have found such a correction, please email us and provide us with some documentation for us to consider making such an adjustment to the files. We will review the infomation and let you know if we think it warrants a new notation. The records do have errors in them, but the idea of the project is to keep the original tan series in tact and let you, the researcher, do the necessary work to find errors and make adjustments in your own research. blah blah blah