Clare Past Forum

This news may have already circulated around the genealogy community although it escaped me until this weekend when I saw the link on a website. In past years, anyone needing a thorough review of Boston ship arrivals had to get to the brick-and-mortar location of the state archives, as well as the Waltham federal archives. Now the state archives has an online search engine that is quick and easy to use, for arrivals 1848 - 1891. Viewing an entire ship manifest is also easily done. Depending on volunteer labor for these transcriptions, the database is not yet complete.

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/arcsrch/ ... tents.html

There is another search engine for vital records around the state, 1841 - 1910. This (as well as the ship arrivals search engine) works with partial parts of a name, so gathering spelling variations is simple. Inputting a surname in the personal name line of a death record search will result in women having that target surname as their maiden name, along with their personal names. Location of each record is shown so that, for instance, of the 43 Talty vital records, 19 linked with the town/city of Lowell can be instantly isolated.

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/VitalRecords ... earch.aspx

Highly recommended. Hope this advances your research.

Sharon Carberry

The "five records at a time" and "no credit cards" rules seem to be modelled on the Irish "service"! But at least the prices are most reasonable by international standards.