Our Massachusetts vital records to 1850 collection includes 2,066,438 records, each with images from the printed vital record book. Original family documents are held by the Massachusetts town or city.
The Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies started to collect these records in a central location well before the state register, however the collection died out by the mid-1600s.
The largest number of vital records books were published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, a genealogical society that has preserved family history documents for more than 165 years.
These birth, marriage and death records collection includes many early Massachusetts figures from the founding of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies to the American Revolution. Massachusetts vital records are some of the most complete and organized family history indexes in the nation having duplicated town and city ancestry records for a centrally located state collection.