Genealogy/ History
Helpful Links to Genealogy Resources
Research Guide
Resources for researching your ancestors and your family history.
Databases
Contains many databases of public records and other online reference material to aid
those researching genealogical information in the New England region.
It has coverage of the United States and the United Kingdom, including census, vital,
church, court, and immigration records, as well as record collections from Canada,
Europe, Australia and other areas of the world! This collection, with thousands of
databases and billions of indexed names, is essential to having a broad genealogy
collection.
- Dictionary of American Family Names (Print Publication in Library Reference)
When it was compiled in 2003, most of the names looked up were present, so this three-
volume dictionary cannot be far off its claim to contain information on eighty-five
percent of American surnames. Entries provide frequency of occurrence in the
population, an explanation or definition of the name, language of origin, original
spelling, region, typology.
Explore your family history with the premier collection of U.S. obituaries and death notices for in-depth genealogical research from 1704 - today. HeritageHub helps you easily identify relatives, uncover new information and potentially unknonw family members. Includes deep coverage from all 50 states, hard-to-find content from the mid 1900's and origional obituary images. Access is available 24/7.
Outside Trusted Websites
- CastleGarden- A free database of information on 11 million immigrants who made their way through Manhattan's Castle Garden immigration station between 1820 and 1892. More than 100 million Americans can trace their ancestors to this early immigration period.
- The US Census Access demographic, economic and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Explore census data with visualizations and view tutorials. https://www.census.gov
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Historical Census Data Find the historical Census data for 1940 and 1950. You can look for the 1940s here and 1950's here. Other decades can be found here: Other Decades.
- Chronicling America- Historic American Newspapers Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S.. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
- Cyndi's List- A portal to contains roughly 332,000 links to genealogy resources in more than 200 categories.
- Digital Commonwealth - Massahusetts Collections Online Digitized photographs, manuscripts, books and other material of local and historical interest from the South Hadley Public Library and other libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies in Massachusetts.
- Ellis Island -The Statue of Liberty Foundation - Passenger Records. Given passenger name, date of arrival, ship of travel, and age on arrival. You can do name searches for "sounds like" names. Original Manifests - Showing passenger names and other information.
- FamilySearch.org- A website containing over five billion searchable records from dozens of countries. Access is free. FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organization in the world. While the site is free, you need to sign in with your email address and create a password.
- Findagrave - Find the graves of ancestors, create virtual memorials or add photos, virtual flowers and a note to a loved one's memorial. Search or browse cemeteries and grave records for every-day and famous people from around the world.
- Genealogy Bank Climb beyond the names and dates on your family tree to the recorded details of their daily lives. Find the facts in over 3,600 fragile, rare newspapers, books and documents.
- Internet Archive - Internet Archive has made finding family history records simple by providing a specific portal dedicated to genealogy. At the time of writing, this free resource contained 129,580 items of valuable genealogical information and it is continually growing. Better yet, the available documents are taken from a wide array of sources, including texts uploaded from places such as Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, the Boston Public Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Leo Baeck Institute’s archives of German-speaking Jews and many more.
- Linkpendium - A 10,000,000+ resource directory to everything on the Web about families worldwide and genealogically-relevant information bout U.S. States and counties. It covers free and subscription sites, with a strong emphesis upon free resources provided by libraries, governement agencies, genealogical and historical societies, and individuals.
- Massachusetts Historical Society - Highlights the history and families of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- Newspaper Obituaries - Obituarieshelp.org - An informative website designed to offer resources for obituaries, funerals and obituary research.
- Relationship Calculator - From SteveMorse.org, assists in determining the names of complicated familial relationships.
- RootsWeb.com - The WorldConnect Project allows users to upload, modify, link, and display their family trees as a means to share their genealogy with other researchers.
- Ship Information - including photographs of more than 900 passenger ships. You can keep copies of the passenger records, manifests, and ship images in Your Profile, which you can open by registering for free on the website.
- USGenWeb - Volunteer website with loads of information for each state and county.