Thursday 8 August 2019

NEHGS expands Historic Catholic Records Online project

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) has announced the start of Phase 2 of its Historic Catholic Records Online project.

Phase 1, launched in early 2017, saw two collections of Catholic records digitised and uploaded to the Society's AmericanAncestors.com database, both from the RC Archdiocese of Boston, and therefore of obvious genealogical potential to those of Irish heritage on both sides of the pond. In summary, the collections are:
The project's logo includes a photo of a
stained glass window at the Cathedral of the
Holy Cross in Boston,MA portraying St Brigid

Phase 2 will see a further 20 years added to the time period of the project, with sacramental register records from 1901 to 1920 being digitized and indexed.

In addition to updating many parishes already included in the project, more than 60 'new' parishes from Greater Boston – all established after 1900 – will join.

To coincide with the announcment of Phase 2, some 72 new volumes covering 17 parishes were added to the image-only database, now renamed Massachusetts: (Image-Only) Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920. Some 39 of these volumes are top-ups to existing parishes on the site while 33 are brand-new volumes.

The expansion of the project is expected to double the original 11 million names of parishioners to about 21 million names when completed.

There's a useful how-to video here to help you navigate the two databases to find what you need.