Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Journals at the NEHGS American Ancestors site

I am a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, even though I am 2,500 miles away.  Why?  Because it has two excellent periodicals (the American Ancestors magazine and the quarterly New England Historical and Genealogical Register) and a website with many searchable databases, including runs of several historic genealogical journals.  You do have to be an NEHGS member in order to access most of the databases and the periodicals.

The historical genealogical journals available at the www.AmericanAncestors.org site include:

*  New England Historical and Genealogical Register:  Volumes 1 to 166 (1847 to present)

*  The American Genealogist:  Volumes 9 to 63 (1932 to 1988)

*  New York Genealogical and Biographical Record:  Volumes 1 to 15 (1870 to 1884)

*  The Mayflower Descendant: Volumes 1 to 25 (1899 to 1923)

*  The Connecticut Nutmegger:  Volumes 1 to 43 (1968 to 2010)

*  The Essex Genealogist: Volumes 1 to 15 (1981-1995)

*  New Netherlands Connections: Volumes 1 to 15 (1996-2010)

*  Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine:  Volumes 1 to 20 (1936-1955)

*  The Virginia Genealogist: Volumes 1 to 49 (1957 to 2005)

*  The Essex Antiquarian: Volumes 1 to 13 (1891-1903)

Frankly, this collection is like having a small periodical library in my genealogy cave!  I can search these journals, or browse them issue by issue, save pages, print out pages, etc.

I currently receive the American Ancestors magazine by postal mail, and access the website to download and save the New England Historical and Genealogical Register issues as a PDF file.  I then put the complete issue on Dropbox so that I can access the issues with my iPhone, Galaxy tablet and laptop computer.

If you have New England and New York ancestry, then an NEHGS subscription is necessary to do extensive online research.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/03/journals-at-nehgs-american-ancestors.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When I went to Family History Day in Tarrytown this month, NEHGS's Webmaster gave us this little hint: when they release a new database, it is available FREE for 30 days!