20th Century Massachusetts Vital Record Indexes New on Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com has added three new record Indexes for 20th century Massachusetts Vital Records today - they include:

1)  Massachusetts Birth Index, 1901-1960, and 1967-1970

I input Seaver as an exact surname on the search field, and received 384 matches:

I clicked on one of the entries and saw:

The results are an index, alphabetical by surname, in five-year intervals (except for the Corrections pages), that provide a name, town, year, volume and page.  The volumes and pages refer to records in Massachusetts Vital Records books, submitted by the towns each year to the Massachusetts State Archives (until 1920) and in the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services, Registry of Vital Records (1921 to present).

2)  Massachusetts, Death Index, 1901-1980

I input Seaver as a Last Name in the search field, and received 525 matches:

I clicked on one of the matches and saw:

The results are an index, alphabetical by surname, in five-year intervals (except for the Corrections pages), that provide a name, town, year, volume and page.  The volumes and pages refer to records in Massachusetts Vital Records books, submitted by the towns each year to the Massachusetts State Archives (until 1920) and in the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services, Registry of Vital Records (1921 to present).

3)  Massachusetts, Marriage Index, 1901-1955, and 1966-1970

I input Seaver as a Last Name in the Search box and received 386 matches:

I clicked on one of the matches for Ernest Leroy Seaver, and saw the Record Summary for him:

The record summary provides only the name, marriage year, marriage place, volume number and page number, and a link to the original image.  The image looks like:

The results are an index, alphabetical by surname, in five-year intervals (except for the Corrections pages), that provide a name, town, year, volume and page.  The volumes and pages refer to records in Massachusetts Vital Records books, submitted by the towns each year to the Massachusetts State Archives (until 1920) and in the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services, Registry of Vital Records (1921 to present).

Note that there are no spouses listed.

However, the Record Summary page provides a way to narrow the search a bit:  there is a link on the Record Summary page to "Search for other records listed with this location, year, volume and page."  I clicked on that link for Ernest Leroy Seaver and saw:

This is a list of all of the persons on the Volume and Page number for the specific town in the specific year.  However, they are listed alphabetically rather than in the as-listed and indexed order. If they were in the as-listed and indexed order, then the spouse's name could be determined from the adjacent name.

This index can narrow the search to fewer names for the spouse.  Perhaps another record, like a U.S. Census record, a City Directory record, or a newspaper article will provide the spouse's first name, and the spouse's last name can be determined from this index.

4)  These three Massachusetts Vital Records indexes are very useful as "finding aids."  They will tell the user when and where their ancestor or target person was born, married or died, but they don't provide the event dates, nor the parents names for births and deaths, or spouse's name, ages and birthplaces for marriages.

Images for some of the town records may be in the Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 database on Ancestry.com, but that database does not include every town through 1988.

Images for Massachusetts town vital records are available on www.AmericanAncestors.org through 1915, and they are adding records up to 1920.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/09/20th-century-massachusetts-vital-record.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver