NEHGS has a wealth of on-site materials in our Boston Library. We encourage you to talk with our expert staff during your visit to make sure you’re accessing all the available genealogical resources we have to offer. These include:
Published Genealogies
30,000 titles covering families in America, Canada, Europe, and around the world.
Local Histories and Records
40,000 state, county, and town histories and record collections covering all U.S. states and eastern Canadian provinces and a wide array of ethnic groups.
Genealogical Journals and Other Periodicals
4,500 titles, including core journals such as The American Genealogist and The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, as well as 700 other current journals, magazines, and newsletters from around the world, focusing on surnames, geographic areas, or general genealogy topics.
Reference Works
Including The Great Migration, New England Marriages to 1700, and Revolutionary War pension abstracts.
Rare Books
12,000 rare genealogies (many with author annotations), church records, local and military histories, heraldic works, and atlases.
Records on Microform
New England: vital records, census records, court records, city directories, newspapers, and pre-1906 naturalizations.
Canadian: records for Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, including vital records, census records to 1901, and parish registers.
Irish: including Griffiths Valuation, Tithe Applotment Books, and Ordnance Survey maps.
Portuguese/Azorean: Catholic parish registers and civil records of the Azores islands of Portugal, consisting of birth, baptism, marriage, and death records from the 16th-19th centuries.
Scottish: including parish register index.
English: including city directories and parish registers.
Be sure to learn more about our R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, which includes more than 28 million original objects, artifacts, documents, family papers, diaries, journals, family Bibles, photographs, and other items dating back more four hundred years.