Account Books
Account books are business records that contain the
names of customers, dates of transaction, list of goods or services purchased,
payment amount, and, in many cases, method of payment (items were often paid for
by bartering goods or services). Although some of our account books have no
indication of the merchant's name or the location of their business, many others
do have this valuable information specifically written in or on the book.
Knowing the location is important because these records can be used as evidence
that the customer or merchant was living in a particular town during a
particular year. An entry in an account book may also be the only record that
exists for an individual, especially in areas where the vital statistics were
either lost or poorly recorded. Thus, seventeenth and eighteenth century account
books are particularly valuable since they can provide information where the
vital records are lacking.
Every now and then, an account book will include non-business information
such as Samuel Sewall's "account of books lent" (Mss 514) or the register
of births and deaths for the John and Ruth (Hale) Pearson family of Rowley,
Massachusetts included in John Pearson's account book of 1736-1740 (Mss C
4963). An account book of Jason Newell includes a record of tuition for a
Cumberland, Rhode Island school, circa 1811 (Mss C 4830). NEHGS also
collects account books of corporate entities, such as Colonel William Bond's
record for the 25th Continental Regiment (Mss C 4883). This account book
lists the soldiers in the regiment and notes whether they have firearms, a
bayonet, a gun mark, and a gun number. It also contains information concerning
the pay of some officers. Was your ancestor a subscriber who donated money to
fund the construction of the frigate USS Boston during 1798 and 1799? Did your
ancestor purchase goods from Samuel Townsend, a merchant in Oyster Bay, New
York, circa 1739-1775? Account books at NEHGS will provide the answer!
Bible Records
Bible records contain vital statistic information
recorded at the same time or shortly after the actual birth, marriage, or death.
As a result, this kind of manuscript can assist researchers by filling in gaps
within the published vital records. This is why genealogists seek the title page
along with the bible record - the date of publication allows the researcher to
determine how close to the actual events the entries were written (with the
assumption that contemporary accounts should be more accurate). Since families
often took these heirlooms with them whenever they moved, bible records can
sometimes help to locate relatives who "disappear." A bible record may also be
accompanied by an assortment of items of interest to genealogists including
photographs, obituaries, bookmarks, marriage certificates, report cards,
handwritten genealogies, wills, etc. NEHGS has recently published transcriptions
of a large portion of bible records in our collection on a CD-ROM titled
Bible Records from the manuscript collections of the New England Historic
Genealogical Society. Linda Rupnow McGuire discusses this exciting release
in detail in the Holiday 2001 edition of New England Ancestors.
Church and Town Records
Church and town records are often grouped
together since they both contain vital statistic information. NEHGS has a very
large collection of unpublished transcribed tombstone inscriptions from town
cemeteries, family burial grounds, and various churches. These transcriptions
were often done for the benefit of the entire community. In addition, our
collection includes original and transcribed copies of church registers, which
list baptisms (and sometimes the date of birth), marriages, deaths, and, more
importantly, admissions. An admission record may reveal the first concrete date
for an individual living in a community. Besides the vital records found in
transcribed town record books, manuscript town records include items such as
handwritten copies of local censuses or tax records, which are also valuable
when figuring out who lived in a particular community during a specific year.
Information from both town and church records forms a major part of the source
material collected by Clarence Bowen for his book, The History of Woodstock,
Connecticut (Plimpton Press, 1926-43), an example of a manuscript collection
that focuses on the history of a specific town. Since copying errors and
omissions do occur in published vital records, histories, and of course,
genealogies, it is important to access the original record or an author's notes
to verify whether questionable information was printed correctly. Additionally,
a researcher's papers often contain more information than what ends up in their
published works.
Correspondence
Correspondence can sometimes provide as much
genealogical and historical information as a diary. Of course, many factors
influence how much information can be gleaned from any particular collection of
correspondence, including general subject matter (personal, business, military,
etc.), how often the letters were written, number of authors, and how much
detail is provided. Genealogical correspondence may consist of letters written
between a genealogist and archivists, curators, town clerks, other genealogists,
and/or individuals researching the same surname. The value of genealogical
letters should be evident: if someone has already done the work, so much the
better, right? At least as long as you credit their work and check their
citations. In addition, previous researchers may have had access to sources and
repositories that you didn't consider and you may also find additions or
corrections to published works.
Personal letters written between family members contain descriptions of their
lives in their own words. Family members often discussed the births, marriages,
and deaths of family members, friends, and others in their town. Although
business letters usually lack vital statistic information often found in
genealogical and personal correspondence, they are nevertheless valuable to
genealogists since they document a major facet of a person's life. At the very
least, the letterheads used by our ancestors on their business letters were
often visually interesting and thus could serve not only as an example of the
kind of work they did, but also as an interesting image to use in a genealogy.
Diaries and Journals
Diaries and journals are like time machines
that remind us what life was like before such modern conveniences as computers,
television, radio, automobiles, electricity and the like. They are perfect
examples of a manuscript's ability to provide insight into the common day-to-day
experiences of our ancestors that is so valuable for historians and
genealogists. The genealogist's ideal situation would be a firsthand account by
an ancestor in which the diary records not only their activities (business,
membership in organizations, offices held, leisure and trips) but their emotions
as well. These personal insights, which may include reactions to local and
national events, can provide us with a window into the author's life. You will
also want to check for diaries written by people living in the same area as your
ancestor, as they might contain secondhand accounts concerning the ancestor. For
more information and examples on the wealth of information diaries can provide,
read Ralph Crandall's article "Diaries and Journals: An Often Neglected
Genealogical Resource" (New
England Ancestors, Summer 2000). Researcher should also peruse our
online guide to the diaries in the NEHGS Special Collections Department.
Family Registers
Family registers compile birth, marriage, and
death information pertaining to a particular family or families, usually entered
by family members themselves. These records may be handwritten notes, a
hand-drawn and colored register like a fraktur, written entries added to a
preprinted form (such as those by Currier and Ives), or a printed broadside.
Besides the vital statistic information these manuscripts provide, family
registers sometimes provide interesting details into the cause of death of a
family member, childhood illnesses, and even dowry information. These documents
often contain examples of handwriting practice and favorite poems or psalms.
Some have an aesthetic quality to them, as the colorful Isaac Ketcham family
register depicted on the cover of the Winter 2001 edition of New England
Ancestors vividly demonstrates. Many aspects of these records, including
their wonderful folk art qualities, will be covered in a scholarly monograph
that will be printed early next year called The Art of Family: Genealogical
Artifacts in New England (NEHGS, 2001), edited by D. Brenton
Simons and Peter Benes. This book will contain numerous illustrations of family
registers from the manuscripts holdings of NEHGS as well as examples from the
American Antiquarian Society, the Society for the Preservation of New England
Antiquities, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, and private
collections throughout the United States.
Genealogies
NEHGS has one of the premier collections of
genealogical manuscripts in the country, and not surprisingly, they comprise the
bulk of our manuscript collection. I have recently cataloged some typescript
biographies (a genealogy of one?) complete with some tipped-in photographs,
which are nice despite the difficult preservation issues they create. What a
great legacy for the future to record not just when and where you were born but
also a description of your education, places of employment, pets, the cars
you've owned, memberships, where you've lived, and other details of your life
that only you and your immediate family would know! Thankfully, even when the
majority of people go through life as mere players who act their part and then
are heard no more, genealogists have continued to make the effort to document
members of their families in compiled genealogies. Although early handwritten
genealogies like the Parson genealogy of 1743 are valuable since the author may
have had access to records that might have been lost over time, genealogists
must realize that today's standards of documentation and citation weren't
established at that time. If you find that a manuscript genealogy contains dates
that are questionable, keep in mind that you may also find valuable biographical
data not available elsewhere.
You never know what you will find when you ask to view a particular
manuscript genealogy in the collection. You may find a modest handwritten record
like the forty page Parsons genealogy or you might lose yourself in an extensive
collection of notes, charts, indexes, and source citations as you face the
prospect of 159 boxes of John Insley Coddington Papers before you! How and why
manuscript collections are created is no mystery; researchers accumulate a large
amount of paperwork in their quest for genealogical information. This includes
correspondence, notes taken from published genealogies and histories, extracts,
abstracts, transcriptions of government records, and much more. The compilers of
the papers in our collection may also have had possession of original documents
such as letters written by their ancestors, a diary, wills, deeds, photographs,
or a family bible. If it was the intention of the genealogist to publish a book,
there may be even more records - drafts, annotated copies, and so on. All of
these unpublished documents a genealogist compiles as a by-product of their
research are manuscripts.
Graphics
The graphics in our collection include photographs,
silhouettes, and portraits. Although NEHGS focuses on acquiring photographs such
as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and albumen prints, researchers will
also find more modern prints. Photographs at NEHGS are scattered throughout our
collections. The "scope note" (the brief description of the manuscript provided
in the catalog record) and subject headings in a catalog record will indicate
when a collection includes photographs or any other graphics. The finding aids
(guides to the intellectual and physical arrangement of larger collections)
found on each library floor include a list of photographs typically separated
into portraits and landscapes. The lists are then arranged alphabetically by
surname or place. Several collections of family papers at NEHGS include
silhouettes, hand painted miniature portraits, or pen and ink sketches. NEHGS
also keeps a few collections comprised entirely of photographs such as the
Harriet Merryfield Forbes Collection of New England Gravestones. Patrons can
even search in our library catalogs for the large painted portraits in the
Society's fine art collection. For more information on other resources for
family portraits see D. Brenton Simons' article "Finding Family Portraits: A
Bibliography of Selected Sources" (New England Ancestors,
Holiday 2000) and Maureen A. Taylor's "Photographs in Your Family History"
(New England Ancestors, Holiday 2001).
Four Cornerstones of the NEHGS Manuscript Collection
Since a member
of the Society recently expressed surprise that NEHGS would be interested in
their research, it should be noted that our members donate approximately 70 to
80% of the material in our collection. This material falls into four general
types: those that focus on a specific surname, on a specific geographical area,
a specific ethnic group, or client research by a professional genealogist. Our
collection also includes the records and papers of several family associations.
Since many of our patrons are primarily concerned with gathering information on
a specific family line, those collections that focus on an entire family are
valuable because they meet the needs of multiple patrons. Sometimes an author
will focus on a specific town including the families that lived there, as Fred
Crowell did for his articles on New Englanders in Nova Scotia, for which we have
the source material. Some genealogists are drawn instead to focus on a specific
ethnic group. Rudi Ottery, for instance, compiled a large group of material on
the Brotherton Indian tribe. The final type of manuscript collection found at
NEHGS are the papers of genealogists hired to do research for clients. The
unifying element of such collections is the genealogist, who often specializes
in a particular area while their clients' needs vary greatly. Researchers will
find more examples of the manuscript collections held by NEHGS by consulting our
sample list of holdings . You may also search the manuscript collection by
subject, author, or title.
It is difficult to account for every single kind of manuscript that NEHGS
has acquired over the past 156 years in such a short article. In addition to the
examples outlined above, our collection also includes documents such as military
commissions, wills, deeds, estate inventories, sermons, and much, much more. It
is also difficult to account for every possible way manuscripts may be used to
further your research. In fact, one of the challenges archivists face is that
researchers are constantly using manuscripts in new ways; thus, our cataloging
of manuscripts is always evolving to incorporate new research interests and
methods. Yet, hopefully, even this short sampling of manuscript types illustrate
why they are an important resource for genealogists. Ultimately, because of
their contemporary recordings of vital statistic and biographical information,
manuscripts are the primary source material that genealogists use to create and
enhance the story of their family.