Overviews

Steve Condarcure’s New England Genealogy Index – The purpose of these pages is to help beginners gather raw data for their genealogy project.  This database does NOT have any sources on the names here.  Steve guesses that 98% of the information here is accurate, but there is some that he has put here with the idea that questionable data is better than nothing.

http://newenglandgenealogy.pcplayground.com/

Ancestry.com

Great Migration Begins: Biographies of immigrants to New England, 1620-33

Gravestones

http://www.capecodgravestones.com/index.html –

Gravestone Records from the 15 Towns of Cape Cod  A major goal is to photograph and display the most interesting old gravestones in Barnstable County before they are lost to the ravages of time. A related goal is to provide reasonably complete gravestone records from the earliest in 1683 up to 1900 for all Barnstable County cemeteries. The web site is complete to 1880 for most cemeteries and many cemeteries are complete to 1900. Work continues for the time period 1880 – 1900.

http://www.findagrave.com/

People

Since the earliest days of settlement, the town clerk of the community has been responsible for vital records. He or she is usually the best person to approach for advice about how to access the records.

GenForum –  Genealogy Message Board organized by surname

PlymouthColony.net –  holds a variety of resources for those whose research involves families of New Plymouth Colony (1620-1685) and the Massachusetts counties that sprang from it – Plymouth, Barnstable and Bristol. That includes sites for Plymouth and Barnstable Counties, twenty-eight sites for cities and towns in the Old Colony, and one for Town Records of Barnstable County.  It also hosts three sites for towns in other Massachusetts counties, a set of forums for online genealogical and historical discussions, and four sites holding other genealogical resources

RootsWeb.com  –  Resources to connect people so that they can help each other and share genealogical research.

USGenWeb Project – A group of volunteers working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone.

Organization is by county and state, and this website provides you with links to all the state genealogy websites which, in turn, provide gateways to the counties. The USGenWeb Project also sponsors important Special Projects at the national level and this website provides an entry point to all of those pages, as well.

World Connect Project –  The WorldConnect Project is a set of tools, which allow users to upload, modify, link, and display their family trees as a means to share their genealogy with other researchers.  More than 640 million names on file

English Ancestors

Medieval source material on the internet: Heralds’ Visitations and the College of Arms –

At first sight, the heralds’ visitations are an ideal source of information for the medieval genealogist. The visitations produced a collection of pedigrees of families with the right to bear arms, recorded between the early 16th and the late 17th century, but in many cases extending much further back. Though they are indeed a valuable source, they must be used with great care, and confirmed from contemporary records wherever possible.

From the early 16th century to the late 17th century the heralds carried out visitations, county by county, in order to regulate the use of arms. Most counties were visited several times during this period. Those who were allowed arms had them recorded, including the quarterings to which they were entitled. Most importantly to the genealogist, supporting pedigrees were recorded. These could include, in addition to the main line of descent, offshoots giving the ancestry of wives who were heraldic heirs, in order to illustrate the route by which the quartered arms had been acquired. In these pedigrees, dates are given only occasionally, and presumably reflect the dates of documents which mention the people concerned. Often the ages of those in the final generation are given, which can allow the chronology of the later part of the pedigree to be estimated.

Sometimes the heralds also recorded some of the evidence on which the pedigree was based, such as transcripts of medieval charters, drawings of seals, coats of arms copied from churches or private houses and so on. Other information may also have been recorded at visitations, such as lists of those using arms to which they could not prove any right. This may sound too good to be true and sadly, in many cases, it is not true. While some of the heralds were pioneers in the systematic application of record evidence to genealogy, others were far less skilful and far less scrupulous.