Massachusetts Vital Records Project links

Question

I just had it pointed out to me that the Massachusetts Vital Records Project website (ma-vitalrecords.org), and all of its pages and links are gone and now need to be fixed.  I guess I should have seen this coming, I could tell that the site was probably run by a single person, but I hoped for the best and added hundreds of sources and links based on the site.  So I guess I have a new project!  I get to find all of the profiles that I added those sources to, find an updated/current source/link to replace it (probably on FamilySearch) and update the source/link.  Wish me luck!  Also wondering if there's a way to add broken links to this site in particular to the Data Doctors project.  Not sure if Ales can be tagged on here, but I'm going to tag the project to see if someone there might help me in this project.

Comments

Here’s a good prior discussion with links to other discussions about this:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1634509/error-966-recheck-ma-vitalrecords-org

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Thanks Barry, I guess I'm a little late to this, but I'm finding solutions already.

Answer 1

A free space page created by Joe Cochoit may help you with finding appropriate replacements. Everything from MA-VitalRecords came straight from the "tan books." Most are available freely on Archive.org.

Massachusetts VR to 1850

Comments

That's an amazing page, but not yet complete.  I started to edit it to add more, but it's not an easy page to edit.

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Jilliane

If you have links to include, perhaps add in a comment, that will allow us to see them. Joe can then update the page to include them.

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There's also the Mass. Gov. page with links on a pdf file.

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Along the way I've found this freespace page that Rick Pierpont manages and I've found it very usable so far.  Doesn't have the town listed, but rather the County, so I probably will end up using both:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Sources-Massachusetts

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Thank you Bobbie for mentioning this site.  After trying out both, I have settled on using Joe's FreeSpace page and it has been a godsend.

Answer 2

I used the MA Vital Records site a lot - most of my ancestors have been in Massachusetts/Maine in that time frame. I am going to miss the ability to click easily from birth to marriage to death records and especially to compare records from different towns without searching for another book. Thanks be that Sourcer can build citations from archive.com pages!
I'll be working through my watchlist to update broken sources. I know I doubled up on some profiles, giving links to the Tan Books (archive.org or ancestry.com) besides those from this project.

Comments

Please add the Archive.org links as that's a freely available site. Add the Ancestry or AmericanAncestors sites, too, if desired, but the Archive site doesn't require a subscription.

Answer 3

Might the old original site be available on the Way Back machine?

Comments

From what I've seen, some of the pages were archived, some were not. My personal thought is to use a link to the actual books such as those on Archive.

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Some of the site extracted information from the pages. Other parts just linked to an image of the page.  From what I've seen the images are not available in the WayBackMachine archives.

Answer 4

Check out my space page, Source References (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Source_References) for links to Massachusetts, and others, records. Maybe not as well organized as Joe’s, but it has some he hasn’t yet added to his collection.

Answer 5

I think the most thorough repository of this information is the AmericanAncestors database "Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1620-1850"  This is one of their databases that is free, and I don't think it even requires registration as a guest member.  It's searchable and includes some of the books not available elsewhere on the web. 

There is a citation for the Database available, although its probably preferable to consult the pdf that is provided on every page that gives the specific book citation. See  Source Citation PDF  I think that is missing a few of the newer publications, but it has most of them.

Answer 6

As an update, I have spent the last month-and-a-half going back through my contributions, replacing all the links to MA-VitalRecords with links to Archive.org resources or when those weren't available Hathi Trust links.  I started with the most recent, and have gotten all the way back to the middle of 2017.  Perhaps not the genealogy kick that I thought would be my next, but still rewarding in its own way.  Getting lots of thank yous, so that's a nice little side bonus.

Comments

Thanks for the "star", Kyle, but Joe should get the real credit.

More importantly: thank you for working on the updates to links for the MA-Vital breaks. It helps all of us.