I began answering genealogical questions about twenty years ago. Since then advancing age, medical problems, and dealing with many inquiries best characterized as "clueless" have made me short-tempered, surly, and generally a genealogical grouch. I beseech you, dear reader, to do your homework before submitting a query through one of my sites or sending me email containing one of your genealogical problems.

     You have likely come to view this page by way of one of my USGenWeb city, town or county sites. As of the day that I am writing this (27-Apr-2010) there are twenty-six of those (if you read this much later than that date there may be more of them). You may have gotten here from one of my other genealogical sites, such as the Bristol Cemeteries Database Project. All of the sites which are part of my domain (including several sites which I host for other people) can be reached through the top page of my domain, The Plymouth Colony Pages.

     Most of the sites in my domain contain a variety of resources. Some hold very extensive and highly useful resources. Please explore a site thoroughly before emailing a query. If you are asking about, say, a Hingham family, my Hingham site contains the "History of Hingham," whose excellent and extensive genealogical registers hold almost all of the answers to the Hingham genealogical questions that have been asked of me over the years.

     Here are some other tips on how you can find sound genealogical information, as well as much more of it than I can put into a reply to a web site query or an email question —.

     First of all, please understand what constitutes genealogical evidence. An undocumented assertion on a web site is not evidence - you will never see it cited in a major genealogical journal. If you don't know what a well-documented genealogical site looks like, see my Samuel Packard pages. I will be adding a page discussing the standards of genealogical evidence, but until it is ready, see Kimberly Powell's succinct online guide Evidence or Proof?.

     Secondly, the internet can be an immensely useful tool if you use it properly. For example, the first tool in any genealogist's arsenal is the published volume of vital records, abstracted or transcribed from the records of Town and City Clerks. We call the VRs for short, and thay have been published in some form for most of the 351 cities and towns in Massachussets, and for many other localities elsewhere in New England and the United States. Massachusetts researchers are fortunate because VRs began to appear for its municipalities in the late 1800s. Volumes for about 200 of the Commonwealth's cities and towns were published in a systematic series before WWII, and are in the public domain. Almost all of those can be downloaded from free sites online, as well as being found at subscription sites such as Ancestry.com. If you live in Massachusetts, the main branch of your local library should also hold all of them, as well as more recent VR volumes which are not in the public domain and not generally available online.

     Other vital records have been published in genealogical journals such as Mayflower Descendant and The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. While you may not have access to such journals online you may find them in large libraries with major genealogical collections all over the country. For example, the North Carolina State Library in Raleigh has extensive Massachusetts genealogical resources, including the VR volumes and complete runs of MD and NEHGR.

     For an overview of what Massachusetts vital records have been published, see my Massachusetts Vital Records page. Bookmark it - it can help you in your search for free copies of VR volumes online. The first (and largest) section of that page lists the VR volumes which are almost all online. You can find them at the Internet Archive Text Archive, Google Books or the Family History Archive. The Internet Archive Text Archive is my favorite, because the scans there are generally better than those at Google or the FHA. Note, however, that some of the scans at the Text Archive are derived from Google Books (and are noted as such), so try a non-Google scan there first. To find a VR (or other) volume at the Text Archive, use their advanced search. Enter a partial title in the Title field and click the Search button to see what is available. This is where my Massachusetts Vital Records page is very useful - you must enter a valid partial title to find a volume. Most of the books in the first section of my page have titles similar to Vital Records of Abington Massachusetts to the Year 1850. If you use "vital records of abington" (without quotes) in a title search you will find it. That won't work for all towns. If you want the Hanover VRs, searching for "vital records of hanover" won't work because, as shown on my page, the title of that volume is A Copy of the Records of Births, Marriages and Deaths and of Intentions of Marriage of the Town of Hanover, Mass. 1727-1857 ... Searching for the title substring "marriage of the town of hanover" (without the quotes) will work.

     Many other types of records were published through the first third of the twentieth century and are also available online at sites such as the Text Archive. They include church records, abstracts and transcriptions of probates and deeds, and gravesone records. If you are not familiar with the published records for your area of interest, once again the internet is your friend. Many town, city and county sites in the USGenWeb Project list published genealogical works for their location. Visit the main USGenWeb page and you can navigate through their state sites to look for counties and municipalities that interest you. In addition to published records, there are town, city and county histories which include genealogical information, but the genealogical information those histories can vary greatly in their reliability.

     In conclusion, please try to be self-sufficient before asking for help. My USGenWeb city, town and county sites are excellent starting points, and can help you to find additional resources online or at a library.