by Gary Boyd Roberts, November 1995
There are now three massive databases of New England surnames. The first is the International Genealogical Index (IGI) of the Mormon Church, available at the family history centers and at Clayton Library on CD ROM. The second is The American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI), 180 volumes covering surnames beginning with the letters A-Tr. The third is the newly published index to volumes 51-148 (1897-1994) of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, the oldest continually published genealogical journal in the world.
Probably each of those databases contains between one and two million New England names. Skillful use of all three may well unravel 10 percent or more of your hardest problems concerning New England-derived ancestors. These problems are those that remain after you have combed all pertinent printed genealogies, all pertinent town histories, and certainly C. A. Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 and its two supplements by Melinde Sanborn. The prime trick for quick use of AGBI and the Register index is to check for women under three names (many Mary Smiths, but only one or two Mary Jones Smiths or Mary Smith Joneses). AGBI primarily indexes the 1790 census, many printed Revolutionary muster rolls, and most importantly, the genealogical columns of The Boston Transcript, which were superb during the 1920s.
The new Register index should be used alongside the old one, which indexes volumes 1-50 and, unfortunately, does not index women under three or more names. This practice began at about volume 85 but was not always consistently followed. For many persons treated in the Register, the cited article will list spouses, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and most contemporary agnate kin. Such coverage occurs in a five-generation genealogy, which often ends a generation before the Revolution. Many articles also cover the English origins of New England immigrants. Of the 20,000 to 25,000 New England settlers from 1620 to 1642 (about 5,000 sires with the remainder wives, children, bachelors, spinsters, and childless couples), we now know the origins of probably 40 percent or more. These data can be found in H. F. Waters’ Genealogical Gleanings in England, the six-volume set of English Origins of New England Families from the NEHG Register, The Great Migration Begins, and my own 1993 compendium, The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States.
With these new books covering English origins of Great Migration colonists, with the five-generation Register articles now superbly indexed, and with AGBI and the IGI, Clayton Library researchers will frequently be able to trace ten or more New England and English generations of ancestry in an hour or less. Recent sources for the century of lost pioneers (1750-1850) include the three-volume D.A.R. Patriot Index, Virgil D. White’s superb three-volume set of Revolutionary Pension Abstracts, and the printed census indexes for 1790-1850/1860.
Furthermore, researchers can look forward to publication of the remainder of the Great Migration Study Project, the completion of AGBI (Tr-Z), more volumes of New England vital records, more silver volumes covering five generations of Mayflower descendants, more superb English origins monographs by Douglas Richardson, John Plummer, J. B. Threlfall, Myrtle S. Hyde, and others, my continued work on area immigrants of royal descent, and the usual number of new genealogies and (non-vital) records sources. These recent publications are indeed a cornucopia, and we have covered only works on the colonial population in this article.
On a personal note, I am usually in Houston during the Christmas holidays and visit Clayton Library. I am ready to help patrons who might like to ask questions about New England research or my various books and articles. All of the works mentioned above are at Clayton Library. During high school in the early 1960s, I “cut my genealogical teeth” on the collection when it was downtown. I have thus watched its massive growth with keen interest and find that Clayton has one of the best New England collections in the South. Conversely, I feel that the NEHGS library in Boston has the largest southern collection north of New York City. Given New England’s prominence in the Republic of Texas, the cross-fertilization between our genealogical communities and collections should not be a surprise.
References: (Those shown with call numbers are available at the Clayton Library.)