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Decorative drawing: a busy small-town main street. Not a photograph of this place.

Massachusetts

The archive covers 14 counties in Massachusetts so far. Everything below is a work of the United States government or a book published before 1929, and every page links to the record it came from.

Research this state

This curated hub for Massachusetts brings together the page's documented record links, visible map or image evidence where published, and routes to related local records.

What is documented here?

Use the page's provenance and linked records to distinguish the source material from the site's navigation and summaries.

How should I cite it?

Open the original record, preserve its repository and identifier, then use the citation tool for this page as a path back to the source.

Where should I go next?

Follow the county or state hub for related places and records, then use the guide for a source-aware research sequence.

Massachusetts within the United States

What the archive holds in Massachusetts

RecordsCount What it is
Settlements2,210Every populated place the Geographic Names Information System records, each with the survey sheets that cover it.
Topographic sheets90,109Sheet coverage counted per settlement, 1900 to 2002.
Township histories160Complete chapters from the county histories, reproduced unedited.
Listed properties3,204On the National Register of Historic Places.
Nomination case files0The full federal document that argued each property on to the register, machine-read from the scan.
Surveyed structures0Buildings and bridges recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record, with their written histories.
Businesses in the atlases1,806Read off the printed indexes of the fire insurance atlases. These names exist nowhere else as text.
Words of narrative10,839,040Public-domain county history, published complete.

Counties

14 of 14

All 14 counties in Massachusetts. Every county below has published records and opens its own page.

Map CountySettlements ListedNarrative
Barnstable County157145147,091 words
Berkshire County15694115,152 words
Bristol County183272959,670 words
Dukes County361196,143 words
Essex County1703501,076,100 words
Franklin County1192833,480 words
Hampden County138123357,442 words
Hampshire County8732550,615 words
Middlesex County30011003,046,010 words
Nantucket County37117,013 words
Norfolk County172249813,521 words
Plymouth County302931,019,142 words
Suffolk County692061,144,386 words
Worcester County3615001,463,275 words

Read off the map

228 businesses

Every fire insurance atlas opens with a printed index naming the town's mills, tanneries and hotels by proprietor. Those names have never been text: they are ink on a scanned sheet, which is why no search engine has ever found them. We read them off the sheets and matched them across volumes, so a business surveyed four times appears once, with the years it survived and the line it was read from.

All 228 establishments named in the atlases of Middlesex County.

What happened here

Three passages from the 1835 to 1917 county histories, written while people who remembered the events were alive.

From History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 - Stoneham Town

Died Of Wounds

> Jarob Pnrker Gould, (i son of Jacob and Pbcbo C, was born >Iiiy 15, 1822, graduated at Norwicli Uuivers'ly, Virmout; was a i-ivil engineer; wns major of the 13lh Regiment XIassacluisetts Voluuteeii; afterwards colonel of the 59th Massachusetts rcginiciit ; wounded nt the battle of Petersburg, Virginia, bod B leg aniputated, and died at Pliiladelphia, July 21.

Read the rest of this passage

From History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 - Newton City

Newton

JbIj^ 1700, M. 63. Capt. Noab, of Newton, an Officer in the Expedition against Canada. Killed in battle with the Freoch and Indians July C, 1C90. M. 50, leaving t son Thomas. Ebeneser, oC Newton, died June 21, 1691. .fi. 45. ... . . J. B. Jepson, Newton Comer, rereals many gravestones whose inscriptions are no longer l^ble, and others, recalling the names which filled a laige place in the early history of the town, and Belonged to the founders of its institutions and the authors of its prosperity.

Read the rest of this passage

From History of Billerica, Massachusetts, with a Genealogical Register, published 1883 - Billerica Town

Crosby

14. Josiah, son of Josiali. 5, b. 1704, Aug. 5; m. 1729-30, Feb. 3, Elizabetli French, dau. of William, 7. She d. 1739, Nov. 27. He d. before 1743. Killed by the Indians says tradition. Ch. Josiah. b. 3730, Nov. 24. He was in the military service in 1747, on the C-onnecticut river, and narrowly escaped with his life by swimming the river from the anibusead(ยป in which French.

Read the rest of this passage

What the county wrote about itself

3,046,010 words

Between 1835 and 1917 29 county and town histories were compiled here while the settlers' children were still alive to be asked. Every town has its own chapter. It is public domain, it has never been cut into pages a search can reach, and it is reproduced here in full: who arrived first, what they built, what it cost them.

All 49 cities and towns chapters.

Places that are gone

Some of what the surveys recorded no longer exists. 3 settlements in this county are marked historical in the federal gazetteer: the post office closed, the mine worked out, the road moved. The maps that recorded them did not go anywhere.

The vanished settlements of Middlesex County.

Where to start

Middlesex County, Massachusetts 1,100 listed properties, 300 settlements and 449 topographic sheets.
Businesses in the atlases 228 establishments read off the printed index sheets.

Every settlement

299

Every named place in the county, each with the survey sheets that cover it and where it stands.

Every business named in the atlases

71

Read off the printed indexes of the fire insurance atlases. These names exist nowhere else as text.

Every listed property

1100

Properties on the National Register of Historic Places, with the maps that show them.

Surveyed structures

333

Buildings and bridges recorded by the federal survey, with their written histories.

Settlements in Massachusetts

2,210 settlements

Named places, each with its own page of maps and records. They are listed on the page for the county that holds them, because that is where the rest of a town's record lives too. A place with no page is a place the archive has not reached yet, not a place that does not exist.

Every county in Massachusetts, each listing its own settlements.

Provenance

  • Boundaries. Census Bureau TIGERweb. A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
  • Place names. Geographic Names Information System, United States Geological Survey.
  • Counts. Computed from the records this site publishes, not quoted from anywhere. They change when the archive grows.