BlockBefore
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

Massachusetts within the United States

What the archive holds in Massachusetts

RecordsCount What it is
Settlements2,280Every populated place the Geographic Names Information System records, each with the survey sheets that cover it.
Topographic sheets2,835Distinct United States Geological Survey sheets covering those settlements.
Town histories196Complete chapters from the county histories, reproduced unedited.
Listed properties4,465On the National Register of Historic Places.
Nomination case files2,722The full federal document that argued each property on to the register, machine-read from the scan.
Surveyed structures1,731Buildings and bridges recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record, with their photographs and written histories.
Businesses in the atlases2,363Read off the printed indexes of the fire insurance atlases. These names exist nowhere else as text.
Words of narrative7,296,851Public-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 County157202288 words
Berkshire County156183115,152 words
Bristol County183389586,876 words
Dukes County362396,143 words
Essex County170480627,145 words
Franklin County1196033,480 words
Hampden County138174351,396 words
Hampshire County8786520,188 words
Middlesex County3001,3532,643,467 words
Nantucket County37417,013 words
Norfolk County172342564,279 words
Plymouth County302138255,646 words
Suffolk County69345727,635 words
Worcester County361686758,143 words

Read off the map

345 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 345 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

2,643,467 words

Between 1835 and 1917 24 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 48 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 1,353 listed properties, 300 settlements and 449 topographic sheets.
Businesses in the atlases 345 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

84

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

Every listed property

1353

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

2,280 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.