NEHGS has this site listed in their latest newsletter. Looks like a good one. Bette Featured Website: Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea The Mystic Seaport website (www.mysticseaport.org) is rich in information and research resources. To access the resources, click on the Research icon on the home page. On the main Research page you will find links that include Highlights of a number of collections, Online Experiences, Online Catalogs, and Resources. Click on Online Experiences and then on the Library Digital Initiative link to access the Initiative's home page. Collections digitized through this initiative include American Maritime Westward Expansion, 19th Century American Merchant Marine Digital Library (which includes the Ship and Yacht Registers), and Immigration Images. Items in these collections include correspondence, individual and family papers from the manuscript collections, diaries, ship registers, maps, ships plans, and passenger logbooks, to name a few. A number of these items have been transcribed so that they may be searched as well as viewed. To get a sense of the wide range of subject areas that comprise the Mystic Seaport online collections, click on the Subject List link. Support for these projects has come from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Gladys Brooks Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program. The American Maritime Westward Expansion Collection comprises materials centered on the theme of how and why people traveled west and what they did once they arrived. While many people traveled overland, others traveled completely by sea or by both land and sea to reach their destinations. The materials, which come from a number of individual collections, look at the events, culture, beliefs, and personal experiences related to westward expansion from a marine perspective. Most materials included here date from the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The items that have been digitized include account books, journals, logbooks, letters, shipping papers, and much more. A selection of nautical charts has also been included. This collection is hosted on both the Library of Congress and Mystic Seaport websites. You will find links to both host websites on the Maritime Westward Expansion Collection home page. The 19th Century Merchant Marine Digital Library currently contains over 100,000 digital images. As described on the website, the focus of this project is on "merchant vessels of the nineteenth century, the people who owned and sailed them and records pertaining to them." The digital collection for this project consists of Ship and Yacht Registers. Marine travel and transport played a prominent role in populating and serving the needs of the people of the United States. Access to ship registers may be able to assist you in your genealogical research if your ancestor was affiliated with a merchant ship or emigrated across an ocean. The registers may be accessed either from the Library Digital Initiative home page or via the 19th Century Merchant Marine Digital Library link. Digital images of the registers in the collection may be viewed by clicking on the registers link. In addition, the Ship and Yacht Register database can be searched by vessel and by shipmaster. Immigration Images: The collections of the Museum of America and the Sea at Mystic Seaport include images of many ships that brought immigrants to the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These images have now been made available online via the Immigration Images Collection. You browse through the Vessel List and the Steamship Line List, name by name. Clicking on a vessel name link will bring up images of and detailed information about the vessel. You can also search the collection by vessel or steamship line name. Connecticut Ship Database, 1789 1939: The United States Customs Service has maintained records that are useful for research on vessels. During the 1930s the Works Progress Administration compiled and transcribed vessel registration data from many customs districts. And much it was then published. The Connecticut data was not. In 1999 the G. W. Blunt White Library, with support from the National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program, created the Connecticut Ship Database 1789-1939, which includes the following Connecticut customs districts: New London/Stonington, New Haven, Bridgeport/Fairfield, and Hartford/Middletown. Currently, this database contains the records for about 15,000 vessels and the people associated with them. The project is ongoing and will continue until all of the personal names from the records have been added to the database. The database provides a variety of information about each vessel and the names of owners and masters. You can run a Vessel Search by vessel name, a People Search by the last name of the person or the name of the company that owned it or an advanced search by keyword or by a specific data field. Search results include not only the vessels names but also the people associated with the vessel. The information provided in this article should help you get a jumpstart with your research on the Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea website. There is a wealth of information that is just a few clicks away. Enjoy! Visit the Mystic Seaport website at www.mysticseaport.org. ____________________________________________ Check out the Bunker Family Association. http://www.bunkerfamilyassn.org. If your name is Bunker and you are a male, consider joining our surname DNA project.