Good morning, everyone. :-) This is a note to let those of you who don't know about a large project that has been going on for some time - the transcription of the early vital records of MA to the end of 1849. The are the published books commonly referred to as the "Tan Books." I had been concentrating on Essex county. Recently a lady wanted to do Lowell and I went ahead with that. So, the Lowell VRs are slowly going online. They are at http://www.rootsweb.com/~maessex/VitalRecords/MiddlesexCounty/Lowell/index.html The long term goal of this project is to get all of the books transcribed and online in one place in one common format. In addition to the transcriptions, I'll put the images online. The transcriptions are primarily a research aide. The images from the books are for documentation. In many cases, these are the only records that still exist. An additional step will be indexing the records by surname and given name. The main page for the vital records is http://www.rootsweb.com/~maessex/VitalRecords/index.html John Slaughter In loving memory of our son, Brennan. 11/10/88-5/31/01. http://john-slaughter.rootsweb.com/Brennan.html MA-Bay-Colony list moderator USGenWeb County Coordinator Essex County, MA - http://www.rootsweb.com/~maessex USGenWeb Town Coordinator Ipswich, Essex, MA - http://www.rootsweb.com/~macipswi _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/