Every month on the 10th day I publish a "Top Ten" list pertaining to genealogy and family history. Here are my favorite ten places to do genealogy research in the state of New Hampshire. In no particular order...
1. New Hampshire Vital
Records and Archives
Visit the Department of Vital Records and Archives on 71
South Fruit Street, Concord, New Hampshire.
There are staff and volunteers to assist in searching for birth,
marriage, divorce and civil union certificates going back to the 1600s. FREE but there are fees for obtaining
certified copies of records. The
Archives is in the same building as the Vital Records, and they share a reading
room. In the archives you will find
probate records, land title deeds, military records, naturalizations, poor
records and more. Some of these records are available online at places like
Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org
2. New Hampshire
Historical Society Library and the New Hampshire State Library
For $40/year for an individual membership you can join the
New Hampshire Historical Society and have access to their large library and
also their museum located at 30 Park Street in Concord, New Hampshire (across
the street from the state house). They
offer free or discounted lectures and workshops. The staff is very good at helping with
genealogy requests and research, and the card catalog is available online,
too. Collections include family
histories, vital records, church records, cemetery records, diaries and
manuscripts, genealogy periodicals and general genealogical reference
materials. The library is open to
non-members for $7 day fee. www.nhhistory.org The catalog and finding aids are online.
The NH Historical Society Library is located right next door
to the NH State Library at 20 Park Street in Concord. They have about 2400 titles of published
family histories for NH and New England, as well as early town records, town
histories, town reports and NH newspapers.
It is FREE to the public, and you won’t have to find a new parking space
if you visit both libraries! https://www.nh.gov/nhsl/
3. American Canadian
Genealogical Society
Join the American Canadian Genealogical Society in
Manchester www.acgs.org for $35.00/ year for an individual
member. This gives you access to their
large library in Manchester (4 Elm Street), individual assistance from a very knowledgeable
staff, a yearly conference and a subscription to the Society’s journal American
Canadian Genealogist. Hanging out at
the library in Manchester is only $5 per day (applicable towards membership if
you decide to join), and you will have the chance to meet genealogists of all
levels of expertise. And they love to answer questions! Free
parking, too. This library is of
general interest to all genealogy researchers, not just those with French
Canadian heritage.
4. Local Historical
Societies and local public libraries
New Hampshire’s hidden treasure is the small historical
societies in nearly every town, and the historical collections to be found in
the public libraries. An incomplete list
can be found at this link: http://www.directorynh.com/NHAssociations-Organizations/NHHistorical.html Most historical societies will accept
queries. If they don’t have the
resources or volunteers to research you query, ask about what resources are
available just in case you would like to hire an independent researcher to
visit the collections for you. Many
towns also have a town historian who will answer queries, or at least tell you
what resources are available for their location.
Consult the local library’s reference department to see what
local records are stored in their collections.
Many local libraries have online card catalogs, or an email direct to
the reference librarian. If you are visiting
there in person, see if the local libraries have the institutional version of
Ancestry.com on their computers, for FREE use by patrons, saving you the
subscription fee you would have to pay on your home computer. Many libraries also have subscriptions to
GenealogyBank.com or newspaper archives online for FREE, too.
5. NHSOG and journal
The New Hampshire Society of Genealogists was founded in
1978. They have an annual conference day
and publish a respected journal, The New
Hampshire Genealogical Record, and a newsletter. You can find copies of this journal at
NEHGS, The American Canadian Genealogical Society, the New Hampshire Historical
Society library, and other libraries with good genealogical collections. Their project “New Hampshire Families in
1790” has an index online http://nhsog.org/nhsog/1790_index.pdf
6. Portsmouth Athenaeum
The Portsmouth Athenaeum is located at 9 Market Square,
Portsmouth, New Hampshire on the third floor.
The Joseph P. Copely Research Library is open free to the public. This
library has over 40,000 volumes, manuscripts and ephemera. It also sponsors lectures and exhibits. There
are some one-of-a-kind things here you will not find online or in any other
library, so it is worth checking out if you have seacoast New Hampshire
ancestors! http://www.portsmouthathenaeum.org/
7. UNH Dimond Library
Dimond library is the main library on the University of New
Hampshire’s Durham campus. Inside the
special collections are manuscripts, genealogies, family papers, archives, and
the Piscataqua Pioneer’s Lamson collections (see below) stored under number
MC231 in the Milne Special Collections.
These papers are the member applications, society information, and
member created genealogies and biographies.
See this link for the University special collections http://www.library.unh.edu/find/special Researchers and the general public are
welcome to use these collections in the Dunleavy Reading Room, Room 101.
8. New Hampshire County
Registries of Deeds website
Most records are kept at the town level in New Hampshire,
except for land titles and probate records.
You can visit each county seat Registry of Deeds to search, or you can
use this handy online website http://www.nhdeeds.com/
9. Piscataqua Pioneers
This is the oldest lineage society in the state of New
Hampshire collecting genealogical records on some of the first settlers in the
Granite State and Maine. If your ancestor settled in the Piscataqua River region, which spans both states, this group probably has a lot of information on your family. The website has a genealogical
queries column http://www.piscataquapioneers.org/ The organization meets annually, and has a
newsletter and a frequently updated website.
The book Piscataqua Pioneers is wonderful volume of biographies of the pioneer
settlers, and was updated in 2000, and can be ordered at the website.
10. NH State and
Provincial Papers
This 40 volume set of historical documents is described in
this previous blog post, along with online finding aids and indexes, as well as
where to find the books. As the title of
the blog post read “You can’t do Colonial NH research without them!” http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-new-hampshire-state-papers-you-cant.html
The first seven volumes are the
Provincial Papers, which include town papers, the Revolutionary War rolls,
military records, land grants, town charters, probate and court records. These
volumes cover New Hampshire historical documents up to about the year
1800.
Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Top Ten New Hampshire Genealogical Resources", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 10, 2016, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/04/top-ten-new-hampshire-genealogical.html: accessed [access date]).
Thank you. Heather. You do swell work.
ReplyDeleteThank yo ufor your kind comment, John!
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