DATABASE TO HOLD CATHOLIC HISTORY

Genealogy group to build nation’s first archive here

The Boston Archdiocese is partnering with the New England Historic Genealogical Society to create the nation’s first extensive database of church records to help people trace family histories.

“This will be the beginning of more, we hope,” said NEHGS library director Jean Maguire. “It’s something that pertains to people all over the country — and the world — who have ancestors who came here. It’s also a development long-awaited by genealogists and historians.”

The plan is to create a searchable database of millions of baptisms, marriages, ordinations and other pivotal life events recorded from 1789 to 1900 at more than 100 Boston and Eastern Massachusetts parishes — a project that could take up to 10 years and cost an estimated $1 million, which will be paid for with proceeds to a Historic Catholic Records Fund the society is launching.

Thomas Lester, the archdiocese’s archivist, approached the NEHGS in March 2015, concerned about preserving records that were so old and fragile that many were falling apart.

“Pages are brittle and flaking, bindings are coming unstitched; some are just falling apart,” he said. “Of course, we try to restore them, but we can’t do it fast enough. So we looked into scanning all of them. That way, if we can’t save the books, we can at least save the information.”

Until the archdiocese hired a part-time person last September to help him, Lester also was singlehandedly handling about 1,400 requests for archival information per year.

Working with two full-time and two part-time employees assisted by about 70 volunteers, the society set to work and already has made available images of the oldest records from four of the earliest Boston parishes — the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Immaculate Conception, Holy Trinity and Our Lady of Victory — to browse for free at AmericanAncestors.org. Name-searchable records will be accessible later this year with an NEHGS membership.

Most records are in Latin; others are in English, French, Italian, German or Polish, depending on the language spoken by the majority of Catholics in the parish at the time. But the NEHGS will create English synonyms for words where needed, Maguire said.

‘If we can’t save the books, we can at least save the information.’ — THOMAS LESTER archdiocese archivist