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Archiver > MAWORCES > 2001-08 > 0997245525


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Subject: [MAWORCES] long one on access
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 00:38:45 EDT


I got to thinking about the post by a lister who wondered if Worcester
City
Clerk’s office let people have physical access to the city’s records. I
didn’t fully
understand Harriet Chandler’s “Re:” post, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t
say they don’t. I
will say it then. No, there is no time that a citizen can go to city hall to
browse the vitals
(birth, death & marriage). As for the Town of Worcester vitals; no one can
look at those.
As I have pointed-out in a previous post, those records are “lost,” and have
been lost for a
very long time. City Clerk Rushford has told me (a private citizen) that he
has been with
that office for a long time and has never seen the old books (the real old
stuff up to about
the city charter in 1848), and that he has looked for them. Fortunately, the
vitals (b., d. &
m.) did surface for a short time, in the early 1980’s, just long enough to be
photographed
by the Holbrook Institute. Mr. Rushford was present when at least some of the
town/city
documents were filmed, yet he was unaware that the very books he has long
sought were
placed under Holbrook’s camera. He was surprised, earlier this year, to learn
that the
records were filmed and has suggested that those books were not in city hall
when they
were filmed. His office has an unopened copy of Holbrook’s resulting
microfiche, no
fiche-reader. Despite this new knowledge, Mr. Rushford has not yet found
those books
nor has his department obtained a reader. With a reader the clerks office
could issue
birth, death and marriage records based on the fiche instead of turning away
anyone who
seeks an $8. certified copy of a pre-1848 vital. I would be willing to bet
that the City
Clerk has the power to certify the fishe of the missing records as true
copies. If he is
uncomfortable with that proposition, he should contact Holbrook to find out
if there was
an organized approach to the filming, and whether it can be deduced from
where (off of
what shelf, in what room, in what building) these images were obtained.
Worcester Public Library also has a copy of the Holbrook fiche.
Warning... There
are a number of pages in the town book (and therefore in Holbrook) that are
not indexed
(marriages, at least). The town/city clerks forwarded the data to the state
and so the state
records are apparently complete and indexed. However, the state index is for
the state
record, and is worthless for finding the entry in the city record. The state
records are on
microfilm, a copy is available at WPL.
If you find a record in the state marriage records or it’s index that
can’t be found
in the Town of Worcester index (which is hard to find) then you must be
looking for a
c.1849 entry. The index for the Marriages Book for 1795-1849 is located at
the back of
that book, the last fiche or two in the group (the heading on the fiche
doesn’t indicate that
the sheet contains an index). This index is for all entries up to page 125 or
so of that
book. This was the last book of marriages to record entries the old way,
i.e.. “the
following is a list of the marriages solemnized by me since the last time I
reported.” or as
Father Fitton once wrote “Dear Sir, Agreeably by request I send you the
subjoined list of
persons who have been united in matrimony by obediently Yours, Jas
Fitton.” This
entry as with nearly all of them was in the hand of the Town Clerk
(Hamilton), recorded
as “A Copy” and signed by the clerk. In 1844/5 the town started using pages
with
columns for the clerk to fill in. In 1850 the City began a new book, many
years later,
when this book was indexed, the indexers assigned this 1850> book; Book I,
as it was
the earliest of the three they were indexing (I guess from c. 1850 forward
the index was
kept on index cards, created and filed at the time of entry into the
records). These
indexers thought to go back into the old book to capture the unindexed
entries, but they
didn’t go back far enough. Or, the clerk stopped using the back-of-the-book
index for a
time before he started using the index card system some time in 1849. Future
indexers
wouldn’t know this and would dutifully record all of the index cards even the
<1850
stuff. It is also possible that they knew there were some 1850 marriages
recorded in that
old book and they were charged with indexing all of 1850 so they went back
only far
enough to be sure they got it all. Whatever the reason, the indexers were
faced with the
dilemma of assigning a Book # to the entries that were recorded in the
1795-1849 book
but indexed with the >1850 stuff. They called it in the “Book” column;
“*4.” They ran
into similar problems with Births and Deaths and solved them the same way. At
least
they got indexed! There are many entries that don’t appear in the
back-of-the-book index,
nor the 1850> index.
Back to Access to Public Records. I don’t think any of us need physical
contact
with any of these old records as they have been placed at our fingertips in a
medium that
will not degrade as quickly and is replaceable. I don’t want to touch the
originals (but I
would like to buy a copy of an old record or two).
It is helpful to “leaf-through” the old books, to check for alternate
spellings in the
index or to see what other people were married that day (For some early
Catholics, the
priest came to town, said Mass and served the sacramental needs of the area,
sometimes
blessing several unions in one day with a baptism or two for good measure.
>From Fr.
Fitton forward until the town got its own church [perhaps until they got a
priest to staff it]
the slim data recorded at these events was reluctantly turned in to the
Worcester Clerk
and not to the towns in which the marriage took place). The method of
collecting the
vital data is apparent when looking at the original records. For a time
people were sent
door to door to inquire as to if there were any births in the household since
the last visit
(quarterly?). Deaths were reported to the clerk’s office by the doctor’s
that made the call.
Those who were performing them had to report marriages to the clerk yearly
and later
more frequently. This enables the researcher to look at all the marriages
performed by an
individual or church to find hidden data. An example would be two (apparently
unrelated) couples acting as witnesses for each others marriage. Plus it is
just plain neat
to browse these old books (or copies at the reader). I remember seeing a Town
Clerk’s
entry for his own wedding! I wonder if he entered that record into the book
on the day of
the event.
So... Any thoughts?
John

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