The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy
Newsletter and is copyright 2001 by Richard W. Eastman. It is
re-published here with the permission of the author.
Vol. 6 No. 45 - November 5, 2001
- Sprague's "Braintree Families" on CD-ROM
Waldo Chamberlain Sprague started compiling the genealogies of all
the early families of Braintree, Massachusetts in 1947. Until his
death eight years later, he created over six thousand index cards
containing information on almost all the pre-1850 population of
old Braintree. Some families from nearby Milton and Stoughton
(both originally part of the town of Dorchester) were also
included in his exhaustive work. These six thousand cards remained
in the manuscript collection of the New England Historic
Genealogical Society in Boston. The cards were initially
microfilmed for the Quincy Historical Society in 1963 and again
for NEHGS in 1983. To look at Sprague's definitive work, you have
always needed to visit the New England Historic Genealogical
Society's library or the reading room of the Quincy Historical
Society. All of that has now changed, and this valuable collection
is available to you, for use in your home, at a modest cost.
Frank E. Dyer, Jr., of Enfield, Connecticut, has painstakingly
transcribed the entire manuscript of Sprague's original
handwritten 5" x 8" index cards into a computer. Robert J. Dunkle
also was involved in making the information available on CD. The
result is now available on a CD-ROM disk published by the New
England Historic Genealogical Society. The full title of this new
disk is "Genealogy of the Families of Braintree, Mass. 1640-1850,
including the modern towns of Randolph and Holbrook and the City
of Quincy after their separation from Braintree in 1792-3." I had
a chance to use the new CD-ROM disk this week.
This valuable work is described in the CD-ROM's introduction,
written by David Allen Lambert:
Genealogists should note that Sprague's work is the only
compiled scholarly treatments for some of these South Shore
families. Families treated in Sprague's work include: Adams,
Allen, Arnold, Bass, Baxter, Beal(s), Belcher, Billings,
Blanchard, Bowditch, Brackett, Burrell, Capen, Chessman,
Clark, Cleverly, Copeland, Crane, Crosby, Curtis, Dyer, Faxon,
Field, French, Glover, Green, Hall, Hardwick, Hayden, Hayward,
Hobart, Holbrook, Hollis, Hunt, Jones, Linfield, Littlefield,
Mann, Marsh, Miller, Mills, Nash, Neale, Newcomb, Nightingale,
Niles, Packard, Payne, Penniman, Pope, Porter, Pratt, Pray,
Quincy, Rawson, Reed, Ruggles, Saunders, Savil, Shaw, Smith,
Spear, Stetson, Stevens, Thayer, Tower, Trask, Turner, Veazie,
Vinton, Wales, Webb, Whitmarsh, White, Whiting, Wild, Wilson
and Wood(s). Also included are some families from Braintree
who later migrated to the following communities: Rehoboth (ca.
1643); Block Island (1660); Mendon (1663); Easton (ca. 1704);
Lebanon and Windham, Conn. (ca. 1713); Norton and Stoughton
(ca. 1726); Holliston (ca. 1745-50); Williamsburg (1771);
Orford and Lyme, N.H.; and Thetford and Fairlee, Vt. (ca.
1780). Other communities of migration included Washington,
N.H.; Lincolnville, Me.; Goshen, Mass.; Chesterfield, Mass.;
Ashfield, Mass.; Belchertown, Mass.; Amherst, Mass.;
Braintree, Vt.; and Randolph, Vt.
Sprague used the unpublished vital records to 1850 for the
towns of Randolph and Quincy extensively and included them in
his manuscript. He also employed the church records for the
communities of Braintree, Quincy, Weymouth, and Randolph.
Sprague was an active transcriber of gravestones for towns
neighboring Quincy, and many of these transcriptions are
included in his compilation.
Sprague consulted some of the manuscripts and published works
of noted Braintree and Quincy historians for his own work,
including the papers of Samuel Austin Bates (1822-97) at NEHGS
and the Quincy Historical Society; Edward Everts Jackson
(1869-1910) who expanded Bates's work; Dr. Ebenezer Alden
(1788-1881) from his published sketches in the Randolph
Transcript on the families of Randolph); the Jonathan Marsh
(1787-1861) manuscript at NEHGS on Quincy history; and the
notes of William Horace Woodman (1833-1913) who published his
deed transcriptions for early Randolph in the Randolph
Register. Other Braintree family historians consulted include
Marion Sophia Arnold, Mrs. Mabel Hope (Kingsbury) Kingsbury,
Mrs. Grace Pratt (Miller) Bosnall, William Gardner Spear,
Warren Samuel Parker, and Frank Amasa Bates.
It is important to note that unless otherwise stated all vital
record dates included refer to Braintree, Mass. A review of
Sprague's work by Gary Boyd Roberts can be found at the
beginning of the 1983 microfilm edition of Genealogy of the
Families of Braintree, Mass. 1640-1850. This review also
appears in The New England Historical and Genealogical
Register (139:155-58). Waldo Chamberlain Sprague died at
Quincy on July 21, 1960 at the age of fifty-seven, leaving a
legacy of Braintree research for future generations to
utilize.
Sprague's "Braintree Families" CD-ROM uses Folio Views software,
an excellent choice in my opinion. Macintosh owners will be
pleased to note that this CD-ROM works on their systems as well as
on Windows. I installed it on Windows 2000 and found that the
installation was quick and easy. I was looking at data within a
couple of minutes after first inserting the CD-ROM disk.
The information is presented in an electronic representation of
Sprague's original index cards. All the data from the cards was
transcribed in Register format. The CD-ROM opens with an index on
the left of the screen and data on the right. The index shows the
twenty-six letters of the alphabet, plus Acknowledgements,
Introduction and "Out Of Town." By clicking on the letter "E", the
first of the alphabetized index cards with a family surname
beginning with E is displayed. The user then scrolls down the
screen to look at the following families.
Here is the entry for David Eames (or Ames), showing what a
typical entry looks like:
[1533] DAVID EAMES (Ames/Emes), came from Dorchester,
probably son of David Eames who died there 1716: Bought land
in So. Precinct in 1725.
David Eames first mentioned in Braintree records in 1730 when
he and others petitioned for a road near their houses. In 1731
this was proposed in meeting and laid out in 1732 and he was
chosen a surveyor of highways that year. This way from his
house to meeting house (now Mill St. Randolph) was
discontinued as a town way in 1749. He lived on present Center
St. Holbrook where it was formerly joined by Mill. St., now
unused.
He was one of the original South Parish, now Randolph Church
members in 1731.
David Ames (Eames) married Dec. 10, 1719 Mehitable Paine, dau.
of Samuel & Mary (Penniman), born Dec. 8, 1693, died -
Children of David & Mehitable:
i. child, buried Dec. __ 1726 - Diary of Rev.
S. Niles.
ii. John, son of David Eames bapt. Apr. 19,
1730 at So. Precinct (by Rev. J. Hancock, 1st Church Rec.).
iii. Elijah, (Ames) s. David bapt. Apr. 16,
1732 (So. Parish).
iv. Mehitable (Eames), dau. of Mehitable
bapt. __ 1734 (So. Parish).
As you can see from the above example, a lot of information is
presented in a brief space. Sources of the information are often
listed, although not always. Nonetheless, Sprague's data is
considered to be very accurate although not perfect. (No genealogy
records are ever perfectly accurate!)
Even though the records are in alphabetical order, the CD-ROM also
contains a great search tool that can produce unexpected results.
For instance, when writing reviews of new genealogy products, I
always look for occurrences of my own surname. I didn't expect to
find any Eastman families in Braintree, and a check of the
alphabetical index cards confirmed my suspicions: there were no
listings for any families of that name. However, I clicked on the
Search icon and entered my own surname. The CD-ROM instantly
reported that the name appeared in four different paces! I looked
at the four citations and found that, indeed, there is unexpected
genealogical information about families of my surname. For
instance, in the middle of the entry for Sumner Wild Arnold, I
discovered an entry that said, "Married May 1, 1842, Rosette
Eastman, born 1815 (GS) at Bow, N.H., died 1898, (GS) Elm St.
Cem., dau. of ____." In Barzillai Thayer's entry I found a listing
for his eldest daughter, "Evaline, about Feb. 1802 at Weymouth, m.
Sep. 2, 1832 (Holbrook Ch. Rec.) Chandler Eastman." It also listed
an interesting note about the division of John Vinton's estate
listing "Evalina (or Emeline) Eastman wife of Chandler [Eastman]"
as a beneficiary.
In short, thanks to the search capability, I was able to find
unexpected genealogy information about families that married into
Braintree families, even though they always resided elsewhere. The
search capabilities are extensive, supporting Boolean search
terms: and, or, not, exclusive or, phrase, wildcards, ordered
proximity, unordered proximity, record proximity, sentence
proximity, paragraph proximity and much more.
Unlike a lot of other genealogy CD-ROM disks that I have used, I
found it easy to copy-and-paste data from Sprague's "Braintree
Families" into other Windows programs. The above information on
David Eames/Ames only took a few seconds to copy from the CD-ROM
and paste into this newsletter. Likewise, printing was easy:
highlight a record and then click on the printer icon. The
selected record was then printed, along with a copyright statement
on the bottom of the page. I also found that I could export
records as ASCII text files, saving them to a file on my hard disk
or on a floppy disk.
Sprague's "Braintree Families" also has the capability to bookmark
records of interest so that you may quickly return to them again
and again. You can also write "sticky notes" that are appended to
records. This is great for keeping notes about your other
findings, research notes or corrections. Every time you return to
that particular record in the future, your "sticky note" will re-
appear with the information you entered. Keep in mind, however,
that bookmarks and "sticky notes" are on your hard disk, not
written to the CD-ROM disk. If you move the CD-ROM disk to another
computer, the bookmarks and "sticky notes" are not moved with it.
All in all, I'd rate this CD-ROM as "A-Plus." It contains high-
quality genealogy information not previously accessible without a
visit to eastern Massachusetts. It is easy to use, easy to export
data and it works on Windows as well as Macintosh. Frank E. Dyer,
Jr., Robert J. Dunkle, Michael J. Leclerc, Carolyn Shepard Oakley,
D. Brenton Simons and the others involved in creating this
genealogy CD-ROM disk are to be congratulated on their excellent
product.
"Genealogy of the Families of Braintree, Mass. 1640-1850,
including the modern towns of Randolph and Holbrook and the City
of Quincy after their separation from Braintree in 1792-3" sells
for $39.99 (U.S. funds). It is available directly from the New
England Historic Genealogical Society. You may order it by mail,
by telephone, or on the Society's Web site. The Web site includes
a secure order form where you may safely enter a credit card
number.
For more information about the "Genealogy of the Families of
Braintree, Mass. 1640-1850, including the modern towns of Randolph
and Holbrook and the City of Quincy after their separation from
Braintree in 1792-3," go to:
http://www.newenglandancestors.org/bookstore/libdetail.asp?sku=3118&dept_id=24