European settlers first arrived in Massachusetts in the early seventeenth century in what was primarily the territory of Algonquian Indian tribes. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Massachusetts was a gateway of English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish emigrants. It also was a slave-holding state until 1783. During the nineteenth century, emigrants from Canada, Eastern Europe, Great Britain, Italy, and Portugal, and freed African Americans settled in Massachusetts. Research in Massachusetts provides a solid framework and useful tool for researchers who may be looking for subject matter linked to a Native American tribe, a Mayflower ancestor, first settler documentation, or information on someone who arrived later in Massachusetts’s history as well as other resources such as qualifying military service.
Published by NGS, Research in Massachusetts is one volume in the Research in the States series edited by Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FUGA, FVGS. It is available for purchase in the NGS online store in both PDF and print versions.
David Allen Lambert is the chief genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The author of A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries, he has published numerous articles. Lambert is the tribal historian for the Massachuset-Punkapoag Indians and a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.