New England Historical Genealogical Society

After a trip to Boston, I am sorting through papers and figuring out which end is up here at Remling Genealogy.

The first week in November was a long anticipated trip to Boston and the New England Historical Genealogical Society (NEHGS). Although I had been to Boston before, I had never had the opportunity to step inside NEHGS. Located in a small building along Newberry Street in Boston, you would think that there is not much to NEHGS. However, upon entering, you will quickly find that your impression was wrong. Very wrong. To start with they have over 200,000 books available to you. I did not get the numbers on rare books, microfilms, microfiche, periodicals and manuscripts.

All of these resources are available to you as a member. For non-members there is I believe a small research fee charged and you can’t access some of the special collection items. Of course, beyond these resources there is one other very important resource available to all who visit, call, email or write them. The most valuable resource of all is living and breathing- the staff! Whether it is a librarian or another staff member, all are extremely helpful and knowledgeable. And they are eager to help you with your quest.

After three wonderful days of researching, my husband and I boarded the train the next day headed for home. I was looking through a few of my digital images on the computer during the trip and spotting a few new directions to take on the various research. This is one of the times that I violated the method of research that we all should be following. Research, analyze what you find, revise and research some more. There is so much available and we had just a short time, so the analyzing and revising had to wait until after we left. Oh, and those digital images? This is one of the options for making copies that is available to you at NEHGS. You can make traditional copies on the copy machine, save those copies as digital images to a thumb drive or use your own camera to take digital images. I opted to use the camera on my iPad to make my digital images. It is quick, they come out clear and not only do I already have a digital copy without scanning them later at home, but it makes my computer bag a lot lighter to haul around than if I got paper copies!