C A Richards Boston Mass History

Working With C A Richards Boston Mass History Publications

If you are tracking New England ancestors and running into the name C A Richards, you are probably looking at one of several genealogical volumes that came out of a publishing operation based in Boston during the late 1800s and early 1900s. These books are genuinely useful, but they have quirks that trip people up if you do not know what to expect. C A Richards Boston Mass History refers to the collection of local histories, town records compilations, and family genealogies that were printed under that imprint. The business was active roughly from the 1870s through the 1920s, with the heaviest output in the first two decades of the 1900s. Most of the titles cover individual Massachusetts towns, but there are also histories of towns in neighboring states that appear in the same catalog because the publisher had a regional focus.

What You Actually Get From C A Richards Boston Mass History

These books typically fall into three categories. The first is town histories, which often include a section on prominent families with genealogical sketches. The second is standalone family genealogies, where a single surname gets several hundred pages. The third is compiled records transcriptions, usually drawn from vital records, probate files, or church registers. I spent probably six months last year digging through the C A Richards title on an Essex County town. The family sketches alone contained about forty entries, each going three or four generations. That saved me from having to order microfilm for at least a dozen families I was already researching. Not everything in there is correct, obviously. I found at least two marriages recorded with the wrong dates compared to what the original town records show. One was a simple transcription error. The other looked like someone conflated two different families with the same surname. The big thing to understand is that these books were often commissioned by the families themselves. People paid to have their genealogy included. That means the earlier generations are usually well documented because the family had records going back. The later generations, the ones living at the time of publication, are sometimes rushed or incomplete. I learned that the hard way when I was looking for a specific descendant who should have been listed in a Richards volume and was not. Turns out his branch of the family declined to contribute information. The editor did not fill it in from public records. The entry just stops.

How to Use These Books Without Wasting Time

Start by checking the Internet Archive and the Massachusetts Archives website. Most of the C A Richards titles have been scanned. The scan quality is inconsistent. Some are crisp. Some are blurry in the genealogical tables because the originals were typed or handwritten in cramped formats. If you are reading a PDF and the dates are illegible, do not guess. Cross reference with the original record if you can find it. The index situation is another thing. Some volumes have detailed indexes at the back. Others have barely anything more than a table of contents. I hit this with a Middlesex County history that had no surname index at all. I ended up going through page by page, which took about four hours. If the book you need lacks an index, check whether a later edition added one. A few of the larger titles got revised and reprinted with improved finding aids. When using the family genealogies, pay attention to the source notes. Richards publications vary wildly in how they cite where information came from. Some entries say "from family records." Some reference specific court files. Most fall somewhere in between. I treat "from family records" as a starting point, not a conclusion. Those records were compiled by relatives, often from memory or from letters passed down. They can be accurate, but they are not primary sources.

Here is something most people miss. The publication date of a C A Richards book does not mean the information inside is current to that date. The research could have been done years earlier. I found an entry in a 1908 volume that referenced a death in 1904, but the family also had living members in 1912 who never got added. The manuscript was clearly completed before the book went to press. When you see someone listed as living in the preface but missing from the genealogical sketch, check for later supplements or errata sheets. Some publishers included those. Richards did not always.

Where to Find Them

The easiest route is the Internet Archive. Search for "C A Richards Boston" plus the town or surname you need. HathiTrust has a substantial portion of the collection as well, though the full text access depends on your institution's subscription. The Boston Public Library holds physical copies of most of the titles, and their online catalog is searchable by publisher. FamilySearch has digitized several of the family genealogies through their book collection. Check there before ordering microfilm or visiting in person. C A Richards Boston Mass History works best when you combine it with the original records. The town histories are excellent for context and for identifying which families were present in a given area. The family genealogies are valuable for filling in connections that are not in the public record. But neither replaces the actual vital records, probate files, or land deeds. I have seen too many researchers treat a Richards genealogy as definitive. It is not definitive. It is a secondary source, often compiled from other secondary sources, with occasional primary source citations mixed in. The main limitation of these books is geographic coverage. They concentrate on eastern and central Massachusetts. If your family was in western Massachusetts or rural areas, Richards may not have published anything relevant. In those cases, you are better off looking at the records published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society or the individual town histories produced by local historical commissions. The quality varies there too, but at least you are not searching for something that was never printed.

Another practical issue is the condition of surviving copies. Many of these books were printed on acidic paper. Copies found in private collections or sold at estate sales often have brittle pages, torn genealogical charts, and faded ink. If you are ordering a print-on-demand reproduction, check the seller's sample pages. I once got a copy where half the family trees were nearly illegible due to poor scanning. The digital version from the Internet Archive was clearer than the physical book I ended up receiving. If you are just getting started with Massachusetts genealogy, I would recommend picking up a couple of the town history volumes for the areas where your ancestors lived. Even if your specific family is not mentioned, the town histories give you a framework. You will see which families were neighbors, which churches were involved, and what economic activities dominated the area. That context matters more than you might expect when you are trying to figure out why two families with the same surname are showing up in the same town at the same time. Sometimes they are related. Sometimes they are not. The town history will often clue you in.