For those who live or have done research in Massachusetts, I'm sure you know how expensive it can be to acquire documents from a city hall nowadays. Take Brockton for example, they charge a twenty dollar fee for a copy of a document. And that's after you pay a fee for them to look for said document. And the fee for them to look gets higher with every year they check. And if they DON'T find what you're looking for, you don't get the fee you just paid them to look for it back.
So what can you do to avoid horrible fees like that? You can go the Massachusetts Archives, which is located at 220 William T Morrissey Boulevard, Dorchester, Massachusetts. There you'll be able to find birth, marriage, and death records ranging from 1841-1920, along with some other things (census records, judicial records, etc). At the Archives, it only costs fifty cents to print a page and thirty cents to photocopy. For more information on what the Archives hold, click here.
However, if you are one who is looking for a birth, marriage, or death record that is post-1920, then you may have to go to the Registry of Vital Records & Statistics, which is located at 150 Mount Vernon St, 1st Floor, Dorchester, MA and can get expensive. You can only buy certificed copies, which costs eighteen dollars if you buy them in person and it gets even more expensive if done via telephone, internet, mail, etc. For more details on pricing, click here
This is a good summary of what the archives in Massachusetts are like. It is good to be prepared. I drove down to Boston with a friend to get copies for her Mayflower application. We went to the Archives first, which was reasonable for copies. Then we needed two more birth records from the VR. It was only a few blocks away, but the price nearly knocked us over.
ReplyDelete