When Annie Haven Thwing (1851-1940), the daughter of a Boston coal merchant, reached her mid-thirties, she became curious to know "where my ancestors lived, who were their neighbors, and what the neighborhood was like." She found it impossible, however, to contain her project, and she spent the next thirty years researching the geographic and built environment of Boston from 1630 to 1822. Tracing people and their properties through deed, probate, and the recently printed town records, enlisting church records, diaries, and graveyard epitaphs, Thwing painstakingly built an index consisting of some 125,000 catalog cards. These she used to publish, in 1920, her classic The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630-1822. Four years before, she had given her card index to the Massachusetts Historical Society, where it occupied seventy-four library drawers in the catalog room. Although arranged only by subjects' names, the index has proved a valuable resource for historians and genealogists.

In 1993, the MHS decided to convert Annie Thwing's monumental work into an electronic database, which would be searchable not just by name, but by occupation, spouse, birth, death, property holdings—up to twenty different factors or any combination of them. The task, which included editing and adding to the original card index, was completed in early 1999.

Thwing's card index and this database are by no means comprehensive. The sixty-two thousand records at your fingertips do not represent a census of all Boston inhabitants during this period. Thwing's methodology, and indeed the historical records themselves, were biased toward property holders. The creators of this database began to make records for the many spouses and children indicated in Thwing's index not given cards of their own, but could not finish that phase of the project. Additionally, the vast majority of Boston's African American and Indian residents lacked records; users will now find nearly five thousand such records in the database, created by MHS staff.

While both Macintosh and Windows are supported, I installed the CD-ROM database on a Windows 2000 system. Installation of the CD-ROM database was simple: click on SETUP.EXE and follow the on-screen instructions. Less than a minute later I was looking at data.

The "Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston" CD-ROM uses Folio Views software, an excellent choice in my opinion. It fully supports copy-and-paste, creation of bookmarks, writing "sticky notes," and other advanced features. This CD-ROM also has an excellent search mechanism. Not only can you easily perform a simple search for a word or phrase, but you can also do full Boolean searches using terms such as AND, OR, NOT, EXCLUSIVE OR, wild cards by a single letter or multiple letters, and also search by proximity. For instance, you can specify a search for "all the entries for Adams that are in close proximity to the word Samuel but not near the word John."

As always, I first did a search for my own surname and found only one "hit." No surprise there, as I have never found any records of the family living in Boston during Colonial times. The family was mostly in northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with later generations moving to Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and westward. Sure enough, even the one entry in this Boston CD-ROM disk pointed to Maine with a brief mention of a daughter who married Thomas Eastman of Maine.

Here is a "copy and paste" of that record, showing the type of information that can be found on this CD-ROM disk:

LAST: Frothingham

FIRST: Nathaniel

BIRTH: 1746

PARENTS: Nathaniel Frothingham of Charlestown Mary Whittemore

SPOUSE: 1771 Rebecca Austin (1st) December 22, 1785 Mary Townsend (2nd) April 8, 1802 Lydia Kettell m(int) (TR 30:479) (3rd)

CHILDREN: Children of first marriage- 1779 Nathaniel of Boston 1781 Rebecca m1781 James Goddard of Boston Children of second marriage- 1787 Mary m Wm. N. Taylor 1792 Susannah m Thomas Eastman of Maine Ruth m John Redman

HOME: West St. (BD 1796) 5 West St. (BD 1800)

OCCUPATION: Chaisemaker Coachmaker (BD 1796-1800)

BUSINESS: Common St. (BD 1796-1800)

EVENT: April 3, 1793 Nathaniel Frothingham and Co. tenants of the Town in Labratory Building. (TR 27:201)

DEED: August 18, 1783 Nathaniel Frothingham, Jr. (chaisemaker) and Nathaniel Frothingham buy house and land of John Tufts. (SD 139:180) S.E. corner of West and Mason Sts.

TEXT: First marriage not recorded in Boston. Second marriage by The Rev. Peter Thatcher. (TR 30:79)

REFERENCE: father Nathaniel Frothingham is 20368 / mother Mary Whittemore is / first wife Rebecca Austin is 31961 / second wife Mary Townsend is / third wife Lydia Kettell is / son Nathaniel is 31962 / daughter Rebecca is 31963 / daughter Mary is 31964 / daughter Susannah is 31965 / daughter Ruth is 31966 / John Tufts is /

REFCODE: 20369

Not all records on this CD-ROM will have all of this information, while other records may have even more. However, this record is typical, with name, all known marriages and children, parents, occupation, residence, and biographical notes. Keep in mind that this CD-ROM contains the equivalent of seventy-four library drawers full of index cards! This half-ounce piece of plastic is much easier to store than those seventy-four drawers and is also easier to search.

The "Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800 & The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, 1630-1822 by Annie Haven Thwing" is an excellent genealogy reference, consisting of 125,000 transcribed records made from original documents by a trained and motivated genealogist. This CD-ROM disk is destined to become a standard reference for genealogists.

"Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800 & The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, 1630-1822" sells for $39.99 plus $2.00 shipping. For more information, look at: www.newenglandancestors.org/store/browse/product.asp?sku=3119&dept_id=24

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