A Brief Summary of My Trip to Boston

I’m back home now .  I’m really bushed so I think I’ll try to get to bed early tonight .  My body clock is now 3 hours ahead of Pacific Time, so I suspect I’ll be up extra early for work tomorrow!

At the end of my vacation, I drove to Dorchester and checked into the DoubleTree Club Hotel .  I spent most of Friday and Saturday researching my family’s history at the Massachusetts Vital Records Office and the Massachusetts State Archives, both of which were within walking distance of the hotel.

I spent all day Friday at the Massachusetts Vital Records Office in Dorchester .  Fortunately, Massachusetts allows researchers to work onsite at the Vital Records Office, so I was easily able to find many records I couldn’t find otherwise .  The Vital Records Office charges $9 per hour do conduct research and $18 for a certified copy of a vital record, making research at the Vital Records Office rather expensive.

I purchased 47 birth, death, and marriage records .  The cost for copies of vital records onsite is $10 less than the cost to order the records by mail, so I saved quite a bit of money by ordering onsite .  The staff at the Vital Records Office tried to give me computer printouts of some of the recent births, but I asked if they could give me photocopies of the actual certificates and they graciously did so .  The actual certificates contain a lot more information than the computer printouts, so I’m happy that I insisted on the photocopies .  With recent efforts by some members of the Massachusetts Legislature to restrict access to Vital Records, I decided it was time to get as many records as I can as soon as possible.

On Saturday, I went to the Massachusetts State Archives and made copies of 7 birth records, 3 death records, and 12 naturalization records .  The Archives doesn’t charge for research onsite and charges only 50 cents a page for copies, so my research at the Archives was a lot less expensive than my previous day’s research at the Vital Records Office.

The information I found at the Massachusetts State Archives included the birth and death records for all three infants buried in the grave in Notre Dame Cemetery that I discussed in Aunt Bronisława Has Been Misplaced!  It turns out that the surnames of two of the three infants were misspelled in the cemetery records . Â The data I complied from three birth records, three death records, and one cemetery record are:

• John Kurpiel, born October 30, 1912, died December 20, 1912, buried December 21, 1912, age 1 month
• Bronisława Dańko, born January 3, 1912, died January 13, 1913, buried January 15, 1913, age 1 year
• Franciszek Stoma, born December 3, 1913, died August 29, 1914, buried August 30, 1914, age 8 months

I also ordered a monument for the grave, and the stone will be put into place sometime later this year .  Notre Dame Cemetery pours foundations only twice a year – in May and September – so the stone can’t be put into place until September at the earliest . Â Tomorrow, I’ll call the monument company to provide them with the correct names and dates, and then I’ll wait to receive the proofs of the inscription .  I’m looking forward to getting monument set in place on this grave that has been unmarked for 94 years!

There’s a lot more to report on my vacation and research trip to the east coast .  I’ll post some of the more interesting records as soon as I get the photocopies scanned.