101 Best Websites: Genealogy in New England and the Eastern United States

American Ancestors $

This subscription site ($79.95 a year) from the New England Historic Genealogical Society continues to branch out beyond its geographic origins, adding databases such as The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine (searchable through volume 20) and inscriptions from 98 Long Island cemeteries. The site remains, of course, the go-to source for researching your New England roots, with some 3,000 Yankee-centric databases and online back issues of the society’s New England Ancestors magazine.

Archives of Maryland Online

Home to 471,000 historical documents, this deep state site includes city directories, probate and land records, digitized newspaper pages (tucked under Early State Records), Revolutionary War service records, and Civil War military records from both Blue and Gray.

Connecticut State Library

Click on Digital Collections to explore early account books, diaries and journals, court documents from Connecticut’s earliest court sessions through the mid-19th century, newspaper marriage and death indexes (1755 to 1870), cemetery inscriptions, probate records, church records and more.

Digital Library of Georgia

Newspapers are the latest additions to this online archive of a million-plus historical documents and images from institutions across Georgia. Other offerings include Colonial wills, Confederate records, historic books, photos and the online New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Florida Memory Project

Massachusetts Archives

It’s the databases that keep this site among our bookmarks: Massachusetts birth, marriage and death records from 1841 to 1910; two dozen volumes of the Massachusetts Archives; and an ongoing project to index passenger manifests totaling 1 million arrivals through the Port of Boston, 1848 to 1891.

North Carolina State Archives

The Online Projects link reveals such Tar Heel treasures as a collection of 3,000-plus old maps of the state (including Sanborn fire-insurance maps), digitized newspapers, and a family records collection of Bibles and newspaper marriage and death announcements dated 1799 to 1893.

Virginia Memory

This Library of Virginia site stands out for the richness and genealogical usefulness of its digital collections. Local history lessons are nice, but what we love are the real records found here: Revolutionary War land bounties, court records, family Bibles, Civil War pension rolls and disability applications, WWI veterans questionnaires and more. Even if you don’t have Virginia kin, the index to Confederate Veteran magazine may be worth a visit.