AGBI primarily indexes the 1790 census, many printed Revolutionary muster rolls, and most importantly, the genealogical columns of The Boston Transcript , which were superb during the 1920s. The new Register index should be used alongside the old one, which indexes volumes 1-50 and, unfortunately, does not index women under three or more names. This practice began at about volume 85 but was not always consistently followed. For many persons treated in the Register , the cited article will list spouses, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and most contemporary agnate kin. Such coverage occurs in a five-generation genealogy, which often ends a generation before the Revolution.
Many articles also cover the English origins of New England immigrants.
These data can be found in H. F. Waters Genealogical Gleanings in England , the six-volume set of English Origins of New England Families from the NEHG Register , The Great Migration Begins , and my own 1993 compendium, The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States . With these new books covering English origins of Great Migration colonists, with the five-generation Register articles now superbly indexed, and with AGBI and the IGI, Clayton Library researchers will frequently be able to trace ten or more New England and English generations of ancestry in an hour or less. These recent publications are indeed a cornucopia, and we have covered only works on the colonial population in this article. On a personal note, I am usually in Houston during the Christmas holidays and visit Clayton Library. I am ready to help patrons who might like to ask questions about New England research or my various books and articles.