Barnstable, Massachusetts Vital Records

The town of Barnstable on Cape Cod is one of the earliest settlements in Massachusetts and home to many Mayflower families and their descendants.  Gustavus Aldolphus Hinckley (1822-1905) transcribed the early vital and town records, as well as the records from the Barnstable County Probate Court that dealt with residents of the town of Barnstable.  In addition to Hinckley's transcription, the Barnstable Vital Records were also transcribed and published by George Bowman in a series of 36 articles in The Mayflower Descendant, beginning in 1900 (Vol. 2, p. 212) and continuing through 1937 (Vol. 34, p. 115)

The current presentation of the material was created by abstracting Bowman's transcriptions in their entirety, and comparing them with the Hinckley transcriptions.  This method has allowed both authors footnotes to be incorporated.  Hinckley's annotations are enclosed in brackets and italicized.  Bowman's footnotes are enclosed in brackets, and these notes are not italicized.

In his introduction to his transcription, (Mayflower Descendant, 2:212), Bowman notes: “Volume I of the Barnstable town records is not the original, but a copy made in 1736, in accordance with the vote recorded on the first page. The vital records in the copy were arranged at the back of the book.” It appears that both Bowman and Hinckley made use of this 1736 copy and not the original.  This note appears in the Banstable record book Volume I: “The pages of this volume are not consecutively numbered. As will be seen below, vital statistics are found on entire page 432 and the next page in the volume, also containing vital records, is numbered 377. Further, the page following number 389 is page numbered 194 and following page 198 is page 209.”

This collection of records was originally published by NEHGS in CD format as Records of Barnstable, Massachusetts in 2002.  This database presents the vital records portion of that CD. 

The original Gustavus Adolphus Hinckley papers, 1883-1905 are available to members at the NEHGS research library, call number Mss 419.  The Mayflower Descendant is also available, call number F68.M46. The Records of Barnstable, Massachusetts is available as call number F74.B14 R43 2002 CD.

This database includes 13,984 births, 14,620 marriages, 7,871 deaths and 6,959 other records.  The images of the records and annotations as compiled for the CD are available from the search results pages.  Because this database is presented as an index to the records, it is essential to view those record pages to understand the relationships between individuals mentioned and to see the annotations of Hinckley and Bowman.