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This CD contains images of the pages of two important works, Leonard Smith's Cape Cod Library of Local History and Genealogy and Walter Goodwin Davis's Massachusetts and Maine Families, which between them refer to approximately 80,000 individuals.

Cape Cod Library of Local History and Genealogy is based on a little-known series of 108 pamphlets published at Yarmouthport by Charles W. Swift in the early part of this century. Although contributors to the Cape Cod Library included many celebrated New England genealogists whose work in original Cape Cod records is showcased here, the series never reached a large audience, and it is today virtually inaccessible. No library in the country holds the complete collection of 108 pamphlets. With great diligence, however, Col. Smith put together a complete collection for himself, arranged the pamphlets in the order in which they were published, and then, to make the material usable, compiled an index of names. In just over 2,000 pages he managed to put together a reference work that compensates for the chronic shortage of printed Cape Cod source material, for in spite of the destruction of the Barnstable County Courthouse in 1827, and similar disasters among the town records of Chatham and Yarmouth, many important Cape Cod records still exist; it's just that very few of them had ever been printed.

One of the monuments of twentieth-century genealogy, and the greatest multi-ancestor series ever published in American genealogy, Walter Goodwin Davis's Massachusetts and Maine Families treats all 180 families deriving from each of his sixteen great-great-grandparents. Almost anyone with considerable New England ancestry--and as many as 100 million living Americans, about 40 percent of the population, have some colonial New England forebears--will descend from one or more, often a dozen or more, of the 180 families covered here. One hundred fourteen of these families lived mostly in Massachusetts, while the bulk of the remainder lived in Maine. Most of the 114 Massachusetts families resided in Essex County, a few in Middlesex or Plymouth counties, or in Boston. Thus Massachusetts and Maine Families is largely a compendium of "North of Boston" families. It is a superb and authoritative work, compiled by a man considered to be one of the outstanding genealogists of the twentieth century and who was recently inducted into the National Genealogical Society's Hall of Fame.

For purposes of manufacturing this CD, every page of the above two works, originally published in multiple volumes, has been electronically scanned, and for your convenience an electronic name index is provided to enable you to search for your ancestors quickly and easily.

System Requirements: You must have a CD-ROM drive, and in order to read the CD you must use either the Family Archive Viewer (version 4.0 or higher), which is available as a free download at http://www.genealogical.com/content/dlfav6.html, or Family Tree Maker for Windows, version 4.0 or higher (Family Tree Maker software can be ordered from www.FamilyTreeMaker.com).

To access information on our Family Archive CDs using the Family Archive Viewer:

1. Install the Family Archive Viewer CD or download it from http://www.genealogy.com/dlfav6.html.
2. Start the Viewer if it is not already running
3. Insert the CD you wish to view into the CD-ROM drive. If you have 2 or more CD-ROM drives, the CD must be placed in the first one.
4. The CD should open automatically, but users of later versions of the Family Archive Viewer must click the CD/magnifying glass icon in the top toolbar (above the template in some versions) to read the CD.
5. When the screen entitled “About this Family Archive�? appears, click OK where prompted.

To access information on our Family Archive CDs using Family Tree Maker:

1. Start your Family Tree Maker and open a Family File. (If the program is already running, skip to Step 2.)
2. Insert the CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive. (If you have 2 or more CD-ROM drives, the CD must be placed in the first one.)
3. From the View menu, select Family Finder, or select the Family Finder icon from the toolbar.
4. For FTM 2005, FTM 2006, or Version 16 or later: From the View menu, select Data CD, then View CD.

To search the CD for names, select the Search Expert button in the top right of your screen, then select "Search this archive for someone NOT from your Family File." You can also search for names by using the Index.

Note: If a window opens that contains a list of files on the CD, simply close it.