“I’m looking for information about my Ancestor…”
Many genealogists with an interest in Gouldsboro quickly exhaust online sources such as Ancestry.com, then send a general inquiry to GHS like the one above. And though we have some unique items in our collection that are of value for answering such questions, we are an all-volunteer organization with extremely limited resources. All are welcome to visit and conduct their own research at our Blance Archive. Few do.
So in response, we are building an “Archive Without Walls” by digitizing as much of our archival material as possible to make it accessible online in the coming years. In addition, GHS volunteers have digitized Gouldsboro’s Town and Vital Records dating back to 1790. Most of these will become available to the public in 2022. See our Online Collections page for more details.
Keep in mind…
Town Records for Gouldsboro begin in 1790 and were the responsibility of the Town Clerk. Initially, Vital records (Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Marriage intentions), tax and voter rolls, election results, and descriptions/accounts of all other Town business were recorded in the same volume, chronologically. Over time, record keeping became more sophisticated and separate books were maintained for specific purposes (for example Tax valuations were entered in separate annual ledgers beginning in 1868).
In 1892, the responsibility for maintaining Vital records shifted from the Town to the State. The Maine State Archives held the official copies of Vital records, the Town Clerk kept a copy. These are now kept by the State’s Vital Records Office.
In 1895, Winter Harbor split from Gouldsboro and became a separate town. So most 19thC documentation of Winter Harbor residents was recorded in Gouldsboro. This includes Town Records, tax records, and Vital records.
Tax Valuation Books (1868 – 1955). These are annual tax and voter rolls for the Town, available for public view at the Blance Archive. They include detailed ownership information about real property, buildings, boats, vehicles, domestic animals, and personal property. They are invaluable for tracking adult males in between censuses, and we hope eventually to have them digitized.
Sources with content specific to Gouldsboro
- Early Families of Gouldsboro — An indexed genealogy of Gouldsboro’s early families by Muriel Sampson Johnson. Published 1990 by Picton Press. Digitized and downloadable with permission of the author’s family.
- Gouldsboro Vital Records 1781-1898 — recently digitized versions of 1955 microfilms, available to view, once you create a free account with FamilySearch.org.
- Vital Records of Gouldsboro, Maine — Vital Records extracted and indexed from the microfilms cited above by Wilfred A. Cote. Published 2017 by Maine Genealogical Society and still in print.
- Cemeteries (recorded on this website) – Gouldsboro has at least 41. Some of these are on Find A Grave, but most are not. However, GHS has transcriptions done by local volunteers for almost all of them.
- Find A Grave – Cemetery transcriptions from the whole world, often an easier place to start than gigantic data bases like Ancestry.com
- MOCA Inscription Repositories – In addition to the MOCA Members Website, this is where you can find MOCA’s published cemetery transcriptions for the State of Maine.
- Winter Harbor Historical Society – WHHS also has a Museum and a Facebook page