In Pittsfield, Mass., the Berkshire Middle Registry of Deeds maintains a collection of land records going back to the 1700s. They are still referenced today when resolving land disputes — a practice widespread across the Northeast. The Town of Brattleboro, Vermont, maintains land records back to 1813, and the first deed on record in Massachusetts' Hampden County Registry of Deeds is dated 1636.
Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes spoke with Berkshire Eagle reporter Nate Harrington about his reporting on Pittsfield's records archive, and how they remain relevant in daily life centuries after they were first filed.
Click the play button to listen to the full conversation.
Read Nate Harrington's reporting here: When a land dispute happens, records from the 1700s could be needed. That's why the Registry of Deeds exists
See the full interview transcript below.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Landes: Today we're speaking with Nate Harrington, a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle. We're talking about how centuries old records in Massachusetts continue to be well in use, not just in the Commonwealth, but across the Northeast.
We're we're talking about how these sometimes hundreds of year old records still play a role in modern life here in the Northeast. How did this come across your radar that something so improbable as centuries old documents being a presence in our daily lives?
Harrington: I cover housing here at the Eagle and one of the things I deal with a lot is the registry of deeds.
I was talking to them and and they elucidated me to this the first deed they have from 1761. Essentially if records aren't complete nowadays, you have to go back and back and back until eventually you find the right record and find the right deed that shows you who owns what land.
Landes: For those unfamiliar with how these might come up for people in 2026, what are some examples of how these documents play a role even now today?
Harrington: If there's any dispute between landowners about who owns what sliver of land, the registry of deeds is your answer.
A lot of times in these deeds, the land itself has has very interesting land markers. For example, sometimes the deeds will say 'five feet past this post' or 'five feet across from this sewer grate,' and that way you can locate exactly what the parcel is.
If there's ever a discussion or a debate about who owns what piece of land, the registry of deeds is going to have that information on hand and be able to finalize what who owns what.
Landes: We're both speaking today from Pittsfield, Mass., the hub of Berkshire County. Patricia Harris is the register of the Berkshire Middle District. She's the one handling these documents. As I understand it, she's something of a character, someone very passionate about this work.
Tell us about Patricia and what you've learned from her and what she brings to this job.
Harrington: She has a real passion for documents and you have to have a passion for this. These are very dense documents.
If you're deciding land disputes, you have to be very careful about how you document. As I was talking to her and understanding kind of the housing world in Berkshire County more, I realized that the registry itself was a very interesting place and it held a lot of really interesting history on its own.
Landes: It strikes me that this kind of opportunity to dig into, as we've been talking about, century old depictions of of legal landholdings in the area, it must tell quite a story about a world far before contemporary ways of transportation and communication were in place.
What have you learned about the Berkshire County of yore from digging into those files?
Harrington: I think one of the primary examples is the first document that the Registry of Deeds has right now, which is from 1761. It's when Elijah Williams sold 100 acres of land in New Framingham, which is present day Lanesboro, to his brother for "his love and affection."
Stuff like that just shows how different people thought about land back then. There were a couple old maps of Pittsfield where you got to see what the proprietors of Pittsfield brought. You got to see the namesakes for a lot of streets.
When I was driving down East Street this morning, I of course recognized that this is the place that I saw on the map and of course none of the buildings were there, but it just it allowed me to understand how Pittsfield has kind of built upon itself to become the city it is today.
Landes: It strikes me that this is something of a unique experience for this part of America.
Going out west, there's way less of a history of property and its many permutations over the decades and centuries.
Looking at Vermont or Hamden County just to the east of us here in Western Mass., what else does this say about the Northeast as as it stands out from the rest of the pack here in the United States?
Harrington: I'm glad you brought that up because something that Register Harris told me was there was no the nation was predated by the registry.
The registry and its form was started in 1640. The first registry in Berkshire County was 1761. So you get land records not only back to to this early colonial time, but you get even back further.
You get the original king's deeds, how the king signed off land to certain people, and how the original appropriations of land were given out.
Another part of it is we haven't known an America without having a registry. It's part of, I think, the whole ethos of American land ownership where we really do take pride in it. We take pride in what we own and we take pride in the amount we own. And there's a lot of disputes around that.
Landes: Bring this home by peering into the orb and looking into the future. What can we learn about the future looking ahead from from what lies within that building and within this treasure trove of documentation about how Berkshire County has been shaped over the centuries?
Harrington: I think the registry is gonna keep doing what the registry does. And the people 50 years from now will get to look at 2026 Berkshire County and 2026 Pittsfield and be like, 'here's the dealings there, here's what the planning map looked like, here's where housing was being built.'
It will help inform kind of the future generations and the future researchers about what life was like in Pittsfield. Because as much as census data is great, as much as all different forms of data are great, nothing really tells a story like the land, like the maps, like the planning, because it really shows where people lived, what they were doing, how they were changing, and how the city was changing.
