It is a curious and interesting fact that the year following the coming of Elijah, the British government passed laws requiring the proper recording of records, and the filing of them in one central place. In the year 1844, the New England Historical and Genealogical Society was organized in Boston; in 1869 the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society was incorporated in New York. Other societies have been organized from time to time in America, principally in the New England States, and they are publishing quarterly genealogical magazines and registers, family records, etc.; and are continually disseminating information regarding our ancestors, that is useful to the Latter-day Saints. The New England Society is publishing, as they express it in their magazine, "by a fund set apart from the bequest of Robert Henry Eddy," to the society, the vital records (births, marriages and deaths) of towns in Massachusetts, whose records are not already printed from the beginning to the year 1850. This is a tremendous work, many volumes of these records have been published, and others are in course of preparation.[I] Eventually they will be printed by this and other similar societies in Massachusetts, a state that has set the pace for her sister states to follow. There, and in other parts, these societies are protected and encouraged by legislative enactment. Besides these numerous societies engaged in this noble work, there are multitudes of individual laborers who are publishing at their own expense family genealogies and vital records that extend back for hundreds of years. [Footnote I: Other societies in Massachusetts are also preparing vital records, among them are the Topsfield Historical Society, the Essex Antiquarian Society, the "Systematic History Fund," Franklin P. Rice, trustee. Of this work Mr. Rice, who is a pioneer in genealogical research, says: