Monthly Archives: October 2019

Call to ministry

American History, Family Stories, , ,
The Rev. Thomas Cary posed for this portrait by John Singleton Copley ca. 1770. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

American Ancestors recently shared, via social media and The Weekly Genealogist, the news that the Rev. Thomas Cary’s diary (owned by NEHGS) was mentioned in a Ben Franklin’s World podcast. His diary was among the documents Susan Clair Imbaratto consulted in writing Sarah Gray Cary from Boston to Grenada: Shifting Fortunes of an American Family, 1753–1825. Combined with the anniversary of my own visit to the Chelsea, Massachusetts house in which Sarah (Gray) Cary and her husband — Thomas’s brother Samuel — lived, this news seemed like a clear invitation to write another blog post about the family.  

This time I wanted to focus on Thomas’s life as a minister, a topic very close to my heart since my husband is also a minister. While the life of an eighteenth/nineteenth-century Congregational cleric has some profound differences from that of a twentieth/twenty-first-century Episcopal priest, I’ve found many diary entries that resonate with personal experience.  Continue reading Call to ministry →

The Middlesex Wrap

American History, Collections, Research Methods, ,

When writing my previous post on Middlesex County court records, I knew there was an important source I was forgetting, but I could not dredge it up from my archival memory. Turns out, it is the article by Melinde Lutz Sanborn [now Byrne] in a Great Migration Newsletter from 1998 on, what else?, “Middlesex County Court Papers.” Melinde’s treatment is exhaustive, although in some cases superseded by twenty years of subsequent changes in location and access to the records. Still, this is a guide that everyone who uses these records should keep in their “important stuff to know” binders.[1]  Continue reading The Middlesex Wrap →

Top 10 published resources

American History, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , , ,

In August I had the pleasure of conducting a webinar entitled “Top 10 Published Resources for Early New England Research.” Given the tremendous genealogical interest in this time period and for this geographic area, I thought Vita Brevis readers might enjoy a series of posts based on the content of the webinar.

This first post on the topic addresses the criteria for being considered a top resource and includes a synopsis of one of the “Top 10s” on our list. Future posts will include the other publications on the “Top 10” list and conclude with an Honorable Mention list. Continue reading Top 10 published resources →