Monthly Archives: July 2023

Uncovering Stories of People in Poverty

American History, , ,
The old administration building at Tewksbury Hospital, formerly the Tewksbury Almshouse.

I recently visited the Boston City Archives, located near the Charles River in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The city archives house city departmental records, school records, city census records, jail records, and more. For anyone with ancestors who lived in Boston during and after the 19th century, it’s a valuable repository for in-depth research.

One of the collections I reviewed during my visit was the records of the Temporary Home for Women and Children. I’ve been inspired by the work of Irish genealogist Daniel Loftus through Project Infant, which documents the names of residents of women and children’s homes in Ireland. Many of the residents sadly died in these institutions, and their names were lost to history. I was curious about what records were available for similar institutions in the United States. Continue reading Uncovering Stories of People in Poverty →

How a Pirate Shipwreck Near Cape Cod Became a Local Legend

American History, , ,
Map showing location of the Whydah Gally wreck

“For many years after this shipwreck, a man, of a very singular and frightful aspect, used, every spring and autumn, to be seen travelling on the Cape, who was supposed to have been one of Bellamy’s crew.” —B.A. Botkin, A Treasury of New England Folklore; Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of Yankee Folk

In April of 1717, the fleet of famed Golden Age pirate Samuel Bellamy was caught in a violent nor’easter off the coast of Cape Cod. Down went the fleet and its flagship, the Whydah Gally, into the depths of the Atlantic, along with its vast hoard of treasure, its captain, and all but a few surviving crew members. Though this intense pirate shipwreck is well documented in primary records, most notably by Cotton Mather, the sensational nature of the story of pirate captain Samuel Bellamy and the Whydah Gally eventually caused it to sink from reality into the realm of legend.

Pirate stories capture the imaginations of children and adults alike. These tales of swashbucklers, buried treasure, violence, and adventure on the open ocean are told and retold time and time again—so much so that they often exist on the margins of fact and fiction. The story of the Whydah Gally and Samuel Bellamy is no exception. In the three centuries since, folktales and ghost stories of the shipwreck have sprung up all along the New England coast. In some, the story is framed as a tragic romance—in others, a tale of revenge. Many of these stories feature a wandering ghost searching the shoreline. Continue reading How a Pirate Shipwreck Near Cape Cod Became a Local Legend →

Yes, the Lakes are My Cousins

Family Stories, ,

Photograph of lake with caption: George Huntington Lyman Memorial LakesIn 2017, my Uncle Lyman visited me in Northfield, Minnesota, while I was attending Carleton College. It was the summer before my junior year, and this was the first time anyone from my family had visited me on campus since freshman move-in day, so I was eager to give him the tour. Of course, the highlight of the tour was our walk around Lyman Lakes—two small, manmade lakes on the east side of campus. Lyman joked that they were named after him. It’s not the first time he’s made a similar joke—Lyman placenames tend to pop up everywhere we go. There’s a Lyman Lake in Washington, and a Lyman Lake State Park in Arizona. There are two Lyman ponds in Greater Boston, one of which is attached to the Lyman Estate in Waltham. When my uncle visits later this year, I’m sure we’ll visit both.

While these are just jokes, I have a feeling that there could be a touch of truth to them. If my uncle and I really have a familial connection to the picturesque lakes on my college campus, or the man who commissioned their construction, I’d like to know. A quick stop to my alma mater’s information page on the lakes supplied a good starting point for my research. The lakes were built around 1916-1917 in honor of George Huntington Lyman (1882-1902) of Minneapolis, Minnesota.1 A campus viewbook from 1926 named Lyman Lakes as the “George Huntington Lyman Memorial Lakes.”2 Continue reading Yes, the Lakes are My Cousins →

A New Tool for Interpreting Central and Eastern European Maps

Technology, , , , ,
Main interface for Maps of the Past

Recently, the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, part of the Polish Academy of Sciences, unveiled a new interactive map feature on their website: Mapy z Przeszłością (Maps of the Past). The online tool superimposes historical maps over a modern map of Central and Eastern Europe, allowing researchers to visualize and compare shifting borders and place names over time. The turbulent nature of Poland’s history, with its boundaries expanding, contracting, and disappearing over several centuries, is reflected in the geographic range of the maps available as overlays. The new map tool is useful for users with ancestry from modern Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, or the historical territories of the German, Russian and Austrian Empires.

In Central and Eastern European genealogy, you will encounter placenames that changed depending on who controlled an area and when. This complicates research as we sort out and weigh the accuracy of the various placenames that are found in American sources. For example, researching a Lithuanian immigrant ancestor, you may find that their town of origin is reported in its Polish form in American sources, reflecting the official name from the early nineteenth century. The same town or village may be recorded in another record with an approximation of its Russian name, from when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. The town name may also appear in its Lithuanian form, which became official in the twentieth century. Researchers with Jewish ancestry may also find a distinct Yiddish form of their ancestral town or village recorded in American sources. Continue reading A New Tool for Interpreting Central and Eastern European Maps →

Becoming a Genealogist at Age 10

Uncategorized, ,
Me standing outside NEHGS headquarters on September 24, 2011

You could be 10, 43, or 85. You could be a beginner or an expert. But if you love genealogy as much as I do, you know how special a visit to the headquarters of New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), now known as the American Ancestors Research Center, can be. When my dad took me there for the first time at age 10, I was a total beginner. The only thing I could have been an expert at back then was watching SpongeBob SquarePants.

A few months earlier, I had asked my grandmother about our family history for the first time. I had no idea her answer would kickstart my passion for genealogy. She told me to wait, went upstairs, and came back with a small blue book about the Mayflowerpassengers who sailed to Plymouth in 1620. In the back was a record of two direct lines connecting my grandmother to the families of passengers John Alden and Francis Cooke. I had always felt drawn to history—I especially loved sitting in libraries all day, and watching the History Channel—but something about seeing connections between my family and historical legends on the page excited me more than anything else. Continue reading Becoming a Genealogist at Age 10 →