All posts by Christopher C. Child

About Christopher C. Child

Chris Child has worked for various departments at NEHGS since 1997 and became a full-time employee in July 2003. He has been a member of NEHGS since the age of eleven. He has written several articles in American Ancestors, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and The Mayflower Descendant. He is the co-editor of The Ancestry of Catherine Middleton (NEHGS, 2011), co-author of The Descendants of Judge John Lowell of Newburyport, Massachusetts (Newbury Street Press, 2011) and Ancestors and Descendants of George Rufus and Alice Nelson Pratt (Newbury Street Press, 2013), and author of The Nelson Family of Rowley, Massachusetts (Newbury Street Press, 2014). Chris holds a B.A. in history from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

ICYMI: Cambridge Cameos

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

[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 26 April 2017.]

Reading Alicia Crane Williams’s post on Sex in Middlesex reminded me of another great work by Roger Thompson – Cambridge Cameos – Stories of Life in Seventeenth-Century New England, which contains forty-four sketches from the period 1651 to 1686. They are fascinating stories involving mostly ordinary people. Some of the more colorful chapters cover Brutality or Bloodsucking; Town versus Gown; Witchcraft or Madness; and A Subversive Physician. These vignettes are based on thousands of original documents Thompson examined that provide a rare chance to hear firsthand accounts of many seventeenth-century New Englanders. Continue reading ICYMI: Cambridge Cameos →

Remembering Denise Nickerson

Genealogical Writing, Mayflower 2020, ,
Some of the WILLY WONKA cast; Denise Nickerson is on Gene Wilder’s right. Courtesy of David Allen Lambert

As a child, I read every book by Roald Dahl; Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was one of my favorite movies. I can still say most of the dialogue by heart and occasionally listen to the film’s soundtrack. I was saddened to hear last week of the death of child actress Denise Nickerson, who portrayed Violet Beauregarde. As I often do when someone in the news passes away, I decided to see if I could find anything of interest on her family history, recognizing her surname often has connections to colonial Cape Cod. Continue reading Remembering Denise Nickerson →

Mayor Pete’s cousins

American History, Genealogical Writing, , , ,

I have been exploring the ancestry of the twenty-plus 2020 presidential candidates. Although I will likely wait some time until the number is reduced before reporting on most of them, I was recently surprised to find in the ancestry of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, via a small amount of his New England ancestry, connections to two prominent figures in the United Kingdom! Continue reading Mayor Pete’s cousins →

A Loyalist!

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Grave marker of Daniel Ward (1700-1777). Courtesy of Findagrave.com

As this month will mark the 244th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord (where my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Jason Russell was killed by British troops), I decided to do a search to see how many patriot ancestors I had. I used the “Ancestor Search” on the website of the Daughters of the American Revolution. This does not necessarily identify all patriots, but rather those for whom a descendant has joined that organization, with caveats that not all service may qualify today.

Using this search, I found 23 direct ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War. I also know of at least one more ancestor, Joseph Tourtellotte, who was not listed here, but had a wonderful pension record, bringing my total to 24. Continue reading A Loyalist! →

A family thicket

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, Technology, , , , ,

When people ask me which DNA test I recommend, I turn around and ask them some questions. If what they are after is taking is an “autosomal DNA test,” I may tell them different reasons to take a test with Ancestry or 23andme (and then usually recommend they also upload their Raw DNA onto GEDMatch, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage to connect with more matches). While I have had many examples of successful connections with the first four sites, I had not any significant breakthroughs with MyHeritage until very recently. Continue reading A family thicket →

Challenging modern records

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, Technology, ,
A record generated for Meghan Markle’s great-grandmother.

In my post earlier this year, regarding preliminary research into the future Duchess of Sussex’s matrilineal ancestry, I indicated that I had ordered several additional twentieth-century records that might lead to corrections or additions. Fortunately, none of the new records seriously affect the lineage I presented, but obtaining one record was not so straightforward. Continue reading Challenging modern records →

Stolen identity

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

Every few months, we have a “Staff Research Night” at NEHGS, where staff members stay in the library after closing and work on their genealogy. Several of the staff genealogists assist staff members in other departments who might be new to genealogy or would like some guidance. Awhile back I worked with Rachel Adams, our Database Services Volunteer Coordinator. She was interested in learning more about her mother’s Jewish ancestry in Connecticut and New York. While we found several items, the ancestor who surprised us both was her great-grandfather, Albert Goldberg (1886–1932) of the Bronx. Continue reading Stolen identity →

Who’s Phebe?

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , ,

When a man married two women with the same first name in colonial America and the early post-revolutionary United States, genealogical misidentifications become more likely since the wife generally took her husband’s name in all subsequent records. Children may get assigned to the wrong mother; in this case, the two wives were “merged” into one wife. Continue reading Who’s Phebe? →

Abel, Jabel, or Isabel?

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, ,
Click on images to expand them.

A recent example of using transcribed records reminded me that many genealogists who wrote turn of the century family histories were using the same original records that were later transcribed – and thus the records that are often used today. Sometimes the genealogist read the records better than the transcriber.

Rehoboth Vital Records, as transcribed by James Newell Arnold in his 1897 publication, list the following children of Amos and Sarah Carpenter, taken from Original volume 3, page 192, shown above left. Continue reading Abel, Jabel, or Isabel? →

One and the same

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , ,

A post I had written awhile back on twins in my father’s family included my conclusion that my ancestor Sarah Johnson, who married Nathaniel Eaton in Ashford, Connecticut in 1755, was the daughter of Maverick and Bathsheba (Janes) Johnson of nearby Lebanon, Connecticut, which gave her a different set of parents than had been stated in family histories and papers.[1] My reasoning for this conclusion was largely ruling other possibilities out, and the interesting situation of several examples of twins in both Sarah’s proposed ancestral family and among her descendants. Still, at this point, I had no direct proof that Sarah was the daughter of Maverick and Bathsheba. Could I find any? Continue reading One and the same →