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.

How to keep a surname going?

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,
The poet James Russell Lowell

Reading Scott Steward’s post about surnames being changed to keep another family name going reminded me of two examples we encountered when we wrote The Descendants of Judge John Lowell of Newburyport, Massachusetts together.

The first example is relatively straightforward. This involved the descendants of the poet James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). James had three daughters and one son, but only his daughter Mabel survived childhood. She married Edward Burnett and had three sons – James Russell Lowell Burnett (b. 1873), Joseph Burnett (b. 1874), and Francis Lowell Burnett (b. 1878). In 1890, Mabel’s eldest son James had his name changed to James Burnett Lowell to continue his maternal grandfather’s surname. Continue reading How to keep a surname going? →

The name’s the same

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, ,
Asa Thurston Child
My great-great-great-grandfather Asa Thurston Child (1820-1860), through whom 7/10 of these Child lines, and 8/12 of these Bowen lines, descend.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my grandfather was raised in the northeastern Connecticut town of Woodstock, a town away from where I grew up. His ancestry can pretty much be summed up as “New England Yankee,” largely descending from families that arrived in Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s and 1640s. Settled by English people in 1686, Woodstock was originally called “New Roxbury,” after the town in Massachusetts from which most of the original English settlers migrated, and was part of Massachusetts until annexed by Connecticut in 1749. With a limited number of families to marry, this quarter of my ancestry features a large number of cousin marriages. I have ten unique descents from my patrilineal immigrant ancestors, Benjamin and Mary (Bowen) Child of Roxbury, and twelve from Mary’s parents, Griffith and Margaret (Fleming) Bowen, also of Roxbury and Boston. Continue reading The name’s the same →

The Harding DNA Study

American History, Family Stories, News, Technology, , ,
Harding chart_2
Harding family tree, showing the relationships predicted by recently-announced autosomal DNA tests. Click on the image to expand it.

I was fascinated by the story released in The New York Times last Wednesday regarding the DNA research to help establish that Warren G. Harding had had a child with his mistress Nan Britton. Continue reading The Harding DNA Study →

In search of family photos: Part Two

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,
Child photo 3
Four generations in the late 1920s. From left: in his father’s arms, Gilbert Wayne Helman III (1926-2010); Gilbert Wayne Helman, Jr. (1906-1985); Gilbert Wayne Helman, Sr. (1882-1945); and Herbert Heath Helman (1854-1931).

As a personal challenge, after seeing a few genealogist friends on Facebook post ancestor charts with photographs of their ancestors back to (in many cases) their great-great-grandparents, I decided to see how “complete” my collection of ancestral photos was.

Turning my attention to photos of my paternal grandmother’s family, I contacted several cousins and arranged to meet my second cousin in Pennsylvania. He also had several photos which he allowed me to take back to Boston. Unfortunately, most of these were not identified. We were able to identify our great-great-grandfather, Herbert Heath Helman, as he posed in a picture with this cousin’s father as a baby in the late 1920s. Continue reading In search of family photos: Part Two →

In search of family photos: Part One

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , , ,
Child photo 1
Click on the image to expand it.

As a personal challenge, after seeing a few genealogist friends on Facebook post ancestor charts with photographs of their ancestors back to (in many cases) their great-great-grandparents, I decided to see how “complete” my collection of ancestral photos was. I have quite a few photos myself and have scanned many that other relatives have had over the years. This has often been a result of contacting second or third cousins, usually with around a 5-10% success rate when a relative actually turns out to have photographs of our common ancestors. Continue reading In search of family photos: Part One →

Massachusetts court cases setting precedents on marriage law

American History, Family Stories, News, , ,
Ishmael Coffee Marriage Cropped
Marriage intention for Ishmael Coffee and Hannah Gay

As the Supreme Court announces its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges relating to recognition of same-sex marriage nationally, I am reminded of how nineteenth-century judicial cases became relevant to the marriage equality cases of the last twelve years. While dozens of cases and laws relating to same-sex marriage have been discussed since 2003, the primary catalyst was the landmark Massachusetts case of Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, which found that same-sex couples had the right to marry in the Bay State. Marriages began on 17 May 2004, but our then-Governor Mitt Romney seized upon a 1913 state law (the Uniform Marriage Evasion Act), which stated: Continue reading Massachusetts court cases setting precedents on marriage law →

More accessible (and legible) probate records

American History, Collections, Research Methods, Technology, , ,
Probate 2
Will of Thomas Nelson of Rowley, 1719

As the majority of the probate record research I do is at NEHGS and on microfilm, I’ve gotten used to what is often a multi-step process in viewing the records. This varies state by state and county by county, but some relatively recent digitization efforts have made access to some of the records significantly easier.

The county I will discuss in this post is Essex County, Massachusetts. For this case, my usual process for accessing records involved checking a book index first, which would provide the name, year, town of residence, and docket number. Then I would check the microfilm index to dockets, and see an outline of the given docket with the various volumes and pages on which the probate record was transcribed. Then I would get each particular probate record volume to examine each record. Continue reading More accessible (and legible) probate records →

First Settlers of Connecticut

American History, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, ,

First Setters of CT coverOther than Vermont, the five New England states had significant European-derived settlements in the early colonial period. In late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “genealogical dictionaries” were produced for the states of Rhode Island,[1] Massachusetts,[2] and Maine and New Hampshire (together).[3] Such a dictionary was not completed for Connecticut, but Royal Ralph Hinman had made an earlier attempt in the mid-nineteenth century which can serve as an initial reference when researching seventeenth-century families of Connecticut. Continue reading First Settlers of Connecticut →

Something to love in Civil War pensions

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,
Child 2
First page from David Franklin’s 1863 letter to his sister, from his Civil War pension file, application #236373.

Following up on my post last month regarding Revolutionary War pensions that can have troves of information, I remembered another subsection within Civil War pensions that are almost always filled with immense amounts of genealogical and biographical data. These are the “Parents’ Pensions.”

While most of us are probably familiar with veterans’ and widows’ pensions, the parents’ pension was claimed by one or both of the parents of a deceased Civil War soldier. The pension act of 27 July 1868 stated: Continue reading Something to love in Civil War pensions →

Why I Love Revolutionary War Pension Records

Family Stories, Research Methods

Sheilagh Doerfler’s recent post about finding Revolutionary War ancestors reminded me of the story I tell people about how much I love Revolutionary War pension records. They often contain significant genealogical information—but the first time I ever consulted these records, they yielded much more material than I ever would have expected.

In the early 1990s, I was doing the paperwork do get my father into the National Huguenot Society by right of his descent from our ancestor Abraham Tourtellotte (ca. 1655–ca. 1704) of Newport, Rhode Island. (I could not join then because I was not yet 18 years old.) The American generations went from Rhode Island—specifically, from Newport to Providence and Glocester—into Thompson, Connecticut, in the northeastern corner of that state. They generally stayed within a few towns of Thompson afterward. As I began to obtain every birth, marriage, and death record, I struggled to find the birth of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Lucy Tourtellotte. Continue reading Why I Love Revolutionary War Pension Records →