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.

Presidents without posterity

American History, Family Stories, , ,

After our recent presidential election, and following up on my recent post regarding some interesting facts about presidential descendants, this post relates to our presidents who do not have any descendants. There are actually quite a few in this category – almost one out of four. While only one president never married (James Buchanan), several presidents had no children, or their children died young or as adults, and in one case a president’s descendants died out after several generations.

Presidents with no living descendants:

Continue reading Presidents without posterity →

Presidential generations

American History, Family Stories, News, , ,
President John Tyler. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The news of the recent death of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr., aged 95, grandson of 10th U.S. President John Tyler (1790-1862), leaves just his younger brother, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, aged 91, as the last grandchild of a president who was born during the administration of George Washington, and whose term in office began twenty years before the Civil War. I’ve always been fascinated when hearing that John Tyler had two living grandsons and would occasionally confirm their longevity. The reason President Tyler has such extended generations is due to a second marriage at fifty-four years old, in the last year of his presidency, which resulted in seven children born between 1846 and 1860, the youngest when Tyler was seventy years old. Continue reading Presidential generations →

Summer spots: Part Three

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , ,
“World’s End” in Hingham

Finishing up this series on places my family enjoyed during our socially distant summer, I move now from the North Shore to the South Shore, to “World’s End” in Hingham. This Trustees property was designed by the well-known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1890 at the request of owner John Reed Brewer, with the intention of creating a 163 home residential subdivision. While the drives were cut, the development never came to fruition, and the land, consisting of four coastal drumlins extending into Hingham Harbor (with views of the Boston skyline), has been preserved as a setting for recreation since 1967, after the land was donated by John’s grandson, the poet [John] Wilmon Brewer (1895-1998). Continue reading Summer spots: Part Three →

Matrilineal mergers: Part Two

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,
Gravestone of Mary E. (Young) Peltz, courtesy of findagrave.

My prior post on my own matrilineal ancestry and merged names continues with my father’s matrilineal line. My paternal grandmother’s parents were both natives of Philadelphia, and she recorded many of her ancestors and their siblings in a family Bible I used early on in my genealogical research. She identified her matrilineal great-grandmother as Mary E. Young (died 1900), wife of John Lentz Peltz (1819-1876). The Bible identifies her father as Peter Young, but does not list a mother, although it does list Mary’s siblings as Peter, Sarah, Eliza, Philip, Margaret, and David. Mary and her husband John were born, married, and died in Philadelphia, and several generations of her husband’s family are treated in a 1948 Peltz genealogy; a 1950 supplement even included my father’s older sister. Continue reading Matrilineal mergers: Part Two →

Summer spots: Part Two

Collections, Research Methods, Royal Lines, , , ,

To continue my look at outdoor spots my family enjoyed this socially distant summer, I now will talk about Appleton Farms in Ipswich and Hamilton, not too far from the Crane Estate. The Trustees website describes Appleton farm as the “gift of Colonel Francis R. Appleton, Jr. and his wife Joan, [and] one of the oldest continuously operating farms in the country, established in 1638 and maintained by nine generations of the Appleton family.”

During our two visits to Appleton Farm this summer, my family and I found three monuments (there are more) to members of the Appleton family, the first to the above Joan Egleston Appleton (1912-2006), and then monuments to Col. Appleton’s parents – Francis R. Appleton (1854-1929) and Fanny L. Appleton (1864-1958).[1] Continue reading Summer spots: Part Two →

Summer spots: Part One

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,
Even the birds are socially distancing at Crane Beach. August 2020

With this most unusual summer now coming to an end, my family of four spent a lot more time together and got to enjoy some outdoor spots within an hour’s drive from Boston. We visited several spots owned by the Trustees of the Reservations and, as a way to remember this time, I’ve done some genealogical research on people historically associated with these places. The first place I’ll discuss is Crane Beach on Crane Estate.

Last summer, our staff outing was to nearby Castle Hill – obviously this summer we were unable to do any such outing. This property was purchased in 1910 by Richard Teller Crane, Jr. (1873-1931), president of the Chicago-based Crane Co. (manufacturer of plumbing supplies and other goods), which he had inherited from his father. Continue reading Summer spots: Part One →

Matrilineal mergers: Part One

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,
Jefferson County, Kentucky Marriage Licenses and Bonds, 1810-1814, showing the 1814 bond between William Shake and Stephen Smith.

An “added” middle name is something that comes up quite a lot when seeing family trees online and can sometimes be difficult to detect. Middle names in the eighteenth century in the present-day United States are rare, and even though they gained popularity during the nineteenth century, numerous people get their mother’s maiden name (or what a descendant thinks it is) added into a name online.

I’ve always been interested in matrilineal lines, and seeing how far back I could trace my mother’s mother’s mother, etc. Continue reading Matrilineal mergers: Part One →

‘Discredited descendants’

American History, Family Stories, Mayflower 2020, ,

Recently a colleague was interviewed for a UK radio show concerning his Mayflower ancestor Governor William Bradford and noticed an entry on a Wikipedia page regarding William Bradford’s descendants. I have long been aware of Hugh Hefner’s Mayflower line, as this has been mentioned in most of his biographies, and he even named his youngest child Cooper Bradford Hefner. Gary Boyd Roberts included the line (see below) in his recent publication, The Mayflower 500. Looking at the line over the years, I have never seen anything wrong with it. Continue reading ‘Discredited descendants’ →

Omission vs. commission

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,
Detail of Lippitt manuscript, 2020

When I “hand-off” a genealogical manuscript, it can be some time before the work is handed back to me with queries from the copyeditor. Occasionally in that time, more resources may emerge (or become more accessible), and my own choices might have evolved with regard to ways of “ending” research where no solution was found.

While I will look at online trees for possibilities, and may put clues in brackets, my general practice is to remove them later on if I can find no supporting documentation. In a roundtable discussion when asked about this, Robert Charles Anderson said he would prefer to “commit the sin of omission versus the sin of commission.” Continue reading Omission vs. commission →

Hamiltonian errors

American History, Family Stories, Royal Lines, , , ,
Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1806. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton premiered on Disney+, I enjoyed watching the musical with my family. (My seven-year-old daughter’s favorite character was King George III!) This prompted me to look a bit more at Alexander Hamilton’s genealogy, which I had worked on a little bit years ago. Gary Boyd Robert’s The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants shows a royal descent back from James II, King of Scotland (died 1460), through Alexander’s father James Hamilton of the West Indies. (Patrilineal descendants of Alexander have taken Y-DNA tests and matched descendants of related Scottish Hamilton families, for those various tall tales questioning Alexander’s paternity.) Continue reading Hamiltonian errors →