All posts by Scott C. Steward

About Scott C. Steward

Scott C. Steward was the founding editor at Vita Brevis; he served as NEHGS Editor-in-Chief 2013-2022. He is the author, co-author, or editor of genealogies of the Ayer, Le Roy, Lowell, Saltonstall, Thorndike, and Winthrop families. His articles have appeared in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, NEXUS, New England Ancestors, American Ancestors, and The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, and he has written book reviews for the Register, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

“Socially, she is not received”

American History, NEHGS Collections, , , , ,
Oscar Wilde by Sarony
Oscar Wilde by Sarony. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

A frequent theater-goer and enthusiastic pedestrian in the 1860s, by the early 1880s – following the death of her husband – Regina Shober Gray was going out rarely, and only to the houses of relatives and close friends. This does not mean that she lost her interest in the goings-on around Boston or, indeed, among the celebrated and notorious people of her day.[1]

1 Beacon Hill Place, Boston, Wednesday, 8 February 1882: Laura Howe[2] has sent Mary[3] a most humorous parody ‘After Oscar Wilde.’[4] She says she and Harry [Richards] agreed that the only thing to be done with his book of poems was to burn it, that there were some pretty things amid the filth! The ‘Swinburne’[5] School of poetry is certainly open to reprobation in the matter of good taste & pure morals! Continue reading “Socially, she is not received” →

ICYMI: Genealogical complexities

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, ICYMI, Research Methods, ,

[Author’s note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 3 September 2014.]

Amy Lowell2When I started out as a genealogical writer, I followed the model of genealogies published earlier in the twentieth century. The genealogical world they depicted was an orderly one, with generation after generation born in one place, married in another, and buried in a third. The greatest dramas I faced in writing my first book (The Sarsaparilla Kings, published in 1993) concerned cousins who deplored the information I had uncovered on their brief first or second marriages, information they were reluctant to see in print. Continue reading ICYMI: Genealogical complexities →

A new century

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Frances Giles Boucher
Frances Giles Boucher

My review of almost sixty years’ worth of Baltimore city directories has yielded much information on my great-great-great-grandfather E. W. Boucher; my great-great-grandfather William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899) and his two wives; and many of William Jr.’s children and -in-laws. In the 1904 city directory, we find Mrs. Frances Boucher[1] at 1718 Linden Avenue with her sons Louis A. and Carlos H. Boucher, clerks. Thomas J. Wentworth, “Proprietor of Saturday Review” and husband of the younger Frances Boucher, is nearby at 1731 Linden Avenue; his temporary office in the year of the Great Baltimore Fire is at 17 East Saratoga Street. Continue reading A new century →

“Brought to ‘attention’”

American History, Family Stories, , , , ,
FJB and Barbara for VB
My mother and her father, Frederick J. Bell, in Falls Church, Virginia.

The recent gift of some family photos reminds me that, well as in some ways I knew my maternal grandfather, there will always be things one cannot know, save by lucky chance. My grandfather was a career Naval officer, one who later went into business and then, in retirement, was ordained an Episcopal minister. A native of Norfolk in Virginia, Frederick Jackson Bell (1903–1994) was appointed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1919, when he was 16, and for the next 28 years he led a peripatetic existence, from Scotland and the Mediterranean to California, Hawaii, and the Pacific Theatre during the Second World War. Continue reading “Brought to ‘attention’” →

An 1890 census substitute

American History, Family Stories, ,
William Boucher
William Boucher Jr. (1822-1899)

As we are missing (most of) the 1890 Federal Census, the value of city directories for the years around 1890 is all the greater. Looking at the Boucher family of Baltimore, the 1880s proved somewhat chaotic, with the family shop and household changing location (or perhaps just street address) more than once. As the Boucher sons grew up, they joined the family business, William Maria Boucher (1867–1921) in 1885 and Louis Albert Boucher (1871–1914?) three years later. As in 1888, Wm. Boucher Jr.,[1] “mus[ical] inst[rument]s,” appeared in the Baltimore city directory with a shop at 414 East Baltimore Street and a residence at 716 West Lanvale Street in 1889, 1890, and 1891.[2] Continue reading An 1890 census substitute →

“An elderly groom”

American History, NEHGS Collections, , ,

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue mall features monumental statues on most blocks, and the block closest to NEHGS boasts a representation of Alexander Hamilton given to the city by Benjamin Tyler Reed (1801–1874). Mr. Reed, a founder of the Episcopal Theological School, appears with some frequency in Regina Shober Gray’s diary, and it is safe to say that to Mrs. Gray he did not present a very heroic figure.

I’ve already written about Mrs. Gray’s dismay at her friend Mary Coolidge’s engagement to Mr. Reed.[1] The Grays and the Coolidges were close – Mrs. Gray writes on 23 January 1860 of having had “a few minutes racy chat with Mary C.”; in fact, as was usually the case in the Gray diary, Mary Coolidge was also a Gray family connection (as the younger sister of Mrs. Gray’s stepmother’s brother’s sister-in-law).

Boston, 16 April 1860: “An unusually full meeting of the ‘circle’[2] at Mary Coolidge’s, and a very entertaining one too. She was full of spirits and kept us on the broad laugh with her droll way of telling things.” Continue reading “An elderly groom” →

Mining Baltimore city directories

American History, Collections, Family Stories, ,
William Boucher
William Boucher Jr.

I have been reviewing Baltimore city directories with a view to better understanding the movements of the William Boucher Jr. household during the nineteenth century. In 1860, the year of the Federal Census, my great-great-grandfather Wm. Boucher Jr., musical inst[rument] maker,[1] appears in Woods’ Baltimore City Directory with a shop at 38 East Baltimore Street and a residence at 77 Cathedral Street.[2] The Census gives a little more information on the Boucher household in that year: William Bucha [sic], 37, music dealer and native of Baden [one of the German States], was living in the Fourth Ward of Baltimore with his wife Mary A., 29, and their children Sophia, 11, Frank, 6, and Victoria [sic], 8 months.[3] William and Mary Boucher would have nine children in all, and these three were the longest-lived: Elizabeth Sophia Boucher (1849–1876), Francis Xavier Boucher (1853–1927), and Victor Emile Boucher (1860–1878). Continue reading Mining Baltimore city directories →

“On the most reasonable terms”

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,
Full monument_2
The main monument in the Boucher plot at New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore County. Photo courtesy of Constance Burch McGrain

A recent Google search brought me to a page of links to various Baltimore city directories, and I thought it might be useful to make some notes sorting out my Baltimore great-great-grandfather William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899) and his father, E. W. Boucher. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my mother’s stories on the Bouchers tended to dwell on their descent from the court painter François (1703–1770), but in fact the Baltimore Bouchers were musicians before they were painters, and the mid-nineteenth-century father and son were businessmen as much as they were artists.[1]

In 1845, Wm. Boucher’s music store is found at two addresses on Holliday Street, but it appears (from the directory’s “Removals, Alterations, Additions” page) that the reference is to one man, first at 11 and then at 4 Holliday Street. Continue reading “On the most reasonable terms” →

Another brick in the wall

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,
J Frank Bell
J. Frank Bell (1878-1944), Justice of the Peace and son of John Francis Bell (1839-1905).

As I’ve mentioned before, genealogical research favors the resourceful — and the patient. One of my outstanding brick walls, a man who has defeated generations of researchers in my mother’s family, is my great-great-grandfather John Francis Bell (1839–1905). Now, while nothing I’m going to say here will provide anything so pleasing as a breakthrough on this mysterious fellow, I think (and hope) there will be value in the journey, in advance of reaching some sort of destination.

I have written elsewhere about strategies for Google searches and the uses of periodic name searches (under every conceivable name variant) when dealing with recalcitrant relatives. Continue reading Another brick in the wall →

General Grant in Singapore

American History, Collections, News, , , ,

An autograph letter from former president Ulysses S. Grant[1] is a completely unexpected treasure in my grandfather’s box of family papers. The envelope holding the letter is not in Grant’s hand; evidently Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen (1819?–1898), to whom Grant wrote it in April 1879, handed it on to one of my grandfather’s relatives – at a guess, my great-great-uncle Robert Livingston Beeckman (1866–1935), then a boy of thirteen. Coincidentally, another family connection mentioned in the letter is my great-grandfather Steward’s kinsman, Rear Admiral William Edgar Le Roy (1818–1898).

The letter itself is rather a travelogue, although General Grant is at pains to explain his apparent discourtesy to Richard Wigginton Thompson, the Secretary of the Navy. An interesting postscript is Grant’s compliment to Admiral Ammen on his “paper on the [Nicaraguan] Inter-Oceanic canal”[2]: the Panama Canal would not be built for another quarter-century. Continue reading General Grant in Singapore →