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.

Family stories in official records

Family Stories, Research Methods,
CS passport photo with MBS
My great-grandparents’ joint passport

Ancestry.com has an interesting database category called Immigration & Travel, which includes a variety of passenger list and passport application databases. I have used them over the years to track members of my family as they traveled to and from Europe, Central and South America, the Hawaiian Islands and the Far East, and I invariably find colorful details to flesh out the prosaic ones. (I also sometimes find exact dates and places of birth that I’ve been unable to find elsewhere.) Continue reading Family stories in official records →

The Great Migration in Vita Brevis

Family Stories, News, ,
St Bartholomews Groton
St. Bartholomew’s Church, Groton, Suffolk

Over the last five months, Vita Brevis has featured a number of blog posts about the Great Migration Study Project and related subjects. Robert Charles Anderson, the project’s director, has written on the topic, as have Alicia Crane Williams and Roger Thompson. Bob’s posts tend to focus on his continuing research in this area, whether it is his trips to Salt Lake City to review a thorny question about identity or the latest literature on the subject as he prepares to write a book tentatively entitled Puritan Pedigrees: The Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England. Continue reading The Great Migration in Vita Brevis →

Remembering Deane Winthrop

Family Stories
Courtesy of Bill Boyington/ Findagrave.com

Last night I went to the monthly meeting of the Winthrop Improvement and Historical Association on the grounds of the Deane Winthrop House to hear John Winthrop Sears speak about his ancestral uncle. Deane2 Winthrop (1623–1704) was Governor John1 Winthrop’s sixth son (the third son by the Governor’s third marriage), and he long outlived his full and half-siblings. He did so in one of the oldest wood-framed houses in the Commonwealth, one continuously occupied since the seventeenth century, on Pulling Point – now the City of Winthrop. Continue reading Remembering Deane Winthrop →

Organizing a family reunion: Part Six

Family Stories, Research Methods
Three generations of Boucher women revised cropped
From left: Pauline Glidden Bell (1903-1968), Pauline Boucher Glidden (1875-1964), and Barbara Bell Steward (1932-1994).

William Boucher Jr. had children born over a period of forty years (1847–1887); his grandchildren were born between 1877 and 1925. Boucher’s great-grandchildren span more than a half century: the first was born in 1911 and the last, so far as I can tell, in 1965. I am a great-great-grandchild, born in the 1960s, and I think it quite likely that a few more of us will be born later in the 2010s. This generation will span something like seventy years.

Continue reading Organizing a family reunion: Part Six →

Organizing a family reunion: Part Five

Family Stories, Research Methods,

Mrs Edgar Lord Brooks cardMy maternal grandmother kept stationery boxes stuffed with letters and calling cards from the guests at my parents’ wedding in 1959. It’s interesting to see who was invited, since my mother’s wedding album only hints at who was there. Among the RSVPs is one from my father’s step-grandmother, who said she was coming from Florida: there is no hint of her in the album, but perhaps she was at the wedding. (I only met her once, unfortunately, although she died as recently as 2000.) Continue reading Organizing a family reunion: Part Five →

One hundred posts on Vita Brevis

News, Research Methods, , , , , , ,


cropped-vita_brevis_banner.jpg

In a few days, Vita Brevis will have published one hundred blog posts. Thinking back to about a year ago, when the subject of the blog was first broached, I can say that I only thought through the mechanics of preparing and posting the first half-dozen; everything after that seemed quite remote!

What can one say about the blog, circa May 2014? After a little more than five months in existence, it has played host to thirty-four bloggers, writing on topics as disparate as RootsTech 2014, the love troubles of William Norton in 1649, the antics of the Puddingstone Club in the early twentieth century, how best to use the NEHGS catalogue from home, an historical image Smack Down! between Google and Bing, and a list of the ships in the Winthrop Fleet in 1629–30. Continue reading One hundred posts on Vita Brevis →

Organizing a family reunion: Part Four

Family Stories, Research Methods
Frances Giles Boucher
Frances Giles Boucher

Patrilineage

One of my sisters recently asked me if we might be related to a friend of hers named Boucher, and I explained that we almost certainly were not, as the surname died out with our great-great-aunt Florence Estella Boucher (1879–1972). Our great-great-grandfather Boucher had eleven sons, only three of whom married. The youngest, Emile Gabriel Boucher (1886–1950), had no children, while the son of Louis Albert Boucher (1871–1914?) changed his first name and adopted his stepfather’s surname; only Francis Xavier Boucher (1854–1927) had Boucher sons, Milton and Edward, and only Milton married. I am unaware of any descendants of either brother. Continue reading Organizing a family reunion: Part Four →

Preparing your genealogical project for publication

Research Methods,

Building_exterior_night 076As I prepare for this week’s Writing and Publishing Seminar in Boston, I am reflecting on that challenging moment for genealogists when research gives way to writing. It’s important, at this stage, to begin thinking about the potential article or book as something quite distinct from the research project it has been until now.

Research is messy and enthralling; good articles and books may well be enthralling, but they are not . . . messy. Research notes record the thrill of the chase; at times, they can be a forum for reflection. They are not, as a rule, a summary or a reasoned argument. Continue reading Preparing your genealogical project for publication →

Organizing a family reunion: Part Three

Family Stories, Research Methods,

Constance Boucher -young woman600 cropped_3My cousin Connie recently sent me a photo of a young woman and asked me if I thought it might show her grandmother (and my great-great-aunt) Constance Boucher Burch (1887–1977). I’m inclined to think it does, given the provenance as well as the (rather unscientific) fact that this young woman has a family look: in features and coloring she reminds me of my grandmother Pauline Glidden Bell (1903–1968). (Click on images to expand them.) Continue reading Organizing a family reunion: Part Three →

Family plots

Family Stories,

Full monument_2A colleague and old friend delights in killing people off: that is, finding the death and burial information of ancestors and other family members. When we are content to list a relative as having been born and later married, with no end date or place in our record-keeping, we are forgoing  information that might explain biographical mysteries. By focusing on our direct ancestry without sparing a glance to collateral relatives or unexplained members of a household, we might well be overlooking the answer to an intractable research problem. I recently made the rounds of many of the cemeteries where my relatives are buried, but one that I did not visit this winter led me, years ago, to a break-through on my matrilineal line. Continue reading Family plots →