Category Archives: American History

July 4 and my family

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,
Ward Township in Hocking County, Ohio. (David Eggleston’s land can be seen at the lower right.) Courtesy Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

In casting around for a July 4 post, I thought it might be interesting to see which (if any) of my ancestors were born on – or married, or died on – the fourth of July. It turns out that there were several!

The closest, a woman likely known to my mother (and certainly to my maternal grandparents), was my great-great-grandmother, Rebecca Jane Eggleston,[1] who was born in Ward Township, Hocking County, Ohio, on 4 July 1856 – just eighty years after the date on which the Declaration of Independence was approved for publication in Philadelphia. Continue reading July 4 and my family →

Lessons in genealogical research: Part Three

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , , , ,
My wife Susan and Danny Cotten at the Hotchkiss-Crawford Historical Museum.

My third lesson follows on from the events of the second – explorations into family history can result in rich and rewarding personal relationships.

So who was this man in Hotchkiss? His name was Danny Cotten and, for all but a few years in California, he had spent his whole life in the area known as the North Fork Valley of Colorado, which encompasses the towns of Hotchkiss, Crawford, and Paonia, and lies just north of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Continue reading Lessons in genealogical research: Part Three →

Pesky middle initials

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

My recent post on “Retroactive surnames” prompted a few comments on the topic of “retroactive middle names,” something that has happened in my own matrilineal ancestry and that of my father’s, as well as with a great-great-grandmother being given a second middle name after her death. Most often these are guesses that balloon on online trees that copy from one another. Continue reading Pesky middle initials →

Divided loyalties

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,
Destruction of the American Fleet at Penobscot Bay, 1779. Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, London

As the branches on my paternal grandmother’s family tree grew, they filled in with names like Hierlihy, Urquhart, and Milliken, and I was quite intrigued to discover that I had a Loyalist ancestor, a gentleman named Benjamin Milliken. He was born in Boston in 1728 to Justice Edward Milliken and Abigail Norman; settled in Hancock County, Maine (then still Massachusetts) during the Revolutionary War; and then went to St. Andrews in Charlotte County, New Brunswick. He married three times and fathered eighteen children over thirty-five years. Continue reading Divided loyalties →

Lessons in genealogical research: Part Two

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

When Mom’s father died, a trove of photographs was discovered in his basement. They had been put there, out of sight, many years before. They were mostly in the form of glass plate negatives – pictures taken by my grandfather when he was a young man, between 1905 and 1919. Many were of his first wife, her family, and areas where they lived. This, of course, was the reason to have put them away. Some of them were in the original boxes in which these dry glass plates were purchased. And there is some history even on those boxes. One is labeled “M.A. Seed Dry Plate Co.” and another is “Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y. successor to M.A. Seed Dry Plate Co.”[1] Continue reading Lessons in genealogical research: Part Two →

Narrowing the field

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Interest in genealogy has increased dramatically since the introduction of DNA testing. With the United States long being considered a melting pot society, Americans have turned to DNA testing to discover what other ethnicities they can claim. DNA testing has also played an instrumental role in solving decades-old crimes, such as catching and prosecuting the Golden State Killer. However, what a lot of people probably don’t realize is that DNA can help solve genealogical mysteries, as well. Continue reading Narrowing the field →

‘Christopher Christophers in the library’

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Mayflower, , ,

Jeff Record’s recent post on his relative Evan Evans reminded me of similarly named persons in colonial Connecticut aptly named Christopher Christophers. While I am not related to these individuals, the fact that these men shared my first name twice is surely a reason I was interested in them. For seventeenth-century New England, Christopher was a rare first name, as it tended to be a name amongst Catholics, with Pilgrims and Puritans rarely using it at the time. Within my own direct ancestry for sixteen generations, I have only found three ancestors named Christopher – two being Germans in eighteenth-century Virginia (Christopher Blankenbecker and Christopher Shake) – and one in colonial New England – Christopher Peake (ca. 1612-1666) of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Continue reading ‘Christopher Christophers in the library’ →

Finding Irish relatives: Part Three

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

[Editor’s note: This series began with Part 1 and Part 2.]

Until recently, unless you were lucky enough to know the names of your immigrant Irish ancestors’ parents and/or the place(s) where they were born or resided in the Emerald Isle, such information was often difficult if not impossible to find in American records. That imposing brick wall remained unassailable for many seeking to pursue their ancestral connections in Ireland … until now. During 2015-2016 digitized troves of the two most significant sources for Irish family history – Catholic church registers and civil vital records – were released online, freely accessible on any internet-enabled device. Like the notorious Berlin Wall, that longstanding, insurmountable impediment to discovering Irish ancestry crumbled almost overnight. Continue reading Finding Irish relatives: Part Three →

Barbara’s story

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , , ,

When I began researching my paternal ancestors as a high school student, I had many questions about Barbara Shakshober, the oldest sister of my great-great-grandfather, Jacob Shakshober. Because the 1860 and 1870 censuses report her birthplace as New York,[1] I concluded she must have been born in or near New York City, her parents’ port of arrival to the United States. Finding Barbara’s birthplace might lead to the discovery of her parents’ neighborhood, and perhaps other ancestors with their elusive, often corrupted surname. Continue reading Barbara’s story →

A census, rediscovered

American History, Collections, News, Research Methods, , , ,

Over the years I have fielded a number of questions about why researchers haven’t been able to locate their ancestors in the 1810 census for Salem, Massachusetts, when other records place these ancestors there for their entire lives.

Well, the simple answer was that in the census for 1810, as made available through the National Archives and Records Administration on microfilm (which is where all the digitized census records on sites like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have come from), somehow the town of Salem was not included. Continue reading A census, rediscovered →