Category Archives: American History

A ‘Relative’ Hoax

American History
“The Cardiff Giant” courtesy of farmersmuseum.org

A couple of weeks ago, my pandemic life in quarantine led me to watch an episode of television’s The Blacklist.[1] During the program, I heard Mr. Reddington (the program’s protagonist) bemoan the fact that something (in this case, a piece of counterfeit art) was, in his words, “as phony as the Cardiff Giant.” As a native Angeleno,[2] and never having heard of the Cardiff Giant before – and additionally unsure if said giant was from Wales,[3] or indeed from Cardiff-by-the sea,[4] – I wanted to see just who (or what) this giant was, and why the heck Raymond Reddington would compare him to a work of art.

Continue reading A ‘Relative’ Hoax →

Reflections on Researching Racism in America

American History, Family Stories, News,
Thomas Bivins Probate Inventory (1857), Marion, Inventories and appraisements 1852-1904, “Georgia, Probate Records, 1742-1990,” FamilySearch.

I have agonized over what I would say in a blog post that would speak to the gravity of where our nation is today. I question if it is my place to say anything or if this is even the forum to do so. The more I debated in my head, the more convinced I became that I needed to write something, if only to amplify the voices of those speaking out against the racism they face every day.

Continue reading Reflections on Researching Racism in America →

ICYMI: “Socially, she is not received”

American History, ICYMI, NEHGS Collections, , , , ,

[Author’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 25 March 2016.]

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 ICYMI: “Socially, she is not received” →

Remember the Mavericks

American History, Family Stories, Mayflower 2020, Royal Lines,
Boston Massacre, engraving with watercolor by Paul Revere, 1770. Both photos courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Later this year, I will be giving a talk as part of Salem Ancestry Days in Salem, Massachusetts, entitled “Remember, Remember: Exploring Salem’s Mayflower Connections.” While Salem was only 80 miles north of Plymouth, the two early settlements had very little interaction. Still, there were at least four Mayflower families with a connection to Salem:

    • Richard More, Mayflower passenger and resident of Salem as early at 1637; he died in Salem in the 1690s;
  • Remember Allerton, Mayflower passenger and member of the Salem church in 1637 with her husband Moses Maverick; Remember’s father Isaac Allerton (Mayflower passenger) joined the church in 1647;
  • Elizabeth Turner, daughter of Mayflower passenger John Turner, was living in Salem by 1651;
  • Benjamin Vermayes (later the son-in-law of Mayflower passenger William Bradford) joined the Salem church in 1642.[1]

Continue reading Remember the Mavericks →

Icing on the cake

American History, Family Stories, , ,
Anni Virta and Nelly Virta with their relative Everett Rintala on their 1960 trip to Ohio. Photo courtesy of Antti Virta

“Goodbye Helsinki,” Anni Virta wrote in July 1960, “our trip to the west has started and the point of the dream has become a reality.” Anni was a cousin by marriage. An English translation of her diary came to me recently through a serendipitous connection.

Anni’s nephew, Antti Virta of Helsinki, had written to the daughter of one of my cousins, making the connection via WikiTree, asking for information about his aunt Mary Rajasilta, wife of my mother’s brother, George Isaacson. Busy with an ailing mother, my cousin’s daughter bounced Antti’s request to me. I looked up some information about Aunt Mary in American records for Antti. And there began a pleasant correspondence. Continue reading Icing on the cake →

‘The more things change…’

American History, Collections, Family Stories, ,
Charles and Harriett Saunders, ca. 1872-97.

Shortly after the Covid-19 stay-at-home order was implemented in Maine, Son remarked that living in My Old House, now known as Our Old House, is like living in two centuries at once, the eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth centuries – as well as the twenty-first.

In the eighteenth century, when this house was built, my ancestors’ daily lives as farmers were “at home.” Now, as the prodigal farmers’ daughter living in their house during the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve planted a small garden and signed on with local farmers for the vegetables, dairy, and meat supplies I either decline to produce on my own or lack the wherewithal to grow. Continue reading ‘The more things change…’ →

Flushed with pride

American History, Family Stories, Mayflower 2020, , , ,

In this period of self-isolation, the imagination of genealogists will likely extend significantly. Frequent Vita Brevis writer Jeff Record recently shared with me an online tree that purportedly gave a Mayflower line back to Seth Wheeler (1838-1925) of Albany, New York, known as the creator of perforated paper, who obtained the earliest patents for toilet paper and dispensers in 1883. The tree depicted a descent from Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke by calling Francis the father Henry Cook of Salem, Massachusetts! Francis did not have a son named Henry, and the origins of Henry Cook (who was in Salem by 1638) are unknown. So, unfortunately, I had to tell Jeff that the Mayflower line was worthless, but at least we can thank Wheeler for toilet paper! Continue reading Flushed with pride →

ICYMI: ‘If space allows’

175th Anniversary, American History, Collections, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, ICYMI, Mayflower 2020, , , , ,

[Author’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 5 January 2017.]

Thanks to a timely message alerting me to a collection of letters for sale at eBay, I recently acquired one side of the genealogical correspondence between Regina Shober Gray[1] and the Rev. Richard Manning Chipman, author of The Chipman Lineage (1872). Mrs. Gray, so expansive in some areas of her diary, is comparatively terse with regard to the beginning of the correspondence: Continue reading ICYMI: ‘If space allows’ →

The power of a mark

American History, Collections, Family Stories, , , , , ,
Petition to the Ipswich selectmen, 12 April 1686. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

History came vividly alive for me on a cold December day ten years ago in Salem, Massachusetts. For a retired historian, the Phillips Library of Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum was the perfect place to enjoy a brief respite from winter’s doldrums by indulging in the quiet pleasures of archival research. Housed in an elegant, mid-nineteenth-century Italianate townhouse brimming with antiques and historical artifacts, the library’s reading room was warm, intimate, and inviting – its library tables and comfortable Windsor chairs surrounded by bookshelf walls filled with classic reference works on New England history. Above them, original portraits and busts of prominent Massachusetts Bay colonists gazed down on the reading room’s patrons – who, on the day in question, consisted of a few family history gray-beards like myself and a young doctoral candidate or two engaged in dissertation research.[1] Continue reading The power of a mark →

Magic of the attic

American History, Collections, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,
The Whorfs’ house in Provincetown.

While admiring April’s Super Pink Moon – and contemplating what the man up there must be thinking as he looks down on Earth’s current woes – the notion of the slingshot effect popped into my head. As someone who, as a kid, took great fascination in the Apollo program, I remember this term being used, described as a maneuver using gravity to change the speed or direction of the spacecraft. That’s as far as I will venture into the science of it, lest I earn the ridicule of all the scientists out there, but the term seemed an apt metaphor for my latest genealogical wanderings. We’ve all had those moments. We are on our way somewhere and then, in a sudden shift in trajectory, we are flung in another direction. Continue reading Magic of the attic →