Category Archives: Collections

Solving a family mystery

November 19, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesBrick Walls, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsPatty Vitale

My mother was born with an unusual last name – Cottuli – which has been both a blessing and a curse for my research. The blessing is that when I find someone with that last name, they always turn out to be related. The curse is that it’s misspelled everywhere and documents can be difficult to find. Recently, however, the uncommon name led to a very happy set of circumstances.

My first cousin, Carl Cottuli, contacted me a couple of months ago and said that a woman in Rhode Island named Keri had reached out to him online. She was cleaning out her stepfather’s desk in Massachusetts and discovered a portrait of a woman, together with an 1896 baptismal certificate for Henrietta Lillian Cottuli. There are no markings on the portrait to identify whether the woman is Henrietta or someone else. Continue reading Solving a family mystery →

Hockey and Canada, 1914-18

November 16, 2015American History, Collections, NewsInternational genealogical research, Photographs, SpotlightRhonda McClure

1917 interned canadians switzerland — The Champion Hockey Team, 1917. Canada Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada

There is one thing that many people know about me, and that is that when I am not busily researching family trees and helping patrons here at the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s research center, the odds are pretty good that I am off somewhere watching hockey or studying its history. In fact, I just returned from a trip to Montréal to see the Montréal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins. Had I known then of the exhibit currently on display at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, I might have headed west, once I crossed the border, instead of going on to Montréal. However, it wasn’t until I had returned and was finalizing some pieces for a webinar that I saw the item on the website of the Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Continue reading Hockey and Canada, 1914-18 →

Collateral relations

November 13, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesA Genealogist's Diary, Brick Walls, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsScott C. Steward

My grandfather’s box of family papers continues to yield treasures – and some fresh mysteries. Among the former (and the latter) are a pair of small leather traveling photo frames: one, the larger, is maroon and holds a photograph of a middle-aged woman; the other (biscuit colored) shows an older man being circled by a dog.

I suspect that the subjects of this pair of photos are my Steward great-grandparents,[1] although it is certainly possible that the woman is not Daisy Steward (1861–1951) but one of her sisters: Katharine Livingston (Beeckman) Lorillard (1855–1941), Helen (Beeckman) Lyman (1858–1938), or Martha Codwise (Beeckman) French (1863–1951). Continue reading Collateral relations →

Preparing to digitize archival collections

November 9, 2015Collections, NEHGS Collections, TechnologyCritical Analysis, SpotlightThomas Grebenchick

Chapman collection 1 — From the Rufus Chapman Collection.

This is part two of a series on digitizing our special collections. Click here to read the first post.

Before we send some of the items from our R. Stanton Avery Special Collections to third parties for scanning, there is work we must do to make this digitization possible. Sally Benny, Curator of Digital Collections, is in charge of organizing and preparing the collections before they are sent to the scanner. Continue reading Preparing to digitize archival collections →

Torch-light processions

November 6, 2015American History, Collections, Family Stories, NEHGS CollectionsA Genealogist's Diary, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, U.S. PresidentsScott C. Steward

Hedwiga Gray diary1 — Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

History is full of portentous moments – in retrospect. America, 1860: To us, today, it is axiomatic to say that, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the nation teetered on the verge of civil war. Yet for one diarist, writing late in the year, the potential outcome of the presidential election was of very limited interest. Regina Shober Gray’s[1] near-daily diary entries take no notice of the rival candidates’ campaigns until early October. Her earliest mention is so vague that it would be easy to miss: Continue reading Torch-light processions →

Two new digitizing projects

November 2, 2015American History, Collections, NEHGS Collections, TechnologyFamily papers, SpotlightThomas Grebenchick

Rufus Chapman letter — Letter and envelope from the correspondence of Rufus Chapman, a Union soldier with the 8th Maine Infantry Regiment, to his wife Catherine.

This is part one of a series on digitizing our special collections.

At NEHGS, the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections are a unique and treasured resource. Since 1845, we have provided access to our collections of manuscripts, typescripts, and photographs, including family histories, vital records, and original primary source documents. The items NEHGS has collected have immense value to researchers – not only for genealogists and family historians, but for students, scholars, and anyone looking for a window into the past. Continue reading Two new digitizing projects →

“No friend at court”

October 28, 2015American History, Collections, Family Stories, NEHGS CollectionsA Genealogist's Diary, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object LessonsScott C. Steward

Just as Morris Gray seems to have been a model child, so Regina Shober Gray’s only daughter, Mary (1848–1923), appears to advantage in her mother’s diary. Inclined to be timid – a tendency the robust Mrs. Gray tried to counter[1] – Mary Clay Gray[2] never married, although she did not lack for suitors, as seen in her mother’s diary entry for 16 February 1873. Continue reading “No friend at court” →

A wedding at a glance

October 27, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesA Genealogist's Diary, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object LessonsScott C. Steward

My grandfather once told me that his parents had to wait for several years to marry. When they did, in January 1885, my great-grandfather was 32 and his bride 23 – hardly old by our standards, perhaps! My grandfather’s box of family papers yields a copy of the wedding invitation; even better, another envelope contains the tiny (2 5/8” by 4”) notebook in which my great-grandmother listed her wedding presents. Continue reading A wedding at a glance →

Leaving their mark

October 22, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesBrick Walls, Family papers, Family stories, Object LessonsEileen Pironti

A few months ago, my husband and I moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts, to work as caretakers of the William Clapp house, which was built in 1806. William Clapp and his wife, Elizabeth (Humphreys) Clapp, were married in the parlor of this house on 15 December 1806. They had nine children, two of whom died at a young age. This family also suffered the loss of three more children in November of 1838 from typhoid fever. Rebecca Clapp, aged twenty, and James Clapp, aged nineteen, died on the same day, and their brother Alexander Clapp, aged seventeen, died four days later. Continue reading Leaving their mark →

A price beyond rubies

October 21, 2015American History, Collections, Family Stories, TechnologyBrick Walls, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, International genealogical research, Object LessonsDavid Allen Lambert

In 2010, I visited the town of Rose in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, to meet the nieces and nephew of Ada Lophemia (Halliday) Clark. Ada was the second wife of my great-grandfather Thomas William Clark of Moncton, New Brunswick. Within the walls of their ancestral home in Rose I heard stories of a great-grandfather who died more than a quarter-century before I was born, a man that my own father only mentioned by name, and whose face is still unknown to me. No photograph is known to exist of my great-grandfather. Nonetheless, through genealogical research and family stories I have been able to draw a picture of what he was like, with a rough sense of his life story. Continue reading A price beyond rubies →

Vita Brevis

A resource for family history from AmericanAncestors.org