Category Archives: Family Stories

The end of an era

Family Stories, News
Bernice_Madigan_2013
Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

An era in New England has ended. The last person born in the region during the nineteenth century died 3 January 2015 at the age of 115. Bernice Marina (Emerson) Madigan was born on Hill Street in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on 24 July 1899. Her birth record appears at American Ancestors.org; her obituary may be read here.

She was the daughter of Harry G. and Grace E. (Bennett) Emerson, who were married at West Springfield on 15 September 1897. Her father was a barber in West Springfield; her mother was a native of Cheshire, Massachusetts. Continue reading The end of an era →

“Shake it off!”

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Child 1_scsOver the last year or so I have had some interesting matches amongst “DNA Relatives” on the website 23andme.com. I manage the profiles of my parents, my mother’s brother, and my wife’s parents. So far, the most interesting results have all come about from my mother and uncle. While all the profiles have given me several DNA relatives predicted to be anywhere from third to fifth cousins, only my mother and uncle’s matches have been linked me with cousins with whom we have been able to determine the exact degree of the relationship. Continue reading “Shake it off!” →

Early New England Families Study Project update

Family Stories, News, Research Methods,

Alicia Crane WilliamsSeven new sketches were recently posted to the Early New England Families Study Project database on americanancestors.org:

Andrew Lane of Hingham, a feltmaker and farmer who had nine children with his wife Trypheny.

George Lane of Hingham, Andrew’s brother, a shoemaker, who had eight children with his wife Sarah Harris.

Oliver Mellowes of Boston and Braintree, farmer. By his first wife, Mary James, Oliver had four children. His second wife was the widow Elizabeth (Hawkredd) Coney – see below. Continue reading Early New England Families Study Project update →

The Wings of a dilemma

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsThe Wing family of Cape Cod has had a great amount of genealogical information published about it over the years. Beginning with Rev. Conway P. Wing’s A Historical and Genealogical Register of John Wing, of Sandwich, Mass. And his Descendants, 1632-1888, the list includes Mary Elizabeth Sinnott’s Annals of the Sinnott, Rogers, Coffin, Corlies, Reeves, Bodine and Allied Families, published in 1905, in which Wing is one of the allied families; The Owl, a serial publication of the Wing Family Association from 1901 to the present, and most recently Raymond T. Wing’s 2006 version, Wing Genealogy, Volume 1, The Reverend John Wing of Banbury, Oxfordshire, England and his wife Deborah Bachiler, Their Ancestry and Descendants through Five Generations. Continue reading The Wings of a dilemma →

The year in review concluded

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, , , , ,

Newbury Street TodayIn yesterday’s post, I covered some of the more than 250 blog posts published in Vita Brevis during the first half of 2014. The series concludes with a post from each of the last six months of the year.

At the end of July, Katrina Fahy solved a genealogical puzzle using family letters, since the family in question lived in a region with few available nineteenth century vital records: Continue reading The year in review concluded →

The year in review

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, , , , , , , ,
1928 Newbury Street Artist Rendering
99-101 Newbury Street, the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s home since December 1964

As I write this, a few days before the New Year begins, Vita Brevis is nearly a year old; it has had more than 300,000 page views since its first post on 2 January 2014. (This is a statistic I like to trumpet, although of course a single reader on a given day might well look at more than one entry: so I cannot claim 300,000 unique readers over the course of the first year, much as I would like to!) That first post, Generatio longa, vita brevis, hinted at the blog’s purpose: “Vita Brevis will include short posts on research methods – applicable to a variety of genealogical subjects – as well as posts on results. Like a mosaic, these posts will, in time, form a new collection for the genealogical researcher to explore.” Continue reading The year in review →

The family historian

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Margaret in Goshen for VB
Margaret Steward in Goshen, New York

Most families have one: the family historian. Whether or not the focus is genealogical, there is usually at least one family member who keeps track of siblings and cousins, sometimes to the nth degree. My father’s family had one in my great-aunt Margaret Steward (1888–1975). I do not remember meeting her, but I’ve been told I take after her, at least in so far as the mantle of family genealogist passed from her to me when I was still in middle school. Continue reading The family historian →

Town and city annual reports

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Somerville_1887Municipal annual reports provide a breakdown of various city and town department budgets and expenditures for the year. At first glance it may seem that these publications would not be useful for genealogical research, but taking the time to search these reports for information about your ancestors may lead to some interesting discoveries about their lives and the lives of their contemporaries. Many of these reports include a roster of municipal employees and their annual salaries. For example, the 1887 edition of City of Somerville (Massachusetts) Annual Reports contains information submitted by a number of departments, including the School Committee.[1] Their report includes a table listing the school teachers who worked in Somerville that year, their salaries, and the year they were hired. Continue reading Town and city annual reports →

A Christmas box

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Grandpa with Scrapbook
My grandfather with his album. Click on the images to expand them.

In this season of giving, sometimes the most enjoyment comes from sharing items you forgot you had instead of those newly received. Three years ago, I celebrated Christmas at the mountain home of my paternal grandparents. At some point, my grandfather mentioned to my father and aunts that he still had a box of their old vinyl records in storage. Naturally, they could not recall what might have been left over from their school days, and my cousins and I were curious about our parents’ musical tastes. We convinced my grandfather to dig out the box. Continue reading A Christmas box →

Solving a “mystery of baseball”

Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,
Moses Walker
Moses Fleetwood Walker. Courtesy of bleacherreport.com

Ask any baseball fan who the first African-American major league player was, and nearly all will tell you it was Jackie Robinson. Ask anyone familiar with the game’s long and storied history before Robinson’s debut in 1947, and they’ll tell you it was Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy, who broke into the game in 1884.[1] Very few, if any, would tell you that it was a man named William Edward White who became the first African-American to play in a major league baseball game in 1879. Had it not been for a few keen researchers, William Edward White’s name would have been lost to baseball history, perhaps forever. Continue reading Solving a “mystery of baseball” →