Last week, I was happily recalling my 2012 trip to Finland, specifically a visit to my ancestral village, Teuva. I had the great good luck to meet cousins there and see the land that my ancestors farmed – and even the foundation of the tiny house where my grandmother grew up. Continue reading Planning an ancestral trip
Category Archives: Family Stories
How I became a genealogist: Part Two
I am the last woman in six generations of my umbilical line (which is as far back as I’ve been able to trace). My mother’s mother, Alice Mason Crane, for whom I was named (I was going to be Alice, too, but Gram didn’t want to be called “Big Alice”), inherited generations of family material from her ancestors and from her husband’s family. All of the Bibles, letters, photographs, and more ended up in her home in Natick, Massachusetts. After she lost her only son in World War II, she spent the next years sorting this material and typing it – with four carbon copies for her grandchildren (she had also trained as a secretary) – into a genealogy. Continue reading How I became a genealogist: Part Two
The Boucher family reunion
This past weekend, about twenty-five of my Boucher cousins gathered to tour the Baltimore Museum of Industry’s show, “Making Music: The Banjo in Baltimore and Beyond,” with its three curators. Our visit to the BMI likely marked the first large-scale reunion of the descendants of William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899) in many years – perhaps since the death of my great-great-grandmother (William’s widow) in 1923.
I don’t think my mother – William Boucher’s great-granddaughter – felt especially close to this part of her family. What interest in the Bouchers I heard expressed focused on exactly how we descended from François Boucher, the painter. When my mother was little, it was still permissible to say, vaguely, that we were François’ descendants; nowadays, with so many (once buried) resources available to us, the story doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny. Continue reading The Boucher family reunion
“Very impertinent”: Elizabeth Chandler of Woodstock
Sometimes, the most interesting stories are found when you weren’t looking for them, as in the following example. I was searching for a simple marriage record in the town of Woodstock, Connecticut. While I eventually found the record I was seeking, what I noticed immediately above that record was a series of intriguing entries. The records read as follows[1]:
1. “Chandler, Elizabeth, was requested Nov. 11, 1743 to make a public confession”
2. “Her letter of conf. was read at ch. meeting Nov. 25, 1743 and considered ‘very impertinent’” Continue reading “Very impertinent”: Elizabeth Chandler of Woodstock
How I became a genealogist: Part One
I got a chuckle out of Bob Anderson’s preface to Elements of Genealogical Analysis, where he described his path to genealogy through military intelligence and molecular biology. It reminded me of the days back in the 80s and 90s when we belonged to a small group of Boston-area genealogists who gathered every month for a pot-luck dinner and genealogy talk. The dinners were the brainchild of Ann Lainhart and, although informal, the group at one point included the editors of the Register, The American Genealogist, and The Mayflower Descendant. When you have the opportunity to sit and listen to the likes of Jane Fiske, Ruth Ann Sherman, Bob Anderson, David Dearborn, Melinde and George Sanborn, and Roger Joslyn to name a few, one cannot help but learn genealogy. Continue reading How I became a genealogist: Part One
A code of ethics
Disclaimer: If you are a member of the Happ family of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, please read no further.
I think I’ve done something bad. I may never be invited to another Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll never be allowed to see my family again.
I think I just discovered that my family has ties to New York City. Continue reading A code of ethics
“My ancestor was born … where?!”
One must always expect surprises when researching family history, because you just never know what you might uncover.
When researching my paternal ancestors, I discovered that our family had ties to one of the most remote places on the planet: the island of Saint Helena. Made famous as the location of Napoleon Bonaparte’s second exile, Saint Helena is a rocky, volcanic island located in the South Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa. Continue reading “My ancestor was born … where?!”
Mapping Vermont
As part of the Society’s Ask a Genealogist service, I was recently asked about locating someone in post-Revolutionary War Strafford, Vermont. The time frame in which this person lived reminded me of the special considerations for this region, which was once hotly disputed by New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and even Massachusetts.
The territory that would become today’s Vermont was claimed by both New Hampshire and New York in the mid-eighteenth century, a squabble that took years to sort out. In general the land grants made by New Hampshire governor Benning Wentworth between 1749 and 1764 lay in territory already claimed by New York. A royal decree of 1764 awarded jurisdiction over the disputed territory to New York, which created four counties: Albany (established in 1764), and from Albany County Gloucester (1766) and Charlotte and Cumberland Counties (1772). Continue reading Mapping Vermont
Insights from my great-grandmother’s diary
If your family is anything like mine, you heard plenty of stories about your great-grandparents from your parents. From those stories I have been able to get a sense of their personalities and how they lived, but it is a view limited to how my parents knew them as their grandparents. Learning who your ancestors were as young adults is difficult, since most standard documents do not reveal an individual’s personality. My mother has a genealogical file on each of my relatives, where she keeps news clippings or other documents pertaining to their lives, which I often refer to while I am researching my family. During my last visit home, while searching through her files, I discovered the diary of my great-grandmother, Gladys Tompkins, from the year 1924. Continue reading Insights from my great-grandmother’s diary
The Le Roy family register
Here at NEHGS, we are always on the lookout for interesting genealogical books, pedigrees, or other formats for documenting family history. One of my first blog posts here covered the Society’s acquisition of a fascinating (and literal) family tree showing all of Queen Victoria’s descendants at the time of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Recently, I was directed to – and subsequently acquired – a Le Roy family register compiled by my cousin Edward Augustus Le Roy (1833–1913), one that showed all the descendants of the Le Roy immigrant down to about 1890. Continue reading The Le Roy family register