Category Archives: Family Stories

An unexpected helping hand

Family Stories, Research Methods, , ,
Robert Muir and Margaret Lavery
Marriage record for Robert Muir and Margaret Lavery. (Click on the images to expand them.)

Tracing one’s family back to their country of origin can be daunting; often the birthplaces found on census records are just countries, with no indication given of province or county. Therefore, when I found my great-great-grandfather on the 1920 United States Federal Census, I groaned inwardly when I read the birthplaces of his parents: Scotland and Ireland.

William Muir’s parents were a Robert and Margaret Muir. As I noted yesterday, I found them in the 1860 United States Federal Census living in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Continue reading An unexpected helping hand →

Finding William Muir

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Frederick Muir and Mabel Lynch
The marriage of Frederick Muir and Mabel Lynch. (Click on the images to expand them.)

When I began working as a genealogist, my mother expressed great interest in learning more about her father’s family: the Muirs. While she had much information on her mother’s side of the family, which was quite large, she knew little about her father’s side of the family beyond her grandparents, so I began there. Continue reading Finding William Muir →

Remember the ladies!

Family Stories, Research Methods,

Alicia Crane WilliamsReaders have asked for Early New England Families Study Project sketches for the ladies. Because genealogy is traditionally oriented to the male surname – and if a wife has only one husband – “reversing” his sketch for her would not include any more information. With 35,000 sketches to do, that is unneeded redundancy.

However, there are exceptions to every rule. In the cases where a woman has married more than one husband and has children by both (or more), then her sketch will contain different information from her husbands’ sketches. Thus to completely cover a family, sketches are needed for the husbands and the wives who connect them. Three new sketches have been posted on the website for three of these wives and a fourth is in progress. It is quite interesting what a change of view can do for our understanding of what it was like to be a wife and mother in seventeenth-century New England. Continue reading Remember the ladies! →

Gravestones and name changes

Family Stories, Research Methods, , ,

Andrew Krea 1Anyone who has researched genealogy knows that names can be spelled many different ways across a variety of records. I once found twelve different spellings of one family’s surname during a research project here at NEHGS. Recently, in my own personal family research, I’ve realized that another problem can occur when names are shortened across the generations. Continue reading Gravestones and name changes →

Serendipity in genealogy

Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

H U Memoirs croppedThere is much serendipity in genealogy: more than once I have pulled a book off the shelf in the library at NEHGS, intrigued by the title or perhaps the binding, only to find within its covers the answer to a vexing research question or a story that sheds light on a forgotten family member. One such volume is H.U. Memoirs, published in Boston in 1886, the earliest Harvard class book – not including the Sibley’s Harvard Graduates volumes – on the Society’s open shelves. In it I found a charming short biography of my great-great-great-great-uncle George James Foster (1810–1876), written by his niece Caroline Healey Dall. Continue reading Serendipity in genealogy →

“Dam humbug”!

Family Stories, ,
Frank Stratton
Frank Stratton

Among my husband’s family papers is a letter, dated 25 October 1873, from John Dill to his mother, Susan (Berry) (Dill) Gibbons. John had left the family home in Springfield, Illinois, earlier that year to work on the railroad in Texas, and he was alarmed about the impending marriage of his younger sister, Ida Dill:

This thing of Ida getting acquainted Courting and marrying all in about a month I do not believe in and more than it is a dam humbug. . . . How do you know what that fellow is or has bin you cant find out so much in such a little time. Continue reading “Dam humbug”! →

Genealogical complexity: writing it up

Family Stories, Research Methods,

Penny at podium_croppedYesterday, Scott wrote about genealogical complexity: addressing all the different ways we make modern families and write about them genealogically. As it turns out, many family historians ask questions about just such things:

  • How do I talk about a child born out of wedlock?
  • Do I list my sister’s stepchildren?

As Scott said, we think you should report it all – without judgment. Well, what does that look like? The first place a child appears in a Register­-style sketch is in a child list, and it’s the child-intro line where you give the salient information. Here are some examples: Continue reading Genealogical complexity: writing it up →

Genealogical complexities

Family Stories, Research Methods,
Amy Lowell2
Amy Lowell

When I started out as a genealogical writer, I followed the model of genealogies published earlier in the twentieth century. The genealogical world they depicted was an orderly one, with generation after generation born in one place, married in another, and buried in a third. The greatest dramas I faced in writing my first book (The Sarsaparilla Kings, published in 1993) concerned cousins who deplored the information I had uncovered on their brief first or second marriages, information they were reluctant to see in print. Continue reading Genealogical complexities →

A question of attribution

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Glidden ArchitectA by-product of finishing a project and publishing the results is that one moves on – without necessarily losing interest in the subject matter.  I spent about five months immersed in the study of my great-grandfather Edward Hughes Glidden’s architectural oeuvre, producing two books at Shutterfly.com about my findings: the first, E. H. Glidden: Baltimore Architect, is illustrated with historic images of his buildings, and the second (Glidden’s Baltimore: Works by Edward Hughes Glidden) is largely filled with 2014 photographs from a spring trip to Maryland. Continue reading A question of attribution →

Puritan Pedigrees

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, ,

Robert Charles Anderson_June 2014_1Now that my book on genealogical research methods (Elements of Genealogical Analysis) is out, I have turned my attention to the series of lectures I will be delivering in October and November; these, in turn, will form the basis for a future book entitled Puritan Pedigrees: The Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England.

In most of the Great Migration volumes, I have been able to examine the motivations of the migrating families only in the context of events at the time of migration. A few years ago, while working on The Winthrop Fleet, I began to get a better feel for the deeper connections and influences which had been developing for decades and for generations leading up to the migration decision. Continue reading Puritan Pedigrees →