Category Archives: Family Stories

A Ruth by any other name

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Ruth Will Little
My great-grandmother Ruth (Will) Little

When I was a child, my classmate Jimmy would often tease me about my middle name: Paine. “Why is your name ‘Pain?’ Were you a pain to your mother when you were born? (Tee-hee!)” When I complained to my mother that my name was a problem and a target for Jimmy’s teasing, she replied, “Well, the name Paine is an old and extremely honorable name. You are, in fact, a descendant of Thomas Paine, who wrote the famous pamphlet Common Sense, which was one of the main inspirations for the American Revolution!” Wow! Was Jimmy impressed!

Not only do I have an old and honorable name, I’m also the descendant of a famous patriot! Of course, Jimmy stopped teasing me and I became a bit of a third-grade celebrity, for a day or two, anyway.  Continue reading A Ruth by any other name →

Musicians in the family: Part One

Family Stories, Research Methods
Nantucket 1913
Theodora Ilsley Ayer with her daughters Anne Beekman and Theodora.

My great-grandmother Sara Theodora Ilsley (1881–1945) was an orphan from the age of fourteen, so it is not surprising that her descendants did not know much about her family. My father, who knew his grandmother well, told me that “Grandma came from Newburyport,” which isn’t really the case: She was an Ilsley descended from the immigrant to Newbury, it’s true, but her branch had gone north to Falmouth/Portland and then south to Newark.

Furthermore, my great-grandmother’s Beekman ancestry has tended to obscure the (to me) equally interesting fact that Theodora Ilsley belonged to a distinguished family of musicians, among them her father Francis Grenville Ilsley (1831–1887), grandfather Francis Lunt Ilsley (1804–1874), and great-grandfather Nathaniel Ilsley (1781–1870). Continue reading Musicians in the family: Part One →

Naming a child born out of wedlock

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Fulton 1
Click on the images to expand them.

I was recently asked a question about how surnames were assigned to illegitimate children born in the seventeenth century: Was the surname of the father, or the mother, given to the child? Since illegitimate births were uncommon in New England during the 1600s (about 92% of first children born through 1680 were delivered nine months or more after their parents’ marriage), the illegitimate child could have been given the surname of the mother OR the father, depending on the circumstances. Continue reading Naming a child born out of wedlock →

Solving a puzzle using family letters

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Katrina FahyThe value of family letters can go far beyond the sentimental, providing important genealogical information on extended family and in-laws that may have been previously unknown. But what if, when attempting to piece together this puzzle of information, you are missing its most basic piece: a surname? Continue reading Solving a puzzle using family letters →

Brick Walls

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
John Laurence
Judge John Lawrance (1750-1810)

My most recent immigrant ancestor was a great-great-grandfather, William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899), who followed his father from Germany to Baltimore in 1845. One generation back, I have three unknown great-great-great-grandparents and a further four who arrived during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries:

  • Campbell Patrick White (1787–1859), who went with his parents to Baltimore from Belfast following the Uprising of 1798;
  • Henry G. Hughes (c1811–1860) and his wife Olivia Letitia Coulton (c1817–1847), from Ireland to Geneva and Brooklyn, New York; and
  • Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Esprit Boucher (b. in 1798), a native of Hamburg who was in New York during the 1830s and in Baltimore (with a second wife and young family) during the 1840s and 1850s.

Continue reading Brick Walls →

The prisoners of Peddocks Island

Family Stories,
Fort Andrews 1932
Fort Andrews in 1932. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Boston Harbor Islands are popular destinations for camping, sailing, and exploring. Their  development and importance to Boston’s history may perhaps be seen most clearly in the well-preserved Fort Warren on Georges Island. An often-overlooked destination among the islands is Peddocks Island, which hosts the remains of Fort Andrews, a defensive compound built at the beginning of the Spanish-American War in 1898.  It was named by the land donor Eliza Andrews after her uncle, Civil War brigadier general Leonard Andrews, and was used as a training station for soldiers during World War I and World War II. The structures left today include a barracks, firehouse, stables, gym, and chapel.

Peddocks Island was also used as a prisoner of war camp, in which at least one thousand Italians captured in North Africa were detained following Mussolini’s surrender to the Allied forces in 1943. Continue reading The prisoners of Peddocks Island →

Revelations from my recliner: Part Two

Family Stories, Research Methods,
Little George Rohrbach
My father George Rohrbach

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a breakthrough in determining the parentage of my great-grandmother, Orella (Turnbull) Turnbull. While stuck in my recliner for several days with my foot elevated, I made another discovery, about Orella’s husband George.

For years I’ve been sporadically working at tracking down the Turnbulls. They are the only English family in my largely Finnish and Swiss ancestry, and it seems they should be much easier to trace. Continue reading Revelations from my recliner: Part Two →

The ‘Do Not Read List’

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
fallon 3
Courtesy of The Tonight Show/NBC

Jimmy Fallon recently aired his recurring segment, the “Do Not Read List,” which pokes fun at books with unfortunate titles or unconventional subjects. To my surprise, one of the books featured on the spot was the popular genealogical resource, List of Persons Whose Names Have Been Changed in Massachusetts, 1780-1892. Fallon introduced the book with a sarcastic joke: “420 pages of names … changed names. That’s a page turner.” Then, he proceeded to mock those who changed their generic names to something comical. Continue reading The ‘Do Not Read List’ →

Some recent discoveries

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Young officer
My grandfather Frederick Jackson Bell (1903-1994), named for his mother’s family

I have written here about some of my research strategies, and I thought it might be interesting to inventory a few of my recent discoveries (and brick walls).

It is easy to get distracted, and for the last decade or so I have kept a lot of my research notes in a Word file called “Notes on 1790–1930 Censuses.” (Yes, it predates the publication of the 1940 Federal Census, although I have begun to add information from that source as well.) Built around appearances in various censuses, the Notes document keeps me organized, as it is really my ahnentafel (or ancestor table), listing ancestors along with their children and their children’s spouses. In the footnotes, I keep track of my ancestral aunts’ and uncles’ children and their descendants. Continue reading Some recent discoveries →

“Beginning at a stake and stones…”

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Stephen Lincoln house

According to John Emory Morris’ Stephen Lincoln of Oakham, Massachusetts, His Ancestors and Descendants (1895), Stephen Lincoln first built a home in Oakham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, in 1784. As late as 1895, this house stood on the road leading from Rutland to Barre Plains, near the home of his father-in-law, Lieutenant Ebenezer Foster. In theory, locating the Lincoln house – or, rather, where it once stood – should be fairly straight forward, right? Continue reading “Beginning at a stake and stones…” →