One fall weekend in 2008 my wife, Karen, and I were visiting her parents at their home on Long Island. After dinner one evening, my mother-in-law asked if I might like to see a collection of journals kept by her maternal grandfather, Glenn Welmer Douglass (1884–1968), a Methodist minister from New England.
“Of course!” I said. Continue reading A serendipitous reunion
As a genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, there are many aspects of my job that I truly enjoy – especially when it involves helping those new to the hobby of family history get off on the right foot. One of my favorite experiences is the chance that I have each college semester to interact with Boston University college students who sign up for a three-week family history program offered through B.U.’s Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. As I write this, I will be introducing myself and the society to a new group this week, and I am looking forward to seeing where their various ancestries take us over the course of the program. Continue reading The last name’s the thing
While interning at the American Jewish Historical Society—New England Archives and processing their collection of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), I came across the interesting case of the Isak Aghassi family, an Iraqi Jewish (or Mizrahi) family who for years struggled to immigrate to the United States, first from Iraq and then from Mexico. The Aghassis’ story is an extraordinary one of resolve and courage that epitomizes the struggle Iraqi Jews went through before, during, and after the period of the Second World War. Their story reveals another side of the Jewish struggle, one that is not as commonly known or understood. Continue reading Mid-century migration from Iraq to Mexico to the United States
My father, borrowing a line from Henry Ford, used to tease me that I could pick any color apple I wanted in the basket “as long as it was red.” (They were all red.) I have been asked to explain how I choose which families to do for the Early New England Families Study Project. The answer is I can pick any family I want – once they are in the basket. Continue reading Picking families for the Early New England Families Study Project
Marilynne K. Roach will lecture tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (99-101 Newbury Street in Boston). Marilynne’s most recent book is Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials, published by Da Capo Press.
Scott C. Steward: Your subjects are the accused and their accusers, and come from several economic and social strata. What makes them representative?
Marilynne K. Roach: The six women in my book, besides being specific individuals, can represent to some extent others of their varying stations in life: accused, accusers and both in one; free and slave; rich, poor, and middling; survivors and those who died. I also chose these six because enough information about their respective lives was available. Continue reading An interview with Marilynne Roach: Part One
Expectations are tricky. As genealogists, we should always be on the look-out for new information, recognizing that the data sought may be in a different location, or format, or offer different content than we had expected.
Lately, as I’ve mentioned, I have been playing around with Google searches. A few days ago, I thought I might look for information about my maternal grandfather’s father, a man I’ve grown used to knowing very little about. His name was John Frank Bell (1878-1944), and he managed hotels in Norfolk, Virginia. He was married twice, to my great-grandmother Minnie Estelle Jackson (1876-1935) and to a woman my grandfather always referred to as Marjorie Feller. In my previous research on this second marriage, I had found a woman who seemed to fit the bill, a Marjorie Feller Jarman (1899-1995) who was twenty years Frank Bell’s junior and actually outlived her stepson, who died in 1994. Continue reading Changing my expectations, one search at a time
I am currently at work processing the Farley Family Papers, a large collection that includes hundreds of letters, photographs, estate records, and military records created by several generations of Farleys in Massachusetts. The wide variety of documents found in the collection creates a vivid picture of what life was like for this family. Among other things, this collection contains two long photographs, originally rolled together and stored in a tube, of the members of the Puddingstone Club, as well as letters from the club’s members to Arthur Christopher Farley (1851-1919). Continue reading “Check or cash … gratefully received”
When I was in school thirty plus years ago, there was a lot of discussion about the differences between history and genealogy – usually with genealogy getting the short end of the stick. The gap between historians and genealogists narrowed once we realized that we all use many of the same sources for similar ends. The differences are in our goals. The historian is trying to interpret the life of communities and does not really need to deal with the details of individuals. The genealogist is dealing with individuals on a fact-by-fact basis and may not feel the need to understand the larger community. To an historian a genealogist might appear to “not see the forest for the trees,” and to a genealogist an historian might “clear cut” the trees they have been nurturing in hopes of finding the forest! Continue reading Clear cutting in the genealogical forest
A current research preoccupation of mine is a photo of my maternal grandfather, Arthur David Belforti (born Achille Alessio Riccardo Belforti, 1902-1996), which my mother recently gave me and which is pictured here. Having had a close relationship with this grandparent, I have always been particularly keen on researching his past and his branch of the family. There is no handwriting on the reverse of the photo, and my mother has no details about it. My first thought upon seeing it was that it might have been taken in or near Detroit. My reasons for believing this were several – 1) before my grandfather was married, he lived in the Detroit area for a couple of years around 1929, drawn there to work at Henry Ford’s newly opened and highly innovative River Rouge plant; 2) his apparent age in the photo seems to match up with that time period; 3) I didn’t recognize the person who sits next to him in the photo, and neither did my mother; and 4) we didn’t recognize the place. My grandfather lived in just three places during his life – Italy, Massachusetts, and Michigan. I’m pretty familiar with the first two, but not so much with the third. Continue reading Beautiful Detroit
I frequently encounter eighteenth- or nineteenth-century dates, especially on the migration trail, that are not cited and which often derive from “online trees,” usually the FamilySearch Ancestral File, Rootsweb WorldConnect, or Ancestry World Tree. These days, I find it easier to determine whether any of the information is valid thanks to the many works and databases indexed at Google and Google Books. The following case suggests the variety of trails the researcher must be prepared to follow, from unverified online trees (which may hold important clues) to books and newspapers contemporary with the events mentioned (and which are sometimes flawed). Continue reading Tips for online genealogical research