Category Archives: Family Stories

ICYMI: A helping hand

Family Stories, ICYMI, Research Methods, ,

[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 30 March 2015.]

Chris Child helping Jean get started in the 4th floor library at NEHGS.
Chris Child helping Jean get started in the 4th floor library at NEHGS.

Before I began researching my ancestry, I was overwhelmed by the undertaking. It seemed like an impossible task that would take up all my time — trying to make sense of all those great-great-great-greats with their shifting residences, repeating names, and overlapping dates. I’ve always been bad with numbers and dates, and tend to be distracted by anything new and exciting, so my past attempts at uncovering information about my ancestors have resulted in a confusing game of Internet hopscotch through random records I couldn’t really understand concerning people to whom I may or may not have been related. I had convinced myself that I was uniquely ill equipped for genealogical research. Continue reading ICYMI: A helping hand →

Re-enacting history

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods,
David Lambert tintype
A modern tintype

I have questioned published history my whole life, and have sought out the stories from the documents or in some cases the source. I was the obnoxious eight-year-old kid who went to Plimouth Plantation and posed my questions to the re-enactor John Alden. I did not ask standard questions like the rest of my class: “What do you do for work?” or “How do you survive without television?” I inquired of Mr. Alden who his parents were and where he was born exactly. The evil look I received back from the modern Mr. Alden was almost as bad as the glare from my second grade teacher before she grabbed me and led me out of the Alden home. Continue reading Re-enacting history →

The secret history

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing,
Marston 4
Warren Gould Child

If you have been binge watching the latest season of Orange is the New Black, you may have learned an interesting bit of trivia, courtesy of the Martha Stewart/Paula Deen-inspired new character of Judy King, who mentions that Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) had “two wives” simultaneously.

As explored in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Marston married Elizabeth Holloway in 1915 and had two surviving children with her; Marston also lived in an extended relationship with Olive Byrne, by whom he had two more children, who were then adopted by William and Elizabeth Marston. Continue reading The secret history →

Beyond price

American History, Family Stories, , ,

Ed Hawes croppedSome photographs of our ancestors are beyond price. This one of my mother’s father, Ed Hawes, was taken in 1899, when he was still planning on a Naval career. Unfortunately, as a midshipman, he was thrown down a hatch in a hazing incident that shattered his hip.

Ed, the son of a street railway motorman and mechanic, had inherited his father’s skills with tools, so with the Navy out of the picture, he started working in a bicycle store – the same store, the story goes, as Peter Fuller (son of Massachusetts Governor Alvan Fuller and later a millionaire Cadillac dealer). As a young man at the turn of the twentieth century who knew how to drive an automobile, Ed was hired as chauffeur by Harrison Harwood, owner of the H. Harwood and Sons Baseball Factory in Ed’s home town of Natick, Massachusetts. Continue reading Beyond price →

A beautiful view

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , ,
Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle, seat of the Duke of Rutland.

My Simons ancestors came from a picturesque region in England known as the Vale of Belvoir (pronounced “Beever,” and meaning “beautiful view,” from the French), found at the intersection of three counties: Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Vale with my uncle, Herbert Simons, to become acquainted with the towns and villages where our paternal ancestors lived from time immemorial. Records of the Simons family (variously spelled Simon, Simond, Symonds, Simons, etc.) stretch back in the Manor of Langar as far as 1340, when it was noted that William Simond “has one messuage and one bovate for homage and fealty and pays five shillings at Saint Martin’s and Pentecost …” Continue reading A beautiful view →

The real Molly Pitcher

American History, Family Stories, ,
Molly Pitcher
Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth, June 1778. Copy of engraving by J. C. Armytage after Alonzo Chappel. Courtesy of NARA

I recently stumbled upon a reference to Molly Pitcher, a woman from Pennsylvania who fought with her husband during the Revolutionary War for a New Jersey militia unit, and whom New Jersey has adopted as their own heroine of the war, lifting her to almost cult status. Who was this legendary woman? Was she a real woman who fought in the war?

In Emily J. Teipe’s 1999 article “Will the Real Molly Pitcher Please Stand Up?” in Prologue Magazine, she cites Robert Leckie’s text,[1] which states that Molly Pitcher was actually Mary Ludwig Hayes, a daughter of German immigrants, who fought alongside her husband, John Hayes, in Captain Francis Proctor’s company in the Pennsylvania Artillery.[2] Continue reading The real Molly Pitcher →

‘Three sorrowful households’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections,

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
The year 1876 marks the onset of Dr. Gray’s debilitating illness. He had the first of a series of operations in March, to correct a problem (according to Mrs. Gray) stretching back “these 30 or 35 years past.”[1] While he would live another four years, the diarist’s husband was henceforth rarely free from pain.

Another feature of the Gray diary from this point is the comparative failure of Dr. Gray’s brother, William Gray (1810–1892), who had hitherto been a mainstay of the family, his wealth and generosity easing things for Dr. and Mrs. Gray and their children.

Boston, Tuesday, 13 June 1876: Wrote yesterday to decline Sallie Gray’s[2] very kind invitation for Doctor and myself to make them a visit [in Brookline], beginning next Thursday. At first, Dr G. was much pleased at the idea and felt sure he should like to go. I knew his courage would fail ere the time came – but I encouraged him all I could; …yesterday he decided it was quite impossible for him to leave home. Continue reading ‘Three sorrowful households’ →

‘Their furrows plough’

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

Daly_Marie photoSeveral decades ago, my father was planting bulbs in our backyard flower garden. An old stone wall borders the garden and our yard, as well as all the neighbors’ yards on my street. Digging into the soil, my father found more than the usual collection of rocks and earthworms – he disinterred a pair of nineteenth-century lady’s boots. Continue reading ‘Their furrows plough’ →

A family tradition

American History, Family Stories,
Mollie Braen Peleg
Courtesy Hill Farmstead Brewery.

Last March, I made the move from Los Angeles to Boston. It was a pretty big change: not just the fact that, for about six months of the year, really cold stuff falls from the sky, but definitely the history, culture, and way of life mean an adjustment from the large, fast-paced, relatively new city of Los Angeles, founded 4 September 1781 (compared to Boston, founded 7 September 1630).

And yet I bring my own history to Boston. Not only was my mother born and raised in Boston and the surrounding areas, but my parents were actually married in Salem thirty years ago this August. But my parents weren’t the first Massachusetts settlers: my great-great-grandparents on my maternal side were the first to come to this country, settling in Revere, Massachusetts, in 1900. Continue reading A family tradition →

‘Something old, something new’

American History, Family Stories, ,

028-coralI’ve been a bridesmaid in four weddings. In each of these weddings, the bride has carefully chosen four special items to wear on her wedding day: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. And when preparing for the first three weddings, I didn’t think much of the custom. But when my sister-in-law got married in April, and showed me her something old, new, borrowed, and blue, I couldn’t help but think: why on earth are women doing this? ‘Something old, new, borrowed, blue’? Did my mother do it? My grandmother? My great-grandmother? Continue reading ‘Something old, something new’ →