Category Archives: Family Stories

Why I Love Revolutionary War Pension Records

Family Stories, Research Methods

Sheilagh Doerfler’s recent post about finding Revolutionary War ancestors reminded me of the story I tell people about how much I love Revolutionary War pension records. They often contain significant genealogical information—but the first time I ever consulted these records, they yielded much more material than I ever would have expected.

In the early 1990s, I was doing the paperwork do get my father into the National Huguenot Society by right of his descent from our ancestor Abraham Tourtellotte (ca. 1655–ca. 1704) of Newport, Rhode Island. (I could not join then because I was not yet 18 years old.) The American generations went from Rhode Island—specifically, from Newport to Providence and Glocester—into Thompson, Connecticut, in the northeastern corner of that state. They generally stayed within a few towns of Thompson afterward. As I began to obtain every birth, marriage, and death record, I struggled to find the birth of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Lucy Tourtellotte. Continue reading Why I Love Revolutionary War Pension Records →

Divorce, Abandonment, and Family Secrets

Family Stories, Research Methods

There has always been some secrecy surrounding the Heisinger side of my family. My grandfather did not know anything about his paternal grandfather, Charles Heisinger, because my great-grandfather, Walter Heisinger, never spoke of his father. We were not even sure of his first name, only that we all had inherited the Heisinger surname from a mystery man. Undoubtedly there was some painful history that my great-grandfather did not wish to share with his children, but it left us with a hole in our family history.

John Kugler Household, 1900 U.S Federal Census, Brooklyn Ward 28, Kings, New York; Roll 1066; Page 7A; Enumeration District 0502, accessed at familysearch.org.
John Kugler Household, 1900 U.S Federal Census, Brooklyn Ward 28, Kings, New York; Roll 1066; Page 7A; Enumeration District 0502, accessed at familysearch.org.

Continue reading Divorce, Abandonment, and Family Secrets →

Finding the Fahys in Ireland

Family Stories, Research Methods,
Grandmother's house
Grandmother Fahy’s house, County Galway.

I recently went to Ireland to visit my dad’s family. Having investigated my grandmother’s ancestry on a previous trip, I wanted to focus this time on learning more about the Fahys.

Thomas Fahy, my paternal grandfather, died in 1983, when my dad was 23. Beyond that, I was able to glean a bit more from my dad, grandmother, and uncles: Continue reading Finding the Fahys in Ireland →

An Ancestral Connection with Prohibition

Family Stories
Two men with a whiskey still, sometime between 1920 and 1930. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Two men with a whiskey still, sometime between 1920 and 1930. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Recently I uncovered some interesting information about my husband’s great-grandfather, Peter Consigli. According to the 6 September 1930 Boston Herald,[1] federal agents from Boston carried out several raids in the town of Milford, Massachusetts, and arrested three men, including Peter, for the manufacture of liquor. According to my husband and father-in-law, no one in their family had ever mentioned this incident.

Continue reading An Ancestral Connection with Prohibition →

Finding Revolutionary War Ancestors

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections,
Frederick Wingdorf's record in the Index to Revolutionary War Service Records.
Frederick Wingdorf’s record in the Index to Revolutionary War Service Records.

Patriots’ Day—the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord—is fast approaching here in Massachusetts. This particular holiday makes many of us a little reflective. Was my ancestor involved in the American Revolution? If you have ever been curious about that, here are some great resources to jump-start your research.

One of the best places to start looking is Virgil D. White’s Index to Revolutionary War Service Records. Available in the NEHGS research library, this particular series is a transcription of the General Index to Compiled Military Service Records of Revolutionary War Soldiers, Sailors, and Members of Army Staff Departments, also known as M860, housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. White’s transcription lists the rank, regiment, or company of each soldier, and is a fantastic resource because it includes every state of service. Consider yourself lucky if your ancestor had a rare name, such as Frederick Wingdorf. Frederick was a drummer in the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment, and—not surprisingly—was the only Frederick Wingdorf in the index. If you are not so lucky and your ancestors had very common names like Samuel Jones or William Moore or, worse, John Smith, you might need to consult secondary sources to help whittle down the long list of candidates. Continue reading Finding Revolutionary War Ancestors →

Finding Uncle Morris

Family Stories, Research Methods

Family Tradition versus Fact, and a few shades of Gray

Gravestone of Morris Larned Healy. Findagrave.com.
Gravestone of Morris Larned Healy. Findagrave.com.

One story often repeated in my family concerned the mystery of my grandfather’s uncle, Morris Larned Healy, who reportedly had died of “lead poisoning” at a bordello in New Orleans . . . or Atlanta. My grandfather, who told the story, was known for his vivid imagination, so I decided to see if the story had any validity. Continue reading Finding Uncle Morris →

Crossing Paths: Two Stories of Buchenwald

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,
U.S. Army troops in Germany, 1945. Photograph by Herbert Gorfinkle. From the Papers of Herbert Gorfinkle, P-904 at the American Jewish Historical Society-New England Archives.
U.S. Army troops in Germany, 1945. Photograph by Herbert Gorfinkle. From the Papers of Herbert Gorfinkle, P-904 at the American Jewish Historical Society-New England Archives.

April 11, 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp. In commemoration of this day, the American Jewish Historical Society–New England Archives (AJHS–NEA) is honoring the memory of two men who were present at Buchenwald for the liberation, and whose papers are in our archives.[1]

As an archive with a very specific mission (to collect and preserve the records of the Jewish communities of Greater Boston and New England), AJHS–NEA has many collections that are connected by family relationships. Continue reading Crossing Paths: Two Stories of Buchenwald →

Testing the “strength” of a local legend

Family Stories, ,
Elmer Bitgood and his back press board weighted with stones in Voluntown, CT. Findagrave.com account of William Molis, Jr.
Elmer Bitgood and his back press board weighted with stones in Voluntown, CT. Findagrave.com account of William Molis, Jr.

Voluntown, a small eastern Connecticut town of just over two thousand, was once home to a national legend who is all but forgotten today. From January 1869 until 23 July 1938,[1] it was the home of Elmer G. Bitgood, a man many locals claimed was the strongest man in the world. I was intrigued and wanted to investigate further.

Stories abound about the strength of Elmer Bitgood, who spent his entire life living and working on his family’s farm in Voluntown. Separating the truth from local folklore was increasingly difficult, even during Elmer’s lifetime, as residents of the area took a certain pride in their hometown Samson. By the 1920s, Bitgood’s fame had grown to national proportions, as articles detailing his exploits appeared in newspapers from New Orleans to Evansville, Indiana, to Rhinelander, Wisconsin.[2] Because he refused all offers to join circuses and museums, he became the focus of many stories throughout eastern Connecticut. Continue reading Testing the “strength” of a local legend →

Beacon Hill Place

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, Research Methods, , ,
Tremont and Beacon Streets
At center, a view of the intersection of Tremont and Beacon Streets. G. W. Bromley & Co., Atlas of the City of Boston: City Proper and Roxbury (1890), Plate 2. Click on the images to expand them.

Mrs. Gray’s Boston, at least during the 1860s, was one largely arrayed around the Common. Her friends lived in houses stretching from Beacon Hill (Beacon, Bowdoin, Chestnut, Hancock, and Mount Vernon Streets) down Park Street to a long line of houses, all long-since demolished, on Tremont Street, thence along Boylston Street to the new Back Bay, with a focus on Arlington Street and Commonwealth Avenue, not to mention (again) Beacon Street. Her sewing circle sometimes met in Chester Square, in the South End, but Mrs. Gray was apt to leapfrog the Back Bay development to her numerous friends living in Roxbury, or perhaps in the country in Dorchester and Brookline. Continue reading Beacon Hill Place →

A helping hand

Family Stories, Research Methods,
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.

But kind fate reached out a helping hand in the form of my friend and colleague Chris Child. Not only is Chris a really nice guy, he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and a legend in the genealogical community. He offered to help me begin and guide me through my research. I accepted immediately, before he could change his mind. Continue reading A helping hand →