Category Archives: Family Stories

Three Argonauts

Family Stories, , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsFriday marks the seventieth anniversary of the death of my mother’s brother in “Operation Argonaut” during the last year of World War II. If you remember your Greek mythology, the Argonauts were the band of heroes who accompanied Jason in his quest to find the Golden Fleece (their ship being the Argo), but you probably have never heard of the Operation Argonaut of 1945.

Operation Argonaut was the mission responsible for getting Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill safely to and from the Yalta Conference with Joseph Stalin. Continue reading Three Argonauts →

Brigadoon

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Map of Mannheim 1888
Map of Mannheim in 1888. (Note the circular grid at right, representing the city William Boucher Jr. would have known.)

My great-grandmother was one of a large family, and when her mother died in 1924 the family house was evidently broken up, its contents divided between Wally and her nine surviving brothers and sisters. A fascinating family register, listing my great-great-grandfather’s twenty-three children and (most of) their birthdates descended to the youngest daughter: her granddaughter, my second cousin once removed, now has it. My great-grandmother Wally received a curious trove of documents associated with her father, a well-known musical instrument-maker: her portion included an 1845 passport from the Grand Duchy of Baden, an 1863 receipt for a soldier substitute, and an 1899 condolence letter from William Boucher Jr.’s half-brother to his widow. Continue reading Brigadoon →

Reconnecting with family

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
scanros3
Taughmaconnell Parish Cemetery, County Roscommon

My interest in genealogy was sparked by a request from my father: he wanted my help in finding information on his paternal grandparents. My father did not know their names, but he had heard that they were from Ireland. My grandfather died when I was young, and his only living sibling didn’t want to talk to us about her parents because it was “all in the past,” so I began my search by obtaining a copy of my grandfather’s birth record. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad the names of his father’s parents, which were listed on that birth record: Thomas Curley and Margaret Glennon. Continue reading Reconnecting with family →

“For want of a shoe”

Family Stories, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsIn recent years I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I am a perfectionist. Now, before everyone starts hooting with laughter, a perfectionist is not a person who is, or thinks she is, perfect. Rather a perfectionist is forever doomed, being human, to never achieving perfection.  Other terms might be obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, or genealogist. Continue reading “For want of a shoe” →

Family connections

Family Stories, ,
Anne Curry and Pearces
From left: Nancie Stewart Curry Pearce, John H. J. Pearce, Anne Curry, and Charles Steward, 1961.

I recently skipped ahead in the Gray diary, as I had a printout of the 1873 volume and thought it might be fun to skim through that year’s entries. It was interesting to see the shifts in Mrs. Gray’s tone: she is, after all, about ten years older than when I last “checked in” with her, and her children – and their family and friends – are that much older, too, with more definite personalities and interests. Continue reading Family connections →

“Memory lane”

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Uncle Bill Doylestown HS 1947The other day, I was discussing genealogy with a friend and she said to me, “So, genealogy is just one big walk down memory lane?” I thought about this, and while I think that genealogy might be more of a drive down the memory interstate highway, I could not get this idea out of my head. I began to think of how some of us like to mosey down memory lane. For some, this might involve looking through old emails or pulling out a memory box. For me, it means flipping through old yearbooks. Continue reading “Memory lane” →

An Alden conundrum

Family Stories, News, Research Methods

Alicia Crane WilliamsMost family hereditary societies are very small organizations. The Alden Kindred of America was established in 1901, first to protect the Alden homestead in Duxbury, Massachusetts, but second to gather together descendants of the famous Pilgrims John and Priscilla Alden. It currently has fewer than 1,400 members. Modeled after the new Mayflower Society established a few years earlier, the Alden Kindred required that members file lineage papers and proof for their claims, and it had dreams of eventually publishing a full Alden genealogy. However, unlike the Wing Family Association – which has been publishing its magazine The Owl for a century and in time produced a book – the Alden Kindred has not published any significant genealogy. Continue reading An Alden conundrum →

Tracing ancestral paths: Part One

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Garceau 1_2
Page from the 1910 Lowell city directory

Whether it is collecting, reading, drawing, or painting, maps have always been one of my greatest passions. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I consider maps an essential tool in my genealogical research. As a researcher, even if I know that some of my ancestors spent their entire lives in the same city or town, I can never assume that they always lived in the same exact location. There are a multitude of sources where an individual’s address at any given point can be found, including: Continue reading Tracing ancestral paths: Part One →

Satisfactory accounts

Family Stories, Research Methods, , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsIn my blog post The Wings of a dilemma, I bemoaned the fact that although so much has been published about the Wing family over the years, I could not find a “satisfactory” account of the early Wing family. Raymond Wing of The Wing Family Association has kindly brought me up to speed on what is new with the Wings, including baptisms for the two oldest children of John and Deborah Wing discovered since the 2006 Wing genealogy was published. Thank you, Raymond. These baptisms are posted on the Wing website, but I evidently missed them because I found no link to those records from the other pages on the site to alert me that they were there. This will eventually bring us to discuss the dilemma: “If we have the information, how to we lead people to it?”

But first, what is, or is not, a “satisfactory” account? Continue reading Satisfactory accounts →

What’s in a name: Part Two

Family Stories, Research Methods, , , , ,
Hedwiga Gray diary1
Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

In the coming weeks, I will be reviewing a diary in our collection with an eye toward its eventual publication. The diarist is Hedwiga Regina (Shober) Gray (1818–1885), a native of Philadelphia who married Dr. Francis Henry Gray of Boston (1813–1880) in 1844. As diaries are rarely written with an audience in mind, no matter how remote, Mrs. Gray’s diary – in twenty-five volumes, spanning the years 1860–1884 – is full of interesting mysteries about the identities of the people she encounters. Continue reading What’s in a name: Part Two →