Founded in December 1788, Cincinnati has long been a city with a rich cultural heritage, forged largely from the influences of its significant immigrant populations. Situated at the junction of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, Cincinnati was viewed as a natural destination for immigrants who sought work in the city’s booming industries.
As I have mentioned in other blog posts, the focus of my research has been on my maternal ancestry from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. While researching my Italian heritage, I have come across various places listed as my ancestors’ places of birth, from tiny frazioni (the equivalent of a parish) to various larger comuni (towns). To make researching my Italian ancestry harder is the fact that I am from the northern part of Italy, about 40 miles outside of Milan. Continue reading Snail mail→
Finishing up the generation of the Princess of Wales’s great-great-great-great-grandparents – as part of a review of scholarship that has become available since Richard Evans’s book, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, was published in 2007 – there is something more to be said about her matrilineal ancestress in that generation, Eliza Kewark (or Kevorkian) of Surat in the Indian state of Gujurat.[1]
The daughter of Jakob Kevork/Hakob Kevorkian, and sister-in-law of Aratoon Baldassier (or Baldassarian), her voice may be heard in a series of letters she wrote to her partner (and, perhaps, husband) Theodore Forbes between 1812 and 1819; the last – concerning Forbes’s plan to send their daughter to his family in Scotland – strikes a formal note: Continue reading Further ancestors of the Princess of Wales→
Volunteer Dianne Wesselhoeft uses a static dissipating brush to collect the pieces of paper and dust from the gutter of a Saint Patrick volume.
I started at NEHGS as a volunteer, coming in every Friday for about four hours. My first project involved checking the transcriptions of the names that other volunteers had made against other sources to help decipher some of the names. Often this involved me running up to the fifth floor, where the local histories are kept, or 7, where the genealogies are, to check spellings. After a few weeks I was familiar enough with the handwriting that I did not have to go use outside sources to verify the transcription. Not long afterwards, I began scanning a manuscript for Special Collections and then, as I was in library school at the time, working with actual collections and providing additional details for finding aids. Continue reading Volunteer appreciation→
My sister-in-law Sue and I hoped we might uncover a backstory behind the marriage of her great-great-grandparents. Aimé Vallée, age 21, of St. Casimir, Québec, wed his third cousin, Marguerite Vallée, age 43, widow of François Trottier, mother of twelve children. François died in November 1844, age 69; Marguerite married Aimé three months later, with a dispensation omitting two additional banns of marriage. We sensed our curiosity might be allayed by visiting St. Casimir, midway between Trois Rivières and Québec City. Its splendid late nineteenth-century Catholic church attests to its central place in the life of that community and a long tradition of recording genealogy. Continue reading The widow of St. Casimir→
David Gorfein traveled to America on board R.M.S. Olympic.
Immigration to the United States has often been a difficult and time-consuming process, and never more so than during the first half of the twentieth century. The immigration laws of the 1920s established a quota system whereby only 2% of the national population of each country could immigrate annually; in effect, this meant that if there were 2 million Germans in the United States, then only 40,000 Germans could come to the United States each year. Continue reading Tired of waiting→
Continuing my project of reviewing recent scholarship (or new databases) that might add material to Richard Evans’s 2007 book, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, I have reached the late Princess’s great-great-great-grandparents. Among them: James Brownell Boothby (1791–1850) and Charlotte Cunningham (1799–1893), who were married in 1816. Ancestry’s UK, Foreign and Overseas Registers of British Subjects, 1628–1969 database documents the marriage of James, late of Sheffield, Yorkshire, and Charlotte, late of Folke (Sherborne), Dorset, in “Bahia of the Brazils, South America.”[1] As there was then “no Protestant Church, Chapel, or Place of Public Worship” established in Bahia, the ceremony was performed by the bride’s father, Alexander Cunningham, the British Consul. Continue reading More ancestors of the Princess of Wales→
St. Patrick’s Church in Lowell. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
As a volunteer at NEHGS, my current assignment is to proofread and potentially correct the indexed records of the Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 collection. If you have taken a look at this database, you’ll know that the handwriting in the records varies from “very clear” to “indecipherable.” We have even made use of a “Transcription Challenge,” where we post names from the scanned record book pages and ask users what they think the handwriting represents. Not too surprisingly, the suggested names vary quite a bit amongst themselves.
Contributing to the confusion is that many of the given (first) names in the collection are expressed in Latin form. In other words, the name “Guillimus McCarthy” represents “William McCarthy” in English. Continue reading The only existing record→
When researching ancestors who fought in the Civil War, don’t forget to examine their Combined Military Service Records for important genealogical data. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Combined Military Service Records were created by the War Department to expedite the administration of the claims and pensions of veterans. Information was collected from muster lists, enlistment records, payrolls, and other miscellaneous sources, and then organized into envelopes by soldier. These records are housed at the National Archives, and many are also available on Fold3 for both Confederate and Union troops.
These Combined Military Service Records note the date of enlistment, presence or absence at muster, injuries sustained, promotions, and discharge. Most importantly, they may also give the specific birthplace of the soldier. For those of us whose Civil War ancestors were immigrants, or whose ancestors were born in locales with poor vital records, these records are especially important. Beyond their military service, these records can also provide unique information, including a physical description of the soldier. Continue reading Service records for Civil War combatants→
“Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718,” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Is that Thomas Lacy drawing his cutlass between Blackbeard and Lieut. Maynard? Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
A year or so back, I was contacted by a favorite cousin of mine asking for help with questions his nephew had regarding our family tree. His nephew, a serious-minded young man (and a very typical teenager), was curious about any infamous or otherwise notable kin among our branches. And, since I’ve managed to somehow insinuate myself as the family’s alleged expert on such things, well, I guess I’d become their “go-to” guy for an answer or two. (I know, hard to believe, right?) I should mention that the young man who would be asking any of these questions was only thirteen years old! Continue reading A pirate’s life→
Founded in December 1788, Cincinnati has long been a city with a rich cultural heritage, forged largely from the influences of its significant immigrant populations. Situated at the junction of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, Cincinnati was viewed as a natural destination for immigrants who sought work in the city’s booming industries.
