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 →

The end of an era

Family Stories, News
Bernice_Madigan_2013
Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

An era in New England has ended. The last person born in the region during the nineteenth century died 3 January 2015 at the age of 115. Bernice Marina (Emerson) Madigan was born on Hill Street in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on 24 July 1899. Her birth record appears at American Ancestors.org; her obituary may be read here.

She was the daughter of Harry G. and Grace E. (Bennett) Emerson, who were married at West Springfield on 15 September 1897. Her father was a barber in West Springfield; her mother was a native of Cheshire, Massachusetts. Continue reading The end of an era →

“Shake it off!”

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Child 1_scsOver the last year or so I have had some interesting matches amongst “DNA Relatives” on the website 23andme.com. I manage the profiles of my parents, my mother’s brother, and my wife’s parents. So far, the most interesting results have all come about from my mother and uncle. While all the profiles have given me several DNA relatives predicted to be anywhere from third to fifth cousins, only my mother and uncle’s matches have been linked me with cousins with whom we have been able to determine the exact degree of the relationship. Continue reading “Shake it off!” →

Early New England Families Study Project update

Family Stories, News, Research Methods,

Alicia Crane WilliamsSeven new sketches were recently posted to the Early New England Families Study Project database on americanancestors.org:

Andrew Lane of Hingham, a feltmaker and farmer who had nine children with his wife Trypheny.

George Lane of Hingham, Andrew’s brother, a shoemaker, who had eight children with his wife Sarah Harris.

Oliver Mellowes of Boston and Braintree, farmer. By his first wife, Mary James, Oliver had four children. His second wife was the widow Elizabeth (Hawkredd) Coney – see below. Continue reading Early New England Families Study Project update →

Double-dating

News, Research Methods, , ,
Charles I death warrant
The Death Warrant of King Charles I, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/rise_parliament/docs/charles_warrant.htm

Millions of British citizens and their colonial counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean went to sleep on 2 September 1752 and woke up on 14 September. This shift in dates was due to an Act of Parliament passed in 1750, known as Chesterfield’s Act, which put into motion a series of changes that fundamentally altered the way that many measured time. Continue reading Double-dating →

The Wings of a dilemma

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsThe Wing family of Cape Cod has had a great amount of genealogical information published about it over the years. Beginning with Rev. Conway P. Wing’s A Historical and Genealogical Register of John Wing, of Sandwich, Mass. And his Descendants, 1632-1888, the list includes Mary Elizabeth Sinnott’s Annals of the Sinnott, Rogers, Coffin, Corlies, Reeves, Bodine and Allied Families, published in 1905, in which Wing is one of the allied families; The Owl, a serial publication of the Wing Family Association from 1901 to the present, and most recently Raymond T. Wing’s 2006 version, Wing Genealogy, Volume 1, The Reverend John Wing of Banbury, Oxfordshire, England and his wife Deborah Bachiler, Their Ancestry and Descendants through Five Generations. Continue reading The Wings of a dilemma →

The year in review concluded

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, , , , ,

Newbury Street TodayIn yesterday’s post, I covered some of the more than 250 blog posts published in Vita Brevis during the first half of 2014. The series concludes with a post from each of the last six months of the year.

At the end of July, Katrina Fahy solved a genealogical puzzle using family letters, since the family in question lived in a region with few available nineteenth century vital records: Continue reading The year in review concluded →

The year in review

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, , , , , , , ,
1928 Newbury Street Artist Rendering
99-101 Newbury Street, the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s home since December 1964

As I write this, a few days before the New Year begins, Vita Brevis is nearly a year old; it has had more than 300,000 page views since its first post on 2 January 2014. (This is a statistic I like to trumpet, although of course a single reader on a given day might well look at more than one entry: so I cannot claim 300,000 unique readers over the course of the first year, much as I would like to!) That first post, Generatio longa, vita brevis, hinted at the blog’s purpose: “Vita Brevis will include short posts on research methods – applicable to a variety of genealogical subjects – as well as posts on results. Like a mosaic, these posts will, in time, form a new collection for the genealogical researcher to explore.” Continue reading The year in review →