Most families have one: the family historian. Whether or not the focus is genealogical, there is usually at least one family member who keeps track of siblings and cousins, sometimes to the nth degree. My father’s family had one in my great-aunt Margaret Steward (1888–1975). I do not remember meeting her, but I’ve been told I take after her, at least in so far as the mantle of family genealogist passed from her to me when I was still in middle school. Continue reading The family historian
Municipal annual reports provide a breakdown of various city and town department budgets and expenditures for the year. At first glance it may seem that these publications would not be useful for genealogical research, but taking the time to search these reports for information about your ancestors may lead to some interesting discoveries about their lives and the lives of their contemporaries. Many of these reports include a roster of municipal employees and their annual salaries. For example, the 1887 edition of City of Somerville (Massachusetts) Annual Reports contains information submitted by a number of departments, including the School Committee.[1] Their report includes a table listing the school teachers who worked in Somerville that year, their salaries, and the year they were hired. Continue reading Town and city annual reports
Building on previous posts, which featured books that help with researching ancestors who arrived first in Massachusetts and then moved westward or northward, this entry will look at some resources available to researchers whose ancestors moved to or first arrived in New York. As Henry B. Hoff, Editor of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, notes in his introduction to the AmericanAncestors.org Research Guide on New York, “Finding information about your New York ancestors can be tricky. The difficulty depends on time, place, and group. Researching Dutch-descended New Yorkers in the Hudson Valley during the eighteenth century is likely to be easy; whereas researching settlers from New England in the same locale may be difficult. And of course the 1911 fire at the State Library in Albany and the fact that statewide registration of vital records did not start until 1880 only adds to the difficulty.” Continue reading Moving to (and through) New York
In this season of giving, sometimes the most enjoyment comes from sharing items you forgot you had instead of those newly received. Three years ago, I celebrated Christmas at the mountain home of my paternal grandparents. At some point, my grandfather mentioned to my father and aunts that he still had a box of their old vinyl records in storage. Naturally, they could not recall what might have been left over from their school days, and my cousins and I were curious about our parents’ musical tastes. We convinced my grandfather to dig out the box. Continue reading A Christmas box
Plymothians invented Forefather’s Day in 1769 to mark the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, and to emphasize Plymouth Colony’s independent origins in response to what they felt was continued oppression by the English Crown. At different times the event has involved a ball, dinner, orations, and church services. Speakers have included the likes of Daniel Webster and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. For most of the last 200 years, the event has been hosted by the Pilgrim Society, whose Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth is the mecca for everyone interested in early New England history. Continue reading Forefathers’ Day
Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) was the last crown-appointed civilian governor of Massachusetts. During his term of office, he dealt with the aftermath of both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts has recently published the first volume of his selected correspondence covering the years 1740–1766. It is most readily available through amazon.com. Here are further thoughts about the process of documentary editing by John Tyler, one of the volumes’ two co-editors.
It is often said that transcription (translating eighteenth-century handwriting into Microsoft Word) is about one-third of the work involved in documentary editing. For the Hutchinson papers, Malcolm Freiberg and Catherine Shaw Mayo had already established, in a preliminary way, the text of most key letters. Elizabeth Dubrulle and I would be negligent, however, if we did not check these against the originals, but Freiberg was very rarely wrong. Continue reading Reading other people’s mail: Part Two
Recently, I was searching for records in the towns of Southampton, Easthampton, and Bridgehampton, all in Suffolk County, New York. I was trying to determine the identity of the father of Abraham C., who was born in 1720 in Southampton and died about 1785. The client had done some excellent research, and through his efforts, concluded that there were two possible outcomes. Since finding direct evidence from records for New York during this time period can be tricky, I examined numerous publications from our NEHGS collection, including town histories, such as the multi-volume series Records of The Town of Southampton, With Other Ancient Documents of Historic Value; published genealogies; and the excellent New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Continue reading Town historians: a helpful resource
This post marks the 250th blog post at Vita Brevis. To mark the occasion, I have asked some of our peerless contributors for suggestions on the theme of “jump starting“ genealogical research (and publication) for the holidays – with an eye toward 2015!
Consider sending a holiday letter out via email to your relatives. Then print a copy for posterity. – David Allen Lambert
Ask any baseball fan who the first African-American major league player was, and nearly all will tell you it was Jackie Robinson. Ask anyone familiar with the game’s long and storied history before Robinson’s debut in 1947, and they’ll tell you it was Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy, who broke into the game in 1884.[1] Very few, if any, would tell you that it was a man named William Edward White who became the first African-American to play in a major league baseball game in 1879. Had it not been for a few keen researchers, William Edward White’s name would have been lost to baseball history, perhaps forever. Continue reading Solving a “mystery of baseball”
Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) was the last crown-appointed civilian governor of Massachusetts. During his term of office, he dealt with the aftermath of both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts has recently published the first volume of his selected correspondence covering the years 1740–1766. It is most readily available through amazon.com. Here are a few thoughts about the process of documentary editing by John Tyler, one of the volumes’ two co-editors.
The effort to bring Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s letters into print has a long history, much longer than the twenty years that I have been working on them. In 1951 and 1954, the National Historical Publications Committee at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts urged their publication. Later in the decade, Malcolm Freiberg and Catherine Shaw Mayo began transcribing the nearly 1,800 letters contained in Hutchinson’s letter books at the Massachusetts Archives. These transcriptions were an invaluable aid to anyone researching the Boston politics of the fifteen years before the American Revolution. Continue reading Reading other people’s mail: Part One