Tag Archives: A Genealogist’s Diary

‘A free citizen’

American History, NEHGS Collections, , , ,

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

By the winter of 1861, an American civil war loomed. Regina Shober Gray[1] – a native of Pennsylvania with Southern connections[2] – was disposed to some sort of emancipation for the South’s slaves, with due respect for slave-owners’ existing property rights, but her views (and emphases) would change over the course of the next four years.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston, Sunday, 3 March 1861: A summer’s day – absolutely oppressive. Sorry to hear from Aunt Sarah Bradlee[3] how very sick Henry [Bradlee][4] seems. There was some talk of sending him on a long voyage, but he is too ill for that. Continue reading ‘A free citizen’ →

‘Of course nobody stopped talking’

NEHGS Collections,

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
These entries, from 1860–61, focus less on Regina Shober Gray’s[1] reading than on the successive deaths from diphtheria of members of the Gardner and Adams families during the winter of 1861; they also include a walk-on part for future Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935), who must have narrowly escaped being infected.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston, Sunday, 23 December 1860: The dinner party at Mr. Adams’[2] was a very pleasant one. Mr. & Mrs. Ed. Blake,[3] Miss Jones,[4] and ourselves. It was disagreeably startled by a grand crash of crockery! the falling of a moveable shelf, which was no doubt too heavily piled. It must have made sad havoc in that beautiful dinner set of French china. Of course nobody stopped talking or took any notice, though there [was] noise enough for the crack of doom. I don’t know if I could have taken it so quietly as Emily [Adams][5] and her father did – I am very sure my husband could not. Continue reading ‘Of course nobody stopped talking’ →

ICYMI: Family papers

American History, Collections, Family Stories, ICYMI, Research Methods, , , , , , , , ,

[Author’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 August 2015.]

John Steward boxMy grandfather died almost 25 years ago, and sometime before that he gave me a box of “family papers.” The box itself is rather striking: a metal strong box, easily portable, with my great-great-grandfather John Steward’s name stenciled on top in fading paint. Inside the box are not just family papers, but intriguing (and, of course, unidentified) daguerreotypes and examples of other early photographic processes, along with materials treating the family of my great-grandmother, Margaret Atherton (Beeckman) Steward (1861–1951). Continue reading ICYMI: Family papers →

‘More than worth the money’

American History, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Regina Shober Gray’s[1] diary shows her as part of a wide network of families: in the following entries, from summer and fall in 1860, we see her entertaining her sister in Manchester; receiving visits from her husband’s uncle and her own stepmother in Boston; sending her son off to visit his uncle and aunt in Brookline; and whiling away a day in some of Boston’s many bookstores.

Manchester, Massachusetts, Saturday, 11 August 1860: A rainy day – we all sat in Mrs. Gordon’s[2] rooms till after luncheon. Then Lizzie [Shober][3] and I read aloud in my room – “Leslie’s Autobiography,”[4] which we found very pleasant reading. We had neither bath[e] nor walk to-day. Dr. Gordon came down this p.m. bringing letters from Rebecca [Wainwright],[5] Dr. G., & Mary S[hober].[6] Morris [Gray][7] went off fishing with the girls, and caught a rock-cod, which he pulled up bravely to the level wharf, and then in his tremulous excitement let slip back into the water!! Continue reading ‘More than worth the money’ →

‘By dint of much skipping’

American History, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In May 1860, Regina Shober Gray[1] was visiting her family in Philadelphia.

245 South Eighteenth Street, Wednesday, 9 May 1860: Shopping with [her sisters] Sue & Liz [Shober][2] all the morning – a call from my old school mate Sallie Newbold[3] p.m. – and quite a pleasant party … in the evening, 12 or 15 ladies to 2 gentlemen – a lack of beaux which gave much merriment. [Her younger sons] Reginald & Morris [Gray][4] grow too independent here – trotted off after breakfast to Aunt Annie [Shober]’s[5] to play with Baby John – and Uncle John [Shober][6] keeps them too abundantly supplied with cash. [They] buy the most abominable trash – I must keep possession of their purses myself.

Thursday, 10 May 1860: Another dull day – which gave us a long quiet morning for reading about [Eliot’s] “The Mill on the Floss.”[7] Poor little Mary [Gray][8] suffering with tooth ache, and could not screw herself up to going to the dentist, notwithstanding I offered the brightest gold dollar if she would – but she scorned being bribed into it! Continue reading ‘By dint of much skipping’ →

‘What a wonderful experience’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Regina Shober Gray[1] was an energetic and well-educated woman of her time. Her diary abounds with visits to the theater and to commercial art galleries (the precursors of museums), so I thought it might be interesting and valuable to dip into her reading material, often left to the end of the day and for the benefit of her young children.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston, Massachusetts

Tuesday, 14 February 1860: Have finished “Hodson’s Twelve years in India”[2] – a most interesting book but, oh, so painful. Must the world and life always be so crowded with “oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful war”! But he was truly a noble fellow – one of “Arnold of Rugby’s”[3] men – said to be the “Scud East” of School Days at Rugby.[4] Oh, that terrible, terrible Indian mutiny – how it mowed down the best and bravest, fair women and innocent babes. Continue reading ‘What a wonderful experience’ →

Lost generations

Family Stories, Research Methods, Technology, , , ,
uncle-livy-beeckman-for-vb
John Henry Beeckman’s nephew, Robert Livingston Beeckman (1866-1935).

One of the trends in my ancestry is the curious one whereby, when given the choice between staying in a locale or moving on, my nineteenth-century forebears often remained behind as other relatives ventured further west. One of the sadder family stories is covered in the 1999 book Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California, by Albert L. Hurtado, and concerns my great-great-great-uncle John Henry Beeckman (1818–1850).

Uncle John was the eldest son of Henry Beeckman and Catherine McPhaedris Livingston, and the family was a prosperous one in the days before the Civil War. That they were socially acceptable to New Yorkers and Virginians alike is suggested by the fact that John H. Beeckman married Margaret Gardiner in 1848 at the Virginia plantation of the bride’s brother-in-law, former President John Tyler. Still, John Beeckman was a young man, fired up by the discovery of gold in California, and in 1849 he left bride and newborn son to travel west. Continue reading Lost generations →

Let’s put on a show!

American History, Collections, News, , , ,

Mitzi posterFor the last few months I have been working with Judi Garner of the Jewish Heritage Center, here at NEHGS, on an exhibit of twentieth-century Jewish photographers and their subjects, and we are finally finished. The photos are framed and hung; the labels have been written, proofed, and attached to boards; a short show catalogue has been created; and my lecture has, largely, been written…

Tonight I will speak here in Boston on the show and its subject: Mitzi Hajos (pron. Hoy-uss), a Broadway chorine who became a one-name star along the lines of Cher or Madonna. Through photos of Mitzi, and the images taken by contemporary photographers of Broadway and Hollywood stars, we can trace the changing aesthetics of theatrical portraiture and the growing influence of the flickers – the photoplay – the movies that were, increasingly, produced in California. Continue reading Let’s put on a show! →

‘Veiling mists and disguising clouds’

Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This post concludes the series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary which began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Mrs. Gray’s[1] summer was winding down, and while autumn impended she could still write with exaltation of her summer visit to New Hampshire:

Plaisted House, Jefferson, N.H., Monday, 30 August 1880: Early this morning a heavy cloud – we should call it a fog-bank on the sea-shore – blotted out the world; but gradually out of it arose the great peaks – and it has lifted now – in a blaze of sun shine & beauty.

Last evening we had the most glorious sunset, with lurid red & pink clouds over head, on which was flung a blazing rainbow, all its colours transmuted into “something rich and rare” by the red Sunset glow. Low in the western sky, a sea of green – that inimitable tint, which comes only in sunset skies; then, bars & banks of gold and purple and crimson; then, deep indigo blue fading up into the paler sky where floated the ragged mass of fleecy cloud across whose red glory this rainbow, like a flaming sword, was flung! A glorious sight! Continue reading ‘Veiling mists and disguising clouds’ →

Friendly rivalries

Collections, Research Methods, , , , , ,

Don and Rosser and query 7 September 1944
“Boy, did they ever embarrass me right after that [picture] was taken. That’s Don and Rosser doing the honors.” (7 September 1944)
My photography collection recently took a decided step into new territory when I started acquiring vernacular photographs – images characterized, generally, by their lack of provenance and offering limited opportunities for identifying the subject. When I bought one large lot, though, I was surprised and pleased to find quite a lot of information on the reverse of the prints, enough that I am hopeful more can be learned about the people shown.

For starters, the (presumably female) scribe who wrote neatly on most of the prints dated them precisely: most are from 3 September 1944, with one or two from four days later. The focus of her interest is clear: Wayne Ehler, whose gymnastic endeavors she much admires. Two photos are marked in another hand, and perhaps this one is male, since he subtly denigrates Wayne and boasts of his own comparable accomplishments (not shown). Continue reading Friendly rivalries →