Tag Archives: A Genealogist’s Diary

A slice of life

American History, Collections, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, , ,
George Bruce Upton
George Bruce Upton (1804-1874). NEHGS Collection

For as long as I’ve had my present office on the Society’s third floor, I’ve looked through my open door at a portrait of George Bruce Upton (1804–1874), the Society’s vice president between 1866 and 1874. I will confess that my eye did not linger over Mr. Upton’s portrait, as the representation does not appeal to me; on the other hand, immersed as I was this winter in my sabbatical project, once I noticed his nameplate I realized that Mr. Upton and his family appear frequently in the Gray diary:[1] Continue reading A slice of life →

Not quite right

American History, Research Methods, , , ,
Two stars in ship’s clothing.

I recently bid on a photograph associated with a 1938 Cecil B. DeMille film called The Buccaneer, and noticed that the seller identified the man in the picture – the actor Fredric March (1897–1975) – but not the woman: a search at The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) suggested that she was the Hungarian actress Franciska Gaal (1904–1973). In the end, I won the auction, and when I went to pay the seller I started thinking about Miss Gaal’s hair – which led me on an internet search that revealed that the actress, the actor, and the film were not quite what they seemed. Continue reading Not quite right →

The scope of the Gray diary

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

For the last six months or so, I have been engrossed in the daily diary of Hedwiga Regina (Shober) Gray (1818–1885), a Philadelphia-born Boston lady who wrote about her family, her household, and the larger world between 1860 and 1884. In almost a dozen blog posts I’ve quoted Mrs. Gray on contemporary celebrities (Mrs. Jack Gardner’s behavior merits a scolding for being “fast”; the diarist’s children see Tom Thumb perform and are “much pleased & amused”); on the danger of fire in the household (Mrs. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is burned to death, while Eliza Winthrop survives a mattress fire); and on the painful grief associated with settling a beloved sister’s estate as relationships degrade between Mrs. Gray, her surviving sisters, and their younger brother. Continue reading The scope of the Gray diary →

International research posts at Vita Brevis

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, News, Research Methods, , , , , , ,
scanros1
From Eileen Pironti’s post on “Reconnecting with family” in January.

Every so often it seems worthwhile to look back over the wide range of Vita Brevis posts and bring some related ones together in one spot. Now that we are half way through the calendar year, some posts on international genealogical research merit a second look. In January, Eileen Pironti wrote about “Reconnecting with family”: in her case, her Irish family in County Roscommon: Continue reading International research posts at Vita Brevis →

Marking the 4th of July

American History, Research Methods, , , , , ,
A year’s worth of holidays by Eugene Robert Richee. Click on the images to expand them.

In my last post on photographs, I wrote about three unknown subjects who sat for some of the leading Hollywood photographers of the day, and readers weighed in with suggestions about who these men might be as well as where to look for answers as to their identity. In today’s post, I wanted to try something a little different, especially as I could use a photo I’ve been longing to show off: these two photos, again taken by well-known photographers of the early sound era, show three film stars doing a bit of modeling for their studios. Continue reading Marking the 4th of July →

An experiment in time and place

American History, Family Stories, ,
Steward 1
Nos. 1 and 2, with their three children in Goshen, New York, ca. 1857.

A number of years ago I read a passage in a book on the British aristocracy that has stayed with me, a passage having little to do with peers and their families and quite a lot to do with how we all can look at our ancestors. The author, the late Richard “Dickie” Buckle, proposed the temporal impossibility that all of his great-great-grandparents might have met in a room in London about the year 1800, and with this rough structure he mused about who they were – and whether they might have known one another.

For my purposes, the year 1875 works best, although my sixteen great-great-grandparents were not all alive at that date. Continue reading An experiment in time and place →

More object lessons

American History, Research Methods, , , ,
Photo by W. F. Seely, L.A.

Back in October I wrote about a mysterious photo in my collection of Hollywood photographs, one taken by Eugene Robert Richee of a plainly-dressed woman wearing a rather splendid hat. Photographer and studio names are given on the back, but the sitter is not identified; that post garnered a number of suggested identifications for the subject, including Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, and Barbara Stanwyck.

Since then, I have bought a number of photographs of “Old Hollywood” sitters, sometimes with the idea of having the photographer (where identified) represented in the collection; in those cases I haven’t worried much about the photos’ subjects. In thinking about these images recently, I thought they might serve as a test case on what old portrait photographs can tell us about their subjects’ identities, starting with the date the image was made. Continue reading More object lessons →

A small world

American History, Family Stories, ,

Augusta in 1823In the small world department, one of my closest friends growing up still lives near my parents on the North Shore of Boston. We grew up hearing our parents and grandparents call each other cousin, but no one could readily sort out the connection – in our case, it was via my step-grandmother’s first husband, which means that Franz was really a connection, a cousin of my (step) first cousins! Continue reading A small world →

Overlapping generations

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Margaret Steward
Margaret Steward (1888-1975) in 1961.

When I was born, I had two living great-grandmothers. The elder was my matrilineal great-grandmother, Pauline (Boucher) Glidden (1875–1964), whom I never had the chance to meet; the other was my paternal grandmother’s stepmother, Annabelle May (Phillips) (Ayer) Whistler (1906–2000), who outlived my great-grandfather by more than forty years and died when I was an adult. I met her only once, but I still think of her often, as I have the dining room set from her house in Florida!

My approach to research, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is to look at collateral relatives as much as I look at my direct ancestry. Continue reading Overlapping generations →

A Victorian genealogist

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

One of the mysteries of the Regina Shober Gray diary is why it came to be part of the NEHGS collection. It is an account of daily (or weekly) life, written between January 1860 and December 1884, and for many of the volumes Mrs. Gray is observant about the relationships of her friends and acquaintances, but far less interested, evidently, in the genealogy of the Shober, Gray, and Clay families.

That all changes, however, in March 1874, at tea with one of her nieces: Continue reading A Victorian genealogist →