Tag Archives: Critical Analysis

Naming a child born out of wedlock

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Fulton 1
Click on the images to expand them.

I was recently asked a question about how surnames were assigned to illegitimate children born in the seventeenth century: Was the surname of the father, or the mother, given to the child? Since illegitimate births were uncommon in New England during the 1600s (about 92% of first children born through 1680 were delivered nine months or more after their parents’ marriage), the illegitimate child could have been given the surname of the mother OR the father, depending on the circumstances. Continue reading Naming a child born out of wedlock →

Solving a puzzle using family letters

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Katrina FahyThe value of family letters can go far beyond the sentimental, providing important genealogical information on extended family and in-laws that may have been previously unknown. But what if, when attempting to piece together this puzzle of information, you are missing its most basic piece: a surname? Continue reading Solving a puzzle using family letters →

Brick Walls

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
John Laurence
Judge John Lawrance (1750-1810)

My most recent immigrant ancestor was a great-great-grandfather, William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899), who followed his father from Germany to Baltimore in 1845. One generation back, I have three unknown great-great-great-grandparents and a further four who arrived during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries:

  • Campbell Patrick White (1787–1859), who went with his parents to Baltimore from Belfast following the Uprising of 1798;
  • Henry G. Hughes (c1811–1860) and his wife Olivia Letitia Coulton (c1817–1847), from Ireland to Geneva and Brooklyn, New York; and
  • Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Esprit Boucher (b. in 1798), a native of Hamburg who was in New York during the 1830s and in Baltimore (with a second wife and young family) during the 1840s and 1850s.

Continue reading Brick Walls →

Cheat Sheets

Research Methods, , , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsI create cheat sheets for projects, but most of them reside inside my head or on scattered pieces of paper in my office – both of which suffer from notorious clutter issues – so it seems like a good exercise to gather and record the process here. In this case, of course, the cheat sheets are for doing research on seventeenth-century New England families, but the basics can be applied to other situations. Also, no search ever progresses exactly the same as any other, so this list is meant to be flexible. Continue reading Cheat Sheets →

Online family trees

Research Methods,

onlinefamtrees2A recent reference question led me on an interesting journey discovering more about online family trees. Using a family tree service on the Web has attractive benefits:  a centralized location on the Internet to store your family information, the immediacy of sharing by digital means your information with relatives and potential relatives, the thrill of locating new individuals or information to enhance your tree and further your research, not to mention networking opportunities to really thrash out a stubborn brick wall. Continue reading Online family trees →

Revelations from my recliner: Part Two

Family Stories, Research Methods,
Little George Rohrbach
My father George Rohrbach

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a breakthrough in determining the parentage of my great-grandmother, Orella (Turnbull) Turnbull. While stuck in my recliner for several days with my foot elevated, I made another discovery, about Orella’s husband George.

For years I’ve been sporadically working at tracking down the Turnbulls. They are the only English family in my largely Finnish and Swiss ancestry, and it seems they should be much easier to trace. Continue reading Revelations from my recliner: Part Two →

The ‘Do Not Read List’

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
fallon 3
Courtesy of The Tonight Show/NBC

Jimmy Fallon recently aired his recurring segment, the “Do Not Read List,” which pokes fun at books with unfortunate titles or unconventional subjects. To my surprise, one of the books featured on the spot was the popular genealogical resource, List of Persons Whose Names Have Been Changed in Massachusetts, 1780-1892. Fallon introduced the book with a sarcastic joke: “420 pages of names … changed names. That’s a page turner.” Then, he proceeded to mock those who changed their generic names to something comical. Continue reading The ‘Do Not Read List’ →

Some recent discoveries

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,
Young officer
My grandfather Frederick Jackson Bell (1903-1994), named for his mother’s family

I have written here about some of my research strategies, and I thought it might be interesting to inventory a few of my recent discoveries (and brick walls).

It is easy to get distracted, and for the last decade or so I have kept a lot of my research notes in a Word file called “Notes on 1790–1930 Censuses.” (Yes, it predates the publication of the 1940 Federal Census, although I have begun to add information from that source as well.) Built around appearances in various censuses, the Notes document keeps me organized, as it is really my ahnentafel (or ancestor table), listing ancestors along with their children and their children’s spouses. In the footnotes, I keep track of my ancestral aunts’ and uncles’ children and their descendants. Continue reading Some recent discoveries →

“Beginning at a stake and stones…”

Family Stories, Research Methods, ,

Stephen Lincoln house

According to John Emory Morris’ Stephen Lincoln of Oakham, Massachusetts, His Ancestors and Descendants (1895), Stephen Lincoln first built a home in Oakham, Worcester County, Massachusetts, in 1784. As late as 1895, this house stood on the road leading from Rutland to Barre Plains, near the home of his father-in-law, Lieutenant Ebenezer Foster. In theory, locating the Lincoln house – or, rather, where it once stood – should be fairly straight forward, right? Continue reading “Beginning at a stake and stones…” →

Revelations from my recliner: Part One

Family Stories, Research Methods,
Turnbull family
From left to right: Orella (Turnbull) Turnbull, her daughter Sylvia (Turnbull) Rohrbach, and Sylvia’s daughter Helen (Rohrbach) Johnson holding her daughter Norma Johnson.

I recently spent a week at home, recovering from foot surgery. With time off from work, I turned to genealogical work of another kind: my own family history. I began crafting an ahnentafel for my father, George Rohrbach. When I got to number 7, I got stuck . . . again.

Number 7 is my great-grandmother, Orella Turnbull, born in Bellaire, Belmont County, Ohio — across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia — in 1856. She married George Turnbull, born in England in 1857. Their first child, Sylvia May Turnbull, was my grandmother. Continue reading Revelations from my recliner: Part One →