Tag Archives: Critical Analysis

Re-enacting history

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods,
David Lambert tintype
A modern tintype

I have questioned published history my whole life, and have sought out the stories from the documents or in some cases the source. I was the obnoxious eight-year-old kid who went to Plimouth Plantation and posed my questions to the re-enactor John Alden. I did not ask standard questions like the rest of my class: “What do you do for work?” or “How do you survive without television?” I inquired of Mr. Alden who his parents were and where he was born exactly. The evil look I received back from the modern Mr. Alden was almost as bad as the glare from my second grade teacher before she grabbed me and led me out of the Alden home. Continue reading Re-enacting history →

The secret history

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing,
Marston 4
Warren Gould Child

If you have been binge watching the latest season of Orange is the New Black, you may have learned an interesting bit of trivia, courtesy of the Martha Stewart/Paula Deen-inspired new character of Judy King, who mentions that Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) had “two wives” simultaneously.

As explored in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Marston married Elizabeth Holloway in 1915 and had two surviving children with her; Marston also lived in an extended relationship with Olive Byrne, by whom he had two more children, who were then adopted by William and Elizabeth Marston. Continue reading The secret history →

Beyond price

American History, Family Stories, , ,

Ed Hawes croppedSome photographs of our ancestors are beyond price. This one of my mother’s father, Ed Hawes, was taken in 1899, when he was still planning on a Naval career. Unfortunately, as a midshipman, he was thrown down a hatch in a hazing incident that shattered his hip.

Ed, the son of a street railway motorman and mechanic, had inherited his father’s skills with tools, so with the Navy out of the picture, he started working in a bicycle store – the same store, the story goes, as Peter Fuller (son of Massachusetts Governor Alvan Fuller and later a millionaire Cadillac dealer). As a young man at the turn of the twentieth century who knew how to drive an automobile, Ed was hired as chauffeur by Harrison Harwood, owner of the H. Harwood and Sons Baseball Factory in Ed’s home town of Natick, Massachusetts. Continue reading Beyond price →

The real Molly Pitcher

American History, Family Stories, ,
Molly Pitcher
Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth, June 1778. Copy of engraving by J. C. Armytage after Alonzo Chappel. Courtesy of NARA

I recently stumbled upon a reference to Molly Pitcher, a woman from Pennsylvania who fought with her husband during the Revolutionary War for a New Jersey militia unit, and whom New Jersey has adopted as their own heroine of the war, lifting her to almost cult status. Who was this legendary woman? Was she a real woman who fought in the war?

In Emily J. Teipe’s 1999 article “Will the Real Molly Pitcher Please Stand Up?” in Prologue Magazine, she cites Robert Leckie’s text,[1] which states that Molly Pitcher was actually Mary Ludwig Hayes, a daughter of German immigrants, who fought alongside her husband, John Hayes, in Captain Francis Proctor’s company in the Pennsylvania Artillery.[2] Continue reading The real Molly Pitcher →

‘Their furrows plough’

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

Daly_Marie photoSeveral decades ago, my father was planting bulbs in our backyard flower garden. An old stone wall borders the garden and our yard, as well as all the neighbors’ yards on my street. Digging into the soil, my father found more than the usual collection of rocks and earthworms – he disinterred a pair of nineteenth-century lady’s boots. Continue reading ‘Their furrows plough’ →

‘Something old, something new’

American History, Family Stories, ,

028-coralI’ve been a bridesmaid in four weddings. In each of these weddings, the bride has carefully chosen four special items to wear on her wedding day: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. And when preparing for the first three weddings, I didn’t think much of the custom. But when my sister-in-law got married in April, and showed me her something old, new, borrowed, and blue, I couldn’t help but think: why on earth are women doing this? ‘Something old, new, borrowed, blue’? Did my mother do it? My grandmother? My great-grandmother? Continue reading ‘Something old, something new’ →

The Parkman House

American History, NEHGS Collections, , ,
Samuel Parkman house, Bowdoin Square, Boston, by Philip Harry, 1847. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

Among the many treasures in the Society’s collection is an extraordinarily well-preserved circa 1847 oil painting by Philip Harry of a grand Boston home that no longer exists: the late eighteenth-century Samuel Parkman House on Bowdoin Square in the West End.

Founded in 1788, Bowdoin Square had, by the early nineteenth century, become one of the most prestigious residential areas of the city and home to many of Boston’s leading families, including the Parkmans. (Samuel Parkman, who built the house around 1789, was a successful merchant who made a fortune in real estate as Boston grew into one of the most important cities in the new republic.) Continue reading The Parkman House →

Serendipity

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

AbigailD Will clipMany discoveries in life are the result of serendipity – wandering around until one falls over something one wasn’t looking for.

I pulled an all-nighter this week while working on the Early New England Families Study Project sketch for Jonas Clark of Cambridge. I had noted that his son Samuel Clark, baptized in 1659, was “living 1705,” but had not included any proof of the claim. Ruffling unsuccessfully through the stack of reference material at four a.m., which is my normal bed time, I still decided to take one more stab at the problem. Continue reading Serendipity →

Well be gone

Family Stories, , ,
Asa Williams well 1
“My Old House”

Researching family history takes us to many places: libraries, museums, various genealogical repositories (New England Historic Genealogical Society, of course!), cemeteries, and . . . driveways. An historical archaeological adventure is the sort of research that happened when I wasn’t looking!

The dooryard and then the driveway of my old Asa Williams house had always been hard-packed dirt, until in 1979 my father had the chance to have it paved, making it easier to plow in winter and eliminating the usual signs of mud season. If asphalt improved the look of things, it also covered a multitude of landscaping sins. Continue reading Well be gone →

Another day at the beach

American History, Collections, Family Stories, , , ,

Gilbert Livingston Steward as a boy by Scheur query of New YorkI am fortunate in having photographs of many of my relatives, and more fortunate still in that I can identify so many of them. Often the work has been done for me, as to names; sometimes my work is cut out for me in terms of fitting them into the family tree. I have photos of all four of my grandparents as children, in the early years of the twentieth century, so I’m also lucky that my great-grandparents (or other relatives) took the trouble to take them to a professional photographer to be recorded.

My paternal grandfather, Gilbert Livingston Steward (1898–1991), was photographed by Scheur of New York – I think! It is one of the photos in my paternal grandmother’s album, and I like to think it was a present from my great-grandmother[1] at the time of my grandparents’ engagement in 1927. The photo shows GLS at about the time he went off to St. George’s School in Rhode Island. Continue reading Another day at the beach →