Every year at this time, the New England Historic Genealogical Society holds its annual meeting here in Boston. This year, the program began on Thursday with a lunch for board members, councilors, and other out-of-town guests, followed by tours of the Society’s new building at 97 Newbury Street and the new conservation laboratory at 99–101 Newbury Street. Friday was devoted to committee and other meetings for the board and council, culminating in a gala dinner where presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin received the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award for American History and Biography. Ms. Goodwin was given a hand bound copy of a genealogy commissioned by the Society and compiled by Chris Child and David Allen Lambert, and she spoke to the group about “Everlasting Legacies”; her address had the epigraph “The people we love will live on so long as we pledge to tell and retell the stories of their lives.” Continue reading “To tell and retell the stories of their lives”
Tag Archives: Early New England Families Study Project
Missing nails and black holes
My “Devil’s advocate” pops up and waves red flags at me whenever something is not quite right based on “our” experience. Our most often used flag is for “black holes” – too much missing information. The connection may be right, but it certainly hasn’t yet been proved, and skipping over these holes is like skipping two out of every three nails when you build your deck – it might hold for a while, but it isn’t safe. Continue reading Missing nails and black holes
Blue prints, building codes, and inspections
Okay, so now we have a pile of bricks. Are we ready to start building our genealogical house? No. We need to know what the house is supposed to look like (blue prints) and the regulations about how the house should be constructed (codes). If we were really building a house, of course, this is where we’d hire an architect and a contractor, but the fun of genealogy is in doing-it-oneself, so we have to educate ourselves about construction. Continue reading Blue prints, building codes, and inspections
Inventorying the Early New England Families Study Project
To access a list of families posted in the Early New England Families Study Project, go to SEARCH on the website americanancestors.org. Under CATEGORY select “Genealogies, Biographies, Heraldry and Local History” and under DATABASES select “Early Families of New England.” Click on VOLUME and all of the names of the heads of families in the database will appear. Continue reading Inventorying the Early New England Families Study Project
Picking families for the Early New England Families Study Project
My father, borrowing a line from Henry Ford, used to tease me that I could pick any color apple I wanted in the basket “as long as it was red.” (They were all red.) I have been asked to explain how I choose which families to do for the Early New England Families Study Project. The answer is I can pick any family I want – once they are in the basket. Continue reading Picking families for the Early New England Families Study Project
Ways to share your genealogical discoveries with others
The Early New England Families Study Project has been well received, and I have already had a number of offers from generous individuals who wish to share their research with the project. I do appreciate the offers, really, but I have to politely decline. Continue reading Ways to share your genealogical discoveries with others
Clear cutting in the genealogical forest
When I was in school thirty plus years ago, there was a lot of discussion about the differences between history and genealogy – usually with genealogy getting the short end of the stick. The gap between historians and genealogists narrowed once we realized that we all use many of the same sources for similar ends. The differences are in our goals. The historian is trying to interpret the life of communities and does not really need to deal with the details of individuals. The genealogist is dealing with individuals on a fact-by-fact basis and may not feel the need to understand the larger community. To an historian a genealogist might appear to “not see the forest for the trees,” and to a genealogist an historian might “clear cut” the trees they have been nurturing in hopes of finding the forest! Continue reading Clear cutting in the genealogical forest
The first year of the Early New England Families Study Project
It is just a little over a year since NEHGS President and CEO Brenton Simons came to me with the idea for what became the Early New England Families Study Project. I was immediately interested, not only because it is an important institutional project, but because it brought me full circle to my beginnings in genealogy. My first job with NEHGS in the 1970s was to create a bibliography for Clarence Almon Torrey’s manuscript “New England Marriages Prior to 1700.” It took a number of years, with the help of colleague Peter Drummey, to compare Torrey’s short citations to the books in the library and decide which belonged to which. It was an unparalleled education in genealogical literature! Continue reading The first year of the Early New England Families Study Project
Something else inventories can tell us
My winter social schedule was enlivened recently with a talk given by one of my favorite speakers, Peg Baker of Plymouth. She and her husband, Jim Baker, are well known for their vast expertise in all things Pilgrim. Peg is Director Emeritus of The Pilgrim Society in Plymouth and compiler of the just released and completely revised edition of Mayflower Families Through Five Generations on Pilgrim Thomas Rogers, published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. Continue reading Something else inventories can tell us
Some light reading material
In his 1693 will, Richard Martyn of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, directed that all the books his third wife “brought with her to my house” be returned to her. Curiosity sent me off on a tangent (it doesn’t take much to distract me) to see if I could identify those books or where she got them. Mrs. Martyn was Elizabeth (Sherborn) (Langdon) (Lear) Martyn, daughter of Henry Sherborn and previously wife of Tobias Langdon and Tobias Lear. So far, the answer eludes me, but I did find some interesting collateral information in the process. Continue reading Some light reading material