Tag Archives: Early New England Families Study Project

Turning green

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsI have been diddling with the sketch for Samuel Green of Boston for over a year and I’m still confused. Samuel2 Green, son of Bartholomew1 Green, was of the famous family of printers who operated the only printing press in the English colonies until 1665, and over Samuel’s fifty-year career his press printed 190 imprints, including the John Eliot “Indian” Bible. Samuel became the progenitor of a dynasty of printers that lasted 190 years and six generations. One would think the records for this family would be plentiful and accurate, right?

Not so much. Continue reading Turning green →

Early New England Families, phase two

American History, Genealogical Writing, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsEight new Early New England Families Study Project sketches have now been posted on Americanancestors.org: James Badcock of Portsmouth/Westerly, Rhode Island, and Hugh Clark of Watertown/Roxbury, Jonas Clark of Cambridge, Thomas Dyer of Weymouth, John Fairbanks of Dedham, John Grout of Watertown/Sudbury, William Marchant of Watertown/Ipswich, and Daniel Wing of Sandwich, Massachusetts. In total, 46 pages of new sketches and more than 1,000 new index entries have been added to the project. Continue reading Early New England Families, phase two →

A good index guides the reader

Genealogical Writing, , ,

Penny at podium_croppedYesterday, Alicia Crane Williams wrote about the steps she takes when indexing the Early New England Families Study Project, showing the extensive work that makes it possible for us to find ancestors in database searches. But what if you’re not creating a database, but writing a book instead?

In the course of your research, have you ever picked up a family history and, to your dismay, found no index? With this experience in mind, if you are writing a family history, you must have an index for your work—at the very least an every-name index. Continue reading A good index guides the reader →

Are we having fun yet?

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsI am definitely regretting getting into the “ladies” sketches for the Early New England Families Study Project. While working on the sketch for William Lord of Saybrook, Connecticut, who had fifteen children by two wives, I recognized that his second wife also had at least one child by her first husband, John Brown of Swansea, which qualifies her for an Early New England Families sketch of her own. Continue reading Are we having fun yet? →

Birth order vs. will order

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsIn the Early New England Families Study Project sketch for Joseph Andrews of Hingham, I included a commentary about the problem I was having establishing the birth order for Joseph’s children. Recently, an inquirer wondered why I had not used the order the children are named in Joseph’s will.[1]

Heirs can be listed in a will in any way the testator wants, but there are legal precedents that encourage listing children by birth order. Sometimes all the sons are named first, then all the daughters, and sometimes they are intermixed. Sometimes the testator specifies “eldest son, second son,” but others do not, and while we might assume birth order, it is not guaranteed. Continue reading Birth order vs. will order →

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 →

Origin stories

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

Alicia Crane WilliamsEvery family has a story about its origins, particularly about how the immigrant(s) came to the New World. Often these stories can seriously stretch credibility, but we can accept them as folklore if not fact. We do not often think about tracking down the origins of the stories, themselves, or that such an exercise may be valuable to our research.

For example, how would one track down the origin of the story about how Deacon Thomas Dyer of Weymouth ended up on this side of the Atlantic? Continue reading Origin stories →

Spring potholes

American History, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsSpring is pothole repair time in New England, and as I write this on April 4 southern New England is receiving up to 8 inches of snow with flash freezing predicted overnight, so there will be plenty of work this spring.

A pothole that has been bugging me this winter is remembering exactly which citations I have proofed and which are yet to be done. I already use the color “highlighter” function in Word – yellow to indicate questions that need answering and green to indicate “This is the right date/name/fact despite what some other sources say,” etc. – but I’m now adding light grey highlights for footnote citations that have been proofed. Continue reading Spring potholes →

ICYMI: The Great Migration in Vita Brevis

Family Stories, ICYMI, News, ,

[Editor’s note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 6 June 2014.]

St Bartholomews Groton
St. Bartholomew’s Church, Groton, Suffolk

Over the last five months, Vita Brevis has featured a number of blog posts about the Great Migration Study Project and related subjects. Robert Charles Anderson, the project’s director, has written on the topic, as have Alicia Crane Williams and Roger Thompson. Bob’s posts tend to focus on his continuing research in this area, whether it is his trips to Salt Lake City to review a thorny question about identity or the latest literature on the subject as he prepares to write a book tentatively entitled Puritan Pedigrees: The Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England. Continue reading ICYMI: The Great Migration in Vita Brevis →

Catch-22s

American History, Genealogical Writing, , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsYikes! Just as I was starting to write this post following-up on the discussion engendered by my penultimate post, I learned that I made an egregious (and embarrassing) mistake regarding Mayflower passengers in the sketch on Samuel Maverick – I made the mother of Rebecca Allerton, who married Sam’s brother Moses Maverick, her step-mother, Fear (Allerton) Brewster. This is the second time I’ve done something like this – the first was back in the beginning of the project when I made Samuel Fuller’s uncle his father. After forty years of working with Mayflower families, I used to know all of this like the back of my hand, but the backs of my hands these days are getting wrinkly and veiny, and clearly the back of my mind has had to shed some information to make room for all the new material coming in from the Early New England Families Study Project. I just have to remember to remember that. Continue reading Catch-22s →