Continuing the series on “Collecting published accounts” that beganhereand continuedhere:
As I collect enough sources, I will begin a “Dump Draft.” (The accompanying illustration shows a partially completed first Dump Draft for Richard Newton.) The goal of the Dump Draft is to get the information on paper in the Early New England Families Study Project format. This allows me to see exactly what I have and what I need. I add and highlight all kinds of notes and questions to myself. Continue reading Dump draft→
This may turn out like watching sausage being made or paint dry, but let’s walk through the process of creating an Early New England Families Study Project entry.
Collect and compare as many different published versions of the subject as you can. Often there is one old surname genealogy and/or a “dictionary” of settlers. Then there will be some accounts of different branches in some “all-my-ancestors” volumes (often seen in Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 – see the new version of Torrey on americanancestors.org that now takes you to the image of the full page from the book, allowing you to see and print all of the entries with the same surname together.) Continue reading Verify what? Part Two→
Five new sketches have been posted to the Early New England Families Study Project database on AmericanAncestors.org: Daniel Morse, John Morse, Joseph Morse, Rev. John Sherman,and Samuel Sherman.
My father, the MIT graduate, used to try to tutor me in math. His most frequent frustration was getting me to remember to “read the problem.” All the answers were there, he claimed, if I understood the problem. Alas, I never conquered math, but the advice is applicable to genealogy.
When I was writing the Early New England Families sketch on Hilliard Veren, whose wife, Mary, was remembered in the will of her mother, Jane (Slade) (Conant) Searle, I cited the abstract of the will published in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 52 (1898):271 (at left), which gives the date of the will as 1 May 1665. Apparently, I neglected to read the entire abstract and note that the date of probate was given as 20 June 1658. Continue reading Read the problem; Trust, but verify→
Detail of The Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass. Dec. 22nd 1620, lithograph by Currier & Ives. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
I’m in the middle of doing some research for a lecture that I’ll be giving in April at NEHGS entitled “The Hand that Rocked the Cradle.” It will use an informal statistical sampling of the women who have been included in the Early New England Families Study Project so far to see if we can form any general pictures about these ladies and their families. Preliminary statistics are interesting.
The gross totals: 88 women who had 116 husbands, 608 children (an average of about 7 each) and 174 step-children. I think that is what they call “populating a wilderness!”
On average these women were born about 1620, came to New England about 1636 (about age 16), were married for the first time about 1640 (age 20), and lived to about 1682 (age 62). Those who had multiple marriages averaged age 41 for the second marriage (22 women), 46 for the third (4 women), and 42 for the fourth (1 woman).
The youngest at first marriage was 15, oldest at first marriage, 32. The woman who lived to the greatest age was 97, and the one who died the youngest was 21. Continue reading Many hands, many cradles→
Although I am descended from some good seamstresses, the talent did not descend to either my mother or me. My grandmother’s home was filled with remnants of cloth, lace, trim, etc., passed down to her. I still have some of this material in my “stash” of stuff “to do something with,” and as a child I loved to go through the bits and pieces.
I was thus curious when I found some interesting accounts listing the cloth and trimmings supplied for Lydia, the widow of Joshua Scottow/Scotto, merchant, of Boston. Continue reading Widow Lydia Scottow’s wardrobe→
In my blog post The Wings of a dilemma, I bemoaned the fact that although so much has been published about the Wing family over the years, I could not find a “satisfactory” account of the early Wing family. Raymond Wing of The Wing Family Association has kindly brought me up to speed on what is new with the Wings, including baptisms for the two oldest children of John and Deborah Wing discovered since the 2006 Wing genealogy was published. Thank you, Raymond. These baptisms are posted on the Wing website, but I evidently missed them because I found no link to those records from the other pages on the site to alert me that they were there. This will eventually bring us to discuss the dilemma: “If we have the information, how to we lead people to it?”
