Tag Archives: Family stories

The wider circle

American History, Collections, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, , ,
Hedwiga Gray diary1
Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

A frequent refrain here at Vita Brevis is that genealogists should consider not just their direct ancestral lines, with a glance at collaterals like siblings or close cousins, but the larger community in which a forebear or collateral relative lived. I was struck by this dictum as I reviewed the Regina Shober Gray diary this winter, as Mrs. Gray lived in a time and place which Jane Austen would have recognized: even the diarist’s closest friends were generally referred to by their married names. Continue reading The wider circle →

“Daylight upon magic”

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , , ,
Leopold Grand Duke of Baden
Leopold, Grand Duke of Baden (1790-1852). Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The British constitutional historian Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) wrote that “When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.”[1] There is something uncanny about royalty, a mystique that can be hard to value according to its merits. This phrase of Bagehot’s – with its reference to “mystery” and “magic” – came to mind as I was thinking about the question of morganatic marriages in Germany. Continue reading “Daylight upon magic” →

The Jamestowne Chancel Burials

American History, Family Stories, Lineage Societies, News, Research Methods, Technology, , , ,
Seal of the King of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, as President of the Virginia Council. U.S. National Parks Service

The announcement Tuesday of the (probable) identification of the remains of four men buried under the chancel of the first parish church at Jamestowne, Virginia – first discovered in 2010 and unearthed in 2013 – has now made the front page of The Wall Street Journal and appeared in other leading news outlets. While not the first Englishmen to die in the nascent American colony, they were nearly so, probably interred in Virginia soil in 1608 and 1610, more than a decade before the Mayflower arrived on American shores; these men were certainly among the colony’s founders. Continue reading The Jamestowne Chancel Burials →

400 posts at Vita Brevis

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, News, Research Methods, , , , , , , ,
Building_exterior_night 076
This photo of the Society’s Newbury Street exterior at night illustrated the first Vita Brevis post in January 2014.

Friday’s post, by Steven Solomon of the Society’s Development team, marked the four hundredth blog post at Vita Brevis. Since its launch in January 2014, the blog has featured posts by 64 bloggers, almost all of them NEHGS staff members, with a few outside contributors or transcribed interviews making up the remainder. What does the genealogical mosaic about which I wrote in the first post at Vita Brevis look like after eighteen months in the blog’s life? Continue reading 400 posts at Vita Brevis →

A slice of life

American History, Collections, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, , ,
George Bruce Upton
George Bruce Upton (1804-1874). NEHGS Collection

For as long as I’ve had my present office on the Society’s third floor, I’ve looked through my open door at a portrait of George Bruce Upton (1804–1874), the Society’s vice president between 1866 and 1874. I will confess that my eye did not linger over Mr. Upton’s portrait, as the representation does not appeal to me; on the other hand, immersed as I was this winter in my sabbatical project, once I noticed his nameplate I realized that Mr. Upton and his family appear frequently in the Gray diary:[1] Continue reading A slice of life →

In search of family photos: Part One

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , , ,
Child photo 1
Click on the image to expand it.

As a personal challenge, after seeing a few genealogist friends on Facebook post ancestor charts with photographs of their ancestors back to (in many cases) their great-great-grandparents, I decided to see how “complete” my collection of ancestral photos was. I have quite a few photos myself and have scanned many that other relatives have had over the years. This has often been a result of contacting second or third cousins, usually with around a 5-10% success rate when a relative actually turns out to have photographs of our common ancestors. Continue reading In search of family photos: Part One →

International research posts at Vita Brevis

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, News, Research Methods, , , , , , ,
scanros1
From Eileen Pironti’s post on “Reconnecting with family” in January.

Every so often it seems worthwhile to look back over the wide range of Vita Brevis posts and bring some related ones together in one spot. Now that we are half way through the calendar year, some posts on international genealogical research merit a second look. In January, Eileen Pironti wrote about “Reconnecting with family”: in her case, her Irish family in County Roscommon: Continue reading International research posts at Vita Brevis →

Early New England Families Study Project update

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsFive new sketches have been posted in the Early New England Families Study Project database:

Nathaniel Bacon (c. 1621–c. 1673) married Hannah Mayo, dau. of Rev. John Mayo; settled in Barnstable, tanner, 8 children.

Joshua Holgrave (c. 1615–c. 1643), son of John and Elizabeth (––) Holgrave (covered in the Great Migration series, or GM), married Jane Conant (see below), to New England about age 18 with parents and younger siblings; settled in Salem, 2 children. Continue reading Early New England Families Study Project update →

An experiment in time and place

American History, Family Stories, ,
Steward 1
Nos. 1 and 2, with their three children in Goshen, New York, ca. 1857.

A number of years ago I read a passage in a book on the British aristocracy that has stayed with me, a passage having little to do with peers and their families and quite a lot to do with how we all can look at our ancestors. The author, the late Richard “Dickie” Buckle, proposed the temporal impossibility that all of his great-great-grandparents might have met in a room in London about the year 1800, and with this rough structure he mused about who they were – and whether they might have known one another.

For my purposes, the year 1875 works best, although my sixteen great-great-grandparents were not all alive at that date. Continue reading An experiment in time and place →

The fiddling champ of Vermont and New Hampshire

American History, Family Stories, ,
Mortimer Brooks with violin
Mortimer Wilson Brooks

The recent Weekly Genealogist survey about musicians in the family sparked interest from readers, which leads me to share my great-great-grandfather’s story. Two of my mother’s most treasured family possessions are the violin of her great-grandfather Mortimer W. Brooks (1847–1931) and the loving cup he won in 1926. Undoubtedly they are more treasured because she actually knew him and had the opportunity to hear him play. Mortimer Brooks died when my mother was about 4½ years old. As she describes it, he would first pull the piano stool to the middle of the room, face the piano, and then ask her what she wanted him to play. She always asked for Pop goes the Weasel and he was happy to oblige. Continue reading The fiddling champ of Vermont and New Hampshire →