Tag Archives: Great Migration Study Project

Puritan Pedigrees

Family Stories, News, Research Methods, ,

Robert Charles Anderson_June 2014_1Now that my book on genealogical research methods (Elements of Genealogical Analysis) is out, I have turned my attention to the series of lectures I will be delivering in October and November; these, in turn, will form the basis for a future book entitled Puritan Pedigrees: The Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England.

In most of the Great Migration volumes, I have been able to examine the motivations of the migrating families only in the context of events at the time of migration. A few years ago, while working on The Winthrop Fleet, I began to get a better feel for the deeper connections and influences which had been developing for decades and for generations leading up to the migration decision. Continue reading Puritan Pedigrees →

Who was Robert Henry Eddy, and why should you care?

News, Research Methods, , , ,

MA VRsRobert Henry Eddy was a life member of NEHGS who died in 1887 and bequeathed a substantial sum of money to the Society.* Mr. Eddy had been an architect, civil engineer, and in later life, a very successful patent attorney. In 1902, NEHGS used $20,000 of the Eddy bequest to establish the “Eddy Town-Record Fund, for the sole purpose of publishing the Vital Records of the towns of Massachusetts.” This fund would become the basis of a major project to preserve early Massachusetts vital records. Continue reading Who was Robert Henry Eddy, and why should you care? →

Cheat Sheets

Research Methods, , , ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsI create cheat sheets for projects, but most of them reside inside my head or on scattered pieces of paper in my office – both of which suffer from notorious clutter issues – so it seems like a good exercise to gather and record the process here. In this case, of course, the cheat sheets are for doing research on seventeenth-century New England families, but the basics can be applied to other situations. Also, no search ever progresses exactly the same as any other, so this list is meant to be flexible. Continue reading Cheat Sheets →

The Great Migration in Vita Brevis

Family Stories, News, ,
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 The Great Migration in Vita Brevis →

The Great Migration Study Project: a primer, Part Three

Family Stories, News, Research Methods,

Alicia Crane WilliamsHere is a table to help sort out where to look for your seventeenth-century ancestors in the publications associated with the Great Migration Study Project and the Early New England Families Study Project: Continue reading The Great Migration Study Project: a primer, Part Three →

The Great Migration Study Project: a primer, Part Two

Research Methods, ,

Alicia Crane WilliamsThree volumes of The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, and seven volumes of the “second series” Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, have been published since 1995. Two “spin-off” volumes – The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620-1633, and The Winthrop Fleet: Massachusetts Bay Company Immigrants to New England, 1629-1630, containing reprints with some updating of the subject families that first appeared in Great Migration Begins – have also been issued. Continue reading The Great Migration Study Project: a primer, Part Two →

One hundred posts on Vita Brevis

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cropped-vita_brevis_banner.jpg

In a few days, Vita Brevis will have published one hundred blog posts. Thinking back to about a year ago, when the subject of the blog was first broached, I can say that I only thought through the mechanics of preparing and posting the first half-dozen; everything after that seemed quite remote!

What can one say about the blog, circa May 2014? After a little more than five months in existence, it has played host to thirty-four bloggers, writing on topics as disparate as RootsTech 2014, the love troubles of William Norton in 1649, the antics of the Puddingstone Club in the early twentieth century, how best to use the NEHGS catalogue from home, an historical image Smack Down! between Google and Bing, and a list of the ships in the Winthrop Fleet in 1629–30. Continue reading One hundred posts on Vita Brevis →

From company to colony

Research Methods,

WinthropFleet_coverEven as the Massachusetts Bay Company was establishing itself in New England in 1630, another London-based joint-stock company, the Providence Island Company, was beginning its settlement project on a small Caribbean island off the coast of Nicaragua. The Providence Island Company was also led by Puritan gentlemen, such as the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, and Lord Brooke. Such men were wealthier and of much higher social status than most of the Massachusetts Bay Company members. Continue reading From company to colony →

Early Charlestown companies

Family Stories, Research Methods,

CharlestownCoverThe “Great Migration” of as many as 20,000 people to New England during the 1630s was, in its long-term effects, the most important event in English seventeenth-century history. It has been depicted as a farther-reaching extension of an already mobile English population, though I have argued elsewhere that many emigrants to New England came from long-settled backgrounds. What distinguished the Great Migration was its family nature, as compared to the settling of the Chesapeake or the Caribbean, where individual young men predominated. Moreover, many arrivals in Salem, Charlestown, or Boston were members of “companies” – interrelated clans, or followers of gentlemen or ministers. Continue reading Early Charlestown companies →

The Great Migration Study Project: a primer

Research Methods

Alicia Crane WilliamsIt is amazing to realize that the Great Migration Study Project is twenty-five years old.  Part of my fifteen seconds of fame is that I was in the room when Great Migration Begins was chosen as the title for the first series of books! It is nice to see how many new researchers are getting a glimpse of the project through Vita Brevis.

Robert Charles Anderson conceived the project as a modern “genealogical dictionary” of settlers who came to New England during the period we call the Great Migration, from 1620 through 1640. The project began as a consolidation and correction of material in print but soon expanded to include original research in New England and Old England. Continue reading The Great Migration Study Project: a primer →