Tag Archives: Photographs

A thousand words

January 6, 2016American History, Collections, Family StoriesCritical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsSteve Solomon

Coming from a family of active amateur photographers, the (still) new digital age of photography has significantly changed the way I look at and convey my world, its events, my life, and my family. Gone are the days of, “Oh, no, I just got to the end of a 36-exposure roll and missed the perfect picture I’ll never get again.” With three expensive cameras sitting in my closet collecting dust, like many of us I now use my smart phone for most of my photographic pursuits. This is not such a bad thing: it’s always in my pocket ready to get, as DeWitt Jones says, “not just a good frame, but a great frame.” Continue reading A thousand words →

A Telluride story

January 5, 2016American History, Family Stories, Genealogical WritingFamily papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, Photographs, SpotlightSharon Inglis

Alice and Kenny — Alice Pheasey and Kenneth McLean on their wedding day.

There are many stories that reside in the papers and photographs our forebears set aside to keep. These stories sometimes lack a key, but here is one that, thanks to a loving sister, retains its general outline.

Kenneth Angus McLean was born in 1873 in a farmhouse on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the youngest of nine children. As a young man, Kenny left the family farm to join his older sister Christine in Boston, where he would have a wider choice of occupations. He didn’t last long in the confines of the city. Kenny, like so many others, decided to seek his fortune out west. He took out a $1,000 life insurance policy, named his sister as beneficiary, and got on a westbound train. Continue reading A Telluride story →

Quality control

December 16, 2015American History, NEHGS Collections, News, TechnologyCritical Analysis, Family papers, Object Lessons, Photographs, SpotlightThomas Grebenchick

Editor’s Note: This is part three of a series on digitizing our special collections. The previous posts can be read here and here.

Good news! The next phase of our digitization project is under way. We’ve just received the first batch of images from our scanning partner, which means we can begin work on the next step: quality control.

In the last post, I talked about the organizational aspects of digitization – sorting and physically preparing the items, creating a finding aid, and adding instructions when needed to make sure all the documents are scanned correctly. One of the first things we did upon getting the Howard family papers back from our scanning partner was to make sure that the organization was honored and that all of the pages were scanned. Continue reading Quality control →

On with the dance

December 8, 2015Collections, Family StoriesA Genealogist's Diary, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsScott C. Steward

As genealogists, we tend to focus on the more remote past, rarely pausing to consider our parents’ or grandparents’ times in a rush to get back to 1850, or 1750, or sometime before that. Someday, of course, 1950 will seem as remote to our descendants as 1750 does to us, and it behooves us to focus some attention on twentieth century research before that century, like the ones before it, vanishes from shared (and contemporary) memory. Continue reading On with the dance →

Solving a family mystery

November 19, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesBrick Walls, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsPatty Vitale

My mother was born with an unusual last name – Cottuli – which has been both a blessing and a curse for my research. The blessing is that when I find someone with that last name, they always turn out to be related. The curse is that it’s misspelled everywhere and documents can be difficult to find. Recently, however, the uncommon name led to a very happy set of circumstances.

My first cousin, Carl Cottuli, contacted me a couple of months ago and said that a woman in Rhode Island named Keri had reached out to him online. She was cleaning out her stepfather’s desk in Massachusetts and discovered a portrait of a woman, together with an 1896 baptismal certificate for Henrietta Lillian Cottuli. There are no markings on the portrait to identify whether the woman is Henrietta or someone else. Continue reading Solving a family mystery →

Hockey and Canada, 1914-18

November 16, 2015American History, Collections, NewsInternational genealogical research, Photographs, SpotlightRhonda McClure

1917 interned canadians switzerland — The Champion Hockey Team, 1917. Canada Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada

There is one thing that many people know about me, and that is that when I am not busily researching family trees and helping patrons here at the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s research center, the odds are pretty good that I am off somewhere watching hockey or studying its history. In fact, I just returned from a trip to Montréal to see the Montréal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins. Had I known then of the exhibit currently on display at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, I might have headed west, once I crossed the border, instead of going on to Montréal. However, it wasn’t until I had returned and was finalizing some pieces for a webinar that I saw the item on the website of the Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Continue reading Hockey and Canada, 1914-18 →

Collateral relations

November 13, 2015American History, Collections, Family StoriesA Genealogist's Diary, Brick Walls, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, PhotographsScott C. Steward

My grandfather’s box of family papers continues to yield treasures – and some fresh mysteries. Among the former (and the latter) are a pair of small leather traveling photo frames: one, the larger, is maroon and holds a photograph of a middle-aged woman; the other (biscuit colored) shows an older man being circled by a dog.

I suspect that the subjects of this pair of photos are my Steward great-grandparents,[1] although it is certainly possible that the woman is not Daisy Steward (1861–1951) but one of her sisters: Katharine Livingston (Beeckman) Lorillard (1855–1941), Helen (Beeckman) Lyman (1858–1938), or Martha Codwise (Beeckman) French (1863–1951). Continue reading Collateral relations →

Transformations

November 11, 2015American History, Family StoriesFamily stories, Object Lessons, Photographs, World War IIGinevra Morse

My ancestry is replete with American patriots, soldiers – veterans. From Anthony Morse Jr., a lieutenant in the militia at Newbury, Massachusetts, in the 1660s, to Samuel Morse, a soldier in the War of 1812; from Thomas Morse, a patriot in the American Revolution, to Colonius Morse, a private in the 19th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War,[1] I have ancestors who served in most major U.S. conflicts from the colonial period to the 1970s. I often wonder what life was like for my family in these times of turmoil. How did war affect the young men who served? How did it change them? Continue reading Transformations →

Family plots: Part Two

October 19, 2015American History, Collections, Family Stories, Research MethodsA Genealogist's Diary, Critical Analysis, Family papers, Family stories, Object Lessons, Photographs, Research tipsScott C. Steward

Riffing on something Chris Child wrote about collecting photos of family members in July, I thought I might do something similar with information about family burial plots. Such an exercise leans heavily on Findagrave.com (where some of the images may be found), although in my case I also have the notes compiled by my great-aunt Margaret Steward in 1966 as a resource for my research.

My grandparents are easy: my father’s parents (and stepmother) are buried at Hamilton Cemetery in Massachusetts, while my mother’s parents (and stepmother) are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. I was present for my paternal grandfather’s memorial service in 1991, my maternal grandfather’s burial in 1994, and for my paternal step-grandmother’s memorial service in 1996. Continue reading Family plots: Part Two →

The introduction of photography

October 15, 2015American History, CollectionsCritical Analysis, Family papers, International genealogical research, Object Lessons, PhotographsZachary Garceau

Garceau photo 1 — Boulevard du Temple, Paris. The solitary man having his shoes shined is at lower left. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Perhaps more than any other event, the introduction of photography altered how individuals were memorialized and are remembered. While portraits have been produced for thousands of years, photographic images were first introduced about 1838 and the first known photograph to contain people was produced between April and May of that year.[1] This photograph is of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and due to the long exposure time of about ten to twelve minutes, all people in the photograph moved and avoided being captured in the image, with the exception of a man having his shoes shined who remained still for the length of the exposure.[2] Continue reading The introduction of photography →

Vita Brevis

A resource for family history from AmericanAncestors.org