Deed formats and terminology vary from colony to colony, county to county, time period to time period and from the handwriting and style of one clerk to another, all of which makes this a complex topic. As a basic primer, we are using a deed from Plymouth County, Massachusetts, chosen because it is short and legible![1] Continue reading Deeds: Part One
A couple of weeks ago I was working on an article for The Root, the online magazine, about locating World War I service records for a reader’s Mississippi ancestors. Knowing that the original service records are not digitized, but instead are housed at the National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri, I searched the Digital Archives of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for any online collections that might assist the reader.[1] My search was ultimately successful in that the MDAH has uploaded veterans’ service cards for World War I, but I also stumbled across a curious collection that I thought might interest our Vita Brevis readers: Educable Children Records (Mississippi), 1850–1894; 1906–1965. Continue reading Educable children
In my recent lectures on DNA, I have discussed the nature of X chromosome inheritance. Owing to the fact that males inherit Y chromosomes from their fathers (who received it only from their fathers, etc.), it’s a very specific gender-linked pattern of inheritance. The same is not true for the X chromosome. (Mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited female-to-female, is a different part of our DNA, and not the same as the X chromosome.) Continue reading X marks the spot
In my last Vita Brevis post, I wrote about some of the best sources to help identify your Loyalist ancestors. But before the Loyalists fled to Canada after the American Revolution, another important group settled Maritime Canada: the New England Planters. This often overlooked group of New Englanders (and others) left a cultural and political impact on Canadian history.
After the expulsion of the Acadians in 1750s, the British government was eager to resettle the area. In the fall of 1758, the Governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, published a proclamation in the Boston Gazette welcoming proposals for the settlement of the now vacant lands. Just a few months later, in January of 1759, Lawrence published another proclamation, detailing the terms of settlement. Continue reading New England planters
Readers have asked how to cite Internet sources. Confession, I don’t really know the answer – and I don’t think many others do, either. It is a new, still-evolving discipline complicated by the transitory nature of the beast, where links to pages get changed and/or vanish into cyberspace. Often I cannot even find my own way back to something I ran across while researching. Continue reading Citing internet sources
I received a phone call the other day from my parents as they were driving through Kansas on a road trip. They wanted to tell me about a curious roadside advertisement they had seen that they thought would interest me: the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia, Kansas. I had never heard of this museum, let along its subject, so I decided to do some sleuthing. What I discovered was an intriguing, controversial, and apparently slightly obscure facet of American history. Continue reading Orphan trains
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
While working on the Early New England Families Study Project sketch on Samuel Maverick this week, I came across a deed from 1636 that was not recorded until 1717! This is a good reminder that deeds are entered into the official books by the date they were recorded, not by the date they were made. Thus, one can never assume that a deed recorded after a person’s death – even decades after – is not that person’s deed.
A sale of land was legal, whether or not the deed was recorded, although recording the transaction helped to prove legality if disputed. Recording might be delayed until the land was sold the next time, which might be a generation or two later. Continue reading Delayed recording of deeds
[Editor’s Note: Between June and August of this year, Alicia wrote two series on her research and writing methodologies. In the interest of bringing them together, and sharing them with a fresh audience, they are offered again, with some of the author’s commentary.]
From Collecting published accounts:
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.
We start with the entry from Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700: Continue reading A genealogist’s research process
Colonial Massachusetts records are a family historian’s dream come true. From the beginning, early Bay colonists meticulously tracked the goings on of their communities, leaving records of government and community alike. These habits have resulted in a veritable trove of records available for genealogical pursuit, mostly aptly demonstrated in the large Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 collection. However, vital records were not the only documents that these early settlers left behind. Surviving court records for some early Massachusetts counties are quite detailed; despite the wealth of information they contain, they are often overlooked by family historians. Continue reading A dream come true