Tag Archives: Road Trips

Germans in the Queen City

American History, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, ,

Founded in December 1788, Cincinnati has long been a city with a rich cultural heritage, forged largely from the influences of its significant immigrant populations. Situated at the junction of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, Cincinnati was viewed as a natural destination for immigrants who sought work in the city’s booming industries.

Initially, Cincinnati was settled largely by English and Scottish settlers who came westward from the east coast and north from Kentucky.[1] Continue reading Germans in the Queen City →

Pictures from “home”

Collections, Technology, , , ,

I just received my order of two copies of a lovely 2019 calendar from Wales (one for me and one for my brother). It is illustrated with paintings of village life in Wales by Welsh artist Valeriane LeBlond (www.valeriane-leblond.eu). The calendar text is in Welsh, so I can’t translate the titles, but the scenes include little white cottages with quilts hung out to air (even in the snow), row houses exactly like those I know my ancestors lived in, bucolic landscapes – this is the southern part of Wales, great farming country – with wind-whipped waves off shore. Neat stuff. Continue reading Pictures from “home” →

Cousins of St. Casimir

American History, Family Stories, ,

Above, left: Eugénie Vallée. Above, right: Marie Trottier.

This blog post, a sequel to “The widow of St. Casimir,” contrasts the lives of two women, Eugénie Vallée (1880–1973) and Marie Trottier (1855–1928), first cousins born in St. Casimir, Québec a generation apart. (Eugénie’s mother, Lumina de Varennes [1844–1922], was the younger sister of Marie’s mother, Léocadie de Varennes [1828–1897].) Marie came to my attention through an online family tree with an elegant photo of her circa 1875. Eugénie’s grandchildren were immediately struck by the strong resemblance between their grandmother at the same age and Marie. Did these look-alike cousins, who likely never met, have similar experiences in their migration path to the Unites States, where they lived the majority of their lives? Continue reading Cousins of St. Casimir →

Essayons

American History, Genealogical Writing, ,

At last, the cast of Volume 2 of Early Families of New England 1641-1700 is set. See below for a list of all fifty sketches.

The inventory includes five sets of siblings: John and Samuel Carter; Andrew and George Lane; Daniel, John, and Joseph Morse; Joshua and Thomas Scottow (and brother-in-law Robert Winsor); and John and Samuel Sherman.

Three women have sketches in this volume: Mary (Smith) (Glover) Hinckley, Jane (Conant) (Holgrave) Mason, and Amyas (Cole) (Thompson) Maverick, in addition to their husbands: Thomas Hinckley, Nathaniel Glover, Joshua Holgrave, and Samuel Maverick. Continue reading Essayons →

Further ancestors of the Princess of Wales

Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , ,

Finishing up the generation of the Princess of Wales’s great-great-great-great-grandparents –­ as part of a review of scholarship that has become available since Richard Evans’s book, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, was published in 2007 – there is something more to be said about her matrilineal ancestress in that generation, Eliza Kewark (or Kevorkian) of Surat in the Indian state of Gujurat.[1]

The daughter of Jakob Kevork/Hakob Kevorkian, and sister-in-law of Aratoon Baldassier (or Baldassarian), her voice may be heard in a series of letters she wrote to her partner (and, perhaps, husband) Theodore Forbes between 1812 and 1819; the last – concerning Forbes’s plan to send their daughter to his family in Scotland – strikes a formal note: Continue reading Further ancestors of the Princess of Wales →

‘Rest & be comfortable’

American History, NEHGS Collections, ,

Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
The death of the diarist’s sister Lizzie Shober[1] is the subject of three diary entries – among the longest passages in the Regina Shober Gray[2] diary, and closing out the year 1865. In these entries Mrs. Gray approaches her subject directly and obliquely, focusing on different moments in Lizzie’s last days as she tries to make sense of the Shober family’s loss.

In her characterization of her younger sister, Mrs. Gray sketches out a Victorian ideal of a maiden lady: “She was pre-eminently the sun shine of her home – the darling sister to each one of us; enjoying all bright, glad things in life, with keenest zest, interested in the smallest details if they were able to pleasure others, ready with quickest sympathies in joys as in sorrows & anxieties – always hopeful if hope were possible, and efficient in all things; at all times considerate & thoughtful for others, self-forgetting, loving, and most lovable.” Continue reading ‘Rest & be comfortable’ →

From Cento to America

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,

A few years ago, as I was looking into what NEHGS’ collection held on Italian research subjects, I came across a manuscript that was created in 1954 by a woman who was interested in documenting the Italians of Kingston, Massachusetts. The Coming of Italians to Kingston by Esther DiMarzo was digitized and is available on our web site. It covers those who first appeared in records in Kingston from about 1899 to 1912. Esther primarily relied on tax lists and vital records and, when possible, included a few stories and information from descendants who were still in Kingston at the time of her compilation. Continue reading From Cento to America →

Tell me no lies

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , ,
Thomas and Shirley: a hint of a complex relationship.

While researching family stories for verification (and, let’s face it, amusement), I began to think that we all face the same questions: “Huh?” turns into “Why did he/she/they do that?,” which morphs into “What?!,” which then becomes “What were they thinking?!?!” We look for the truth but often find muddled facts, conflicting stories, and outright prevarications.

I discovered with the help of a maternal cousin that one of our ancestors, Shadrack Ireland (1718–1780), was something of a rogue/cad/religious nut. Sure enough, when I read about his life, history knows him as a pipe maker, carpenter, and “religious leader” who espoused Perfectionism at the time of The Great Awakening, a Christian revival in the 1730s and ‘40s. Continue reading Tell me no lies →

The widow of St. Casimir

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, ,
Ambrotype of Hermidas Vallee, ca. 1865.

My sister-in-law Sue and I hoped we might uncover a backstory behind the marriage of her great-great-grandparents. Aimé Vallée, age 21, of St. Casimir, Québec, wed his third cousin, Marguerite Vallée, age 43, widow of François Trottier, mother of twelve children. François died in November 1844, age 69; Marguerite married Aimé three months later, with a dispensation omitting two additional banns of marriage. We sensed our curiosity might be allayed by visiting St. Casimir, midway between Trois Rivières and Québec City. Its splendid late nineteenth-century Catholic church attests to its central place in the life of that community and a long tradition of recording genealogy. Continue reading The widow of St. Casimir →

Tired of waiting

American History, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , , , ,
David Gorfein traveled to America on board R.M.S. Olympic.

Immigration to the United States has often been a difficult and time-consuming process, and never more so than during the first half of the twentieth century. The immigration laws of the 1920s established a quota system whereby only 2% of the national population of each country could immigrate annually; in effect, this meant that if there were 2 million Germans in the United States, then only 40,000 Germans could come to the United States each year. Continue reading Tired of waiting →