Tag Archives: Road Trips

Connecticut Probate Districts

American History, Research Methods, , , ,
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With the release of the sixth edition of The Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research, the town chart of Connecticut added two important columns when it comes to finding the correct probate district for a Connecticut town based on the year of an estate’s probate.

First, in 2011, Connecticut consolidated its probate districts. The fifth edition of The Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research identified districts using a number that referred to the narrative section of the Connecticut chapter and identified these probate districts moving forward, so from 2011 on. Continue reading Connecticut Probate Districts →

2021: the year in review concluded

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, ICYMI, Mayflower, Research Methods, , , ,

[Author’s note: Part 1 can be found here.]

In July 2021, Christopher C. Child reviewed a surprising feature in his ancestry: that he has 1 (one) ancestor who resided in northern New England during the seventeenth century:

“…My connections to Vermont are even briefer. A great-great-great-great-grandmother, Julia (Vaughan) Perry (ca. 1814-1899), was born in Allegany County, New York. Her parents William and Elizabeth (Foster) Vaughan were born in Massachusetts, Vermont, or Rhode Island (sources vary). Continue reading 2021: the year in review concluded →

2021: the year in review

American History, Collections, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, ICYMI, Research Methods, Technology, , , , , , , , ,

“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be a curse – it’s certainly an exhausting way to go through life. As 2021 rolls over to 2022, here is a look back at 2021 in Vita Brevis:

In January, Ann Lawthers urged genealogists visiting cemeteries to apply some of the insights garnered from their research, in this case about how the changing cultural norms around death translated into stone: Continue reading 2021: the year in review →

I’ll be home for Christmas

American History, Genealogical Writing, , ,

During this festive time of the year, magical Christmas “villages” seem to pop up everywhere, transforming nooks in the home as well as entire downtowns. It is a loaded word and whenever I see “village” attached to a place (and not only during the Christmas season), be it a village inn, pub, green, or a village itself, I am immediately enchanted. The word conjures up all the nostalgia of yesteryear with the hope and anticipation of reclaiming a bit of quaintness, simplicity, and charm. I live in an area of many of the country’s oldest towns and, because they were “unplanned” towns that grew organically, often in a haphazard way, even the busiest of these places retain pockets of their “village” atmosphere, complete with narrow streets, clustered old buildings, bricks and cobbles, town clocks, and Dickensian lampposts. Continue reading I’ll be home for Christmas →

Family associations

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , , ,
My grandfather in Topsfield with his sister Margaret and son Charles, December 1953.

Here I don’t mean surname associations or descendant groups — I mean a family’s association with a place. This concept is on my mind as my father prepares to sell his house, built 27 years ago on land that his parents had bought back in the 1920s. For that matter, my paternal grandfather[1] was born in a house his parents built and on a piece of land that had (already, in 1898) been in the Steward family for about 150 years.

Sad to say that neither my great-grandparents’ house nor the older John Steward Homestead still exist. Continue reading Family associations →

The power of Faith

American History, Mayflower, Mayflower 2020, , , , ,

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

– Hebrews 11: 1

Statue of ‘Faith’ on her pedestal

A comment on my recent post, Seeing double, reminded readers of yet another tribute honoring the Pilgrim legacy, the National Monument to the Forefathers. The gentleman who commented called the monument one of Plymouth’s best kept secrets. Its location, off-the-beaten path, on an 11-acre site in a residential neighborhood, does make it less-visited than the iconic Mayflower and Rock.

It has been said that the monument’s sheer size and multitude of visual elements, the centerpiece of which is the figure of Faith, overwhelms modern sensibilities. It is not signposted on the highway, Route 3, but only on Route 3A, the secondary road into Plymouth, and since that is the road I take, I always make the “detour” up the hill to visit. Continue reading The power of Faith →

An Instagram find

Collections, Family Stories, Research Methods, Technology, , , , ,
Mim (at right) and friends in Congress Park, 1922. Courtesy of Skidmore College Special Collections

One night several years ago, I recalled that it had been a while since I last Googled some of my favorite ancestors. Slouched in my chair, I scrolled idly through the Google hits for “Miriam Shakshober,” my grandfather’s aunt whom I never met but regarded with interest. Towards the end of her life she was supposed to have been a recluse, dying quietly in her house in December 1980 as Christmas cards piled up in her mailbox. The house she died in—her childhood home, possessing the uncanny power of always drawing her back—is now rented out to multiple tenants. Continue reading An Instagram find →

It pays to share

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, , , , , ,
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This time of the year is all about sharing … sharing our time and exchanging visits and gifts with family and friends, perhaps including family history projects. As genealogists, we are always seeking and exchanging information as part of our never-ending quests to find elusive ancestors and learn about their lives, and to share our discoveries with family and other researchers. The opportunities to share – and benefit from – our genealogical research have never been easier in this age of the Internet. The more we share, the more we can help others who may find something big or small in the fruits of our labors. The reverse is also true – the more we share, the more likely it is that others will share with us. Continue reading It pays to share →

Learned Larneds

American History, Family Stories, Royal Lines, , , ,
Geraldine, Queen of the Albanians

Years ago, Jeff Record sent me an ahnentafel report on his ancestry, curious to see if we had any connections back in Kansas. While we identified several common ancestors in New England, I was curious about his great-great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth (Neff) Young (1864-1898) of El Dorado, Kansas. Neff is not in my own ancestry, but it is the surname of some distant cousins I remembered from my childhood. I frequently went to Kansas over the holidays as a child and would stay at my grandparents’ farm in Sedgwick, Kansas. Most often my mother’s siblings and their children would also be there; sometimes there were more distant cousins present, and at the time I had no idea how they were related to me. The Neffs were some such cousins that would occasionally visit as two of their boys were the same age as myself and a few of my first cousins. Later, as I got interested in genealogy, I learned that they were my third cousins: their mother’s father’s sister Carrie Etta (Wright) Learned was a sister of my matrilineal great-grandmother Daisy Alice (Wright) Horton. Continue reading Learned Larneds →

Seeing double

American History, Mayflower, Mayflower 2020, , ,

On a glorious early fall day, with a plan to gather myself a small fistful of forget-me-nots blooming along the town brook and revisit some of the landmarks that I wrote about last year in my Outdoor Classroom posts, we took a ride to Plymouth. As this Pilgrim “first year” year slowly extinguishes itself, the town was busy with visitors taking in the sights. Oh, if only 2020 had cooperated, but better late than never.

Making a beeline for the waterfront, sparkling on that clear, crisp afternoon, I wanted to pay another visit to the Pilgrim Mother, a memorial fountain cut from Knoxville marble and given to the town by the DAR in 1920 in recognition of the tenacity, resilience, and hopefulness of the Mayflower women. Continue reading Seeing double →