On 1 September 1903, difficult and scary times came to Telluride. Union members demanding an eight-hour rather than a twelve-hour workday walked out of Telluride’s ore processing mills. This shutdown caused the closing of area gold and silver mines. When the Tomboy gold mine tried to reopen with nonunion workers (strikebreakers or “scabs”), the union posted armed picketers to prevent the new workers from entering. Continue reading Turbulent times→
[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, beganhere.]
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236Letters as well as books constituted Regina Shober Gray’s[1] reading. First, though, a note on the configuration of the Grays’ house at the corner of Bowdoin Street and Beacon Hill Place. This group of buildings was later taken down to make way for the East Wing of the Massachusetts State House, but in 1861 the Grays faced the William Fletcher Welds at 65 Bowdoin Street across Beacon Hill Place, which was itself a continuation of Mount Vernon Street. (In those days, Mount Vernon Street started at the corner of Beacon Street and turned 90° at the State House, and Beacon Hill Place, to continue down Beacon Hill.) Confusingly, the Grays lived at 1 Beacon Hill Place, too; Joseph B. Carter was their neighbor at 3 Beacon Hill Place:
61 Bowdoin Street, Boston, Saturday, 16 November 1861: Wrote as polite a note as I knew how to our neighbour Mrs. Weld[2] this week au sujetde their end window on Beacon Hill [Place], which they have no right to keep open, and which they do, to my great inconvenience. Continue reading ‘How can I make a call there?’→
While working in Salt Lake City in 2011, I met a sort of expert in lost arts named LaJean Carruth. Besides being a weaver, she also taught a small class on nineteenth-century Pitman Shorthand,[1] which she invited me to join. Being a lover of lost arts myself, I naturally agreed.
For those unfamiliar with Pitman Shorthand, Sir Isaac Pitman’s creation of a phonetic shorthand system in 1837 marked the beginning of one of the most lasting forms of shorthand, in use for well over a hundred years, particularly in Great Britain. With a variety of strokes to indicate consonants and interspersed dots and short dashes representing vowels, it was primarily used for its speed and ability to conserve space.[2] As a result, many records from the mid-1800s are written in Pitman Shorthand. Continue reading Secrets in shorthand→
I was just given the honor of being elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. So exactly what do those initials after my name mean?
The American Society of Genealogists (ASG) was conceived in 1940 by three giants in the field: Dr. Arthur Adams, John Insley Coddington, and Merdeith B. Colket, Jr. When it was incorporated in 1946, the first directors were Adams, Colket, Harry Wright Newman, Milton Rubincam, and Herbert F. Seversmith. Milton once confided to me over drinks at a genealogical conference that it all began as a bunch of guys getting together for drinks! The purpose was to associate themselves and others for their mutual benefit and for the advancement of genealogy (see www.fasg.org). Continue reading Honors→
From Alfred Janes, Standard Stenography: Being Taylor’s Shorthand (1882), courtesy of Google Books.
One day, when searching through the town records of New Haven, Connecticut, I was struck by one of the entries. The writing appeared like nothing I had ever seen before. After asking others for their thoughts, we found that none of us had ever seen this form of writing before. After some research, I discovered that what I had found was notation written in Taylor Shorthand, a system of writing developed by Samuel Taylor in 1786, the first system of shorthand writing to be widely used across the English-speaking world.[1]
Shorthand has long been used as a method of notation, often when time or efficiency is imperative, and as a result, it often appears in court documents and meeting minutes. Continue reading Shorthand systems→
In February 1904, the Great Fire of Baltimore raged for two days, burning much of downtown. It was a devastating disaster that helped prompt standardization and reform in the firefighting industry. A month later, my great-great-great-uncle Henry F. Rosendale wrote a narrative poem, detailing the events of the fire that ravaged the city. The poem is hardly personal: instead it is highly detailed, almost encyclopedic, relating many facts that one now finds in modern encyclopedia articles. Henry relates the progression of the fire, the direction of the winds that carried it, the help that came from other cities (“From Washington and from New York in record breaking time”), and the dynamiting of buildings meant to act as a fire break. Continue reading The Great Baltimore Fire→
The Parson Capen House sits in the historic section of Topsfield, Massachusetts, a charming New England town about 30 miles north of Boston. It is quite remarkable that this minister’s home has survived nearly unchanged since the seventeenth century. Visitors can walk in the rooms where the Reverend Joseph Capen and his family lived, and where Parson Capen undoubtedly contemplated the fate of parishioners accused and convicted of practicing witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. Continue reading The Parson Capen House→
Lorenzo Dow preaching by Lossing Barrett. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org
Some years ago I researched my husband’s ancestor Jerreb Kendall (1804–1839) of Passumpsic, Caledonia County, Vermont, and took pleasure in the interesting names given to many of Jerreb’s eleven siblings by their parents Jerreb and Lucy (Woods) Kendall.
I liked the thoughtfulness and weightiness behind given names like George Washington, William Wallace, Alonzo Ransom, James Eaton, Larnard Lamb, and Lorenzo Dow. (And I could almost sense the rejoicing that accompanied the selection of the name Lucy Celestia, which was given to the twelfth child – and the first and only daughter!) Continue reading History of a Cosmopolite→
[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, beganhere.]
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236Regina Shober Gray’s[1] diary shows her as part of a wide network of families: in the following entries, from summer and fall in 1860, we see her entertaining her sister in Manchester; receiving visits from her husband’s uncle and her own stepmother in Boston; sending her son off to visit his uncle and aunt in Brookline; and whiling away a day in some of Boston’s many bookstores.
Manchester, Massachusetts, Saturday, 11 August 1860: A rainy day – we all sat in Mrs. Gordon’s[2] rooms till after luncheon. Then Lizzie [Shober][3] and I read aloud in my room – “Leslie’s Autobiography,”[4] which we found very pleasant reading. We had neither bath[e] nor walk to-day. Dr. Gordon came down this p.m. bringing letters from Rebecca [Wainwright],[5] Dr. G., & Mary S[hober].[6] Morris [Gray][7] went off fishing with the girls, and caught a rock-cod, which he pulled up bravely to the level wharf, and then in his tremulous excitement let slip back into the water!! Continue reading ‘More than worth the money’→
Early in 1836, nearly two hundred American men lost their lives defending the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, over the course of a thirteen-day siege. While this event is largely viewed through the lens of Texas and southern American history, several men from New England were involved in the defense and indispensable in the battle. The following men were New Englanders who played a key role in the defense of the Alamo: Continue reading Remembering the Alamo→
