A recent episode of Jeopardy! had one of the greatest instances of coincidence in the Final Jeopardy clue, where the answer was: In 1896, the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, “thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare.” Emily Croke was the only..
Continue readingThe New York Times Magazine recently published a story on the ancestry of the new Pope. The article was by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in collaboration with American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami. I was one of the researchers tasked with working on some of..
Continue reading →If you are ever in Essex County, Massachusetts, there is an interesting cemetery within the Maudslay State Park in Newburyport. It is a pet cemetery and features seven gravestones of beloved pets that once belonged to the wealthy Moseley family.
Continue reading →A few years before the death of my father, Frank Dwyer, in 2015, he described a harrowing incident he witnessed outside his home during the early days of World War II. Dad grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, on a property his Cassidy grandparents, Irish immigrants..
Continue reading →As I've made my way through the lives of my ancestors, I am continually dumbfounded by what has simply been forgotten. It's hard not to keep asking oneself, Did anyone in the family know this? How come they never said…
Continue reading →I remember my first time visiting Lexington and Concord as a child. Even at that time I knew some of the stories about my ancestors in the American Revolution. One was my maternal fourth great-grandfather Capt. Jonathan Poor (1737-1807) of Newbury, Essex,..
Continue reading →Every now and then my research takes me into the murky corners of history, inter-personal drama, and catastrophic tragedy, making it suddenly feel like I’m watching a binge-worthy Netflix series instead of doing my job. That’s when I reach for my phone or turn to my..
Continue reading →Please, I'm in a bit of trouble.
I sure hope you won't rat me out. I know I haven't been around the Vita Brevis in a while, but I had to tell someone. You see, I've fallen in with a bad crowd. I've become something of a (gasp)…genealogical heretic. Recently, while..
Continue reading →I had the privilege of attending the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) annual meeting, which was held in Providence, Rhode Island, this year. At the last academic conference I attended, I was still a newly minted PhD discussing my academic research...
Continue reading →My 2nd-great-grandfather Ephraim Chamberlain had an interesting career as a photographer. Traditional genealogical research showed that he was born in Sweden, Oxford County, Maine, on 11 August 1843 and died in Wakefield, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, on 22 October..
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