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..
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I think about genealogy for much of my day. Therefore, on a recent trip to Boston’s Museum of Science, I was again thinking about how I could apply something that I learned that day to make me a better genealogist. Thankfully, the Museum has a new(er) exhibit that is..
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Sometimes we all, like Tennessee Williams, depend on the kindness of strangers – whether we realize it or not. While I’ve always shared my family research and stories, it has been only recently that I’ve come to understand how..
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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..
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Bob Anderson has a “Phantom File” at the end of his Great Migration Begins series (3: 2097–2104), with names that have been misread or misconstrued (e.g., John Allen for John Alden), meaning that no real person by the mistaken name existed.
An example of a phantom in..
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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..
Continue reading[Author's note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]
[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 August 2015.]
My grandfather died almost 25 years ago, and sometime before that he gave me a box of “family papers.” The box itself is rather striking: a metal strong box, easily portable, with my..
Continue reading[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]
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..
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Recently, the New England Historic Genealogical Society participated in “Free Fun Friday,” a yearly summer event sponsored by the Highland Street Foundation for no-cost admission to cultural..
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I have been diddling with the sketch for Samuel Green of Boston for over a year and I’m still confused. Samuel2 Green, son of Bartholomew1 Green, was of the famous family of printers who operated the only printing press in the English colonies until 1665, and over..
Continue reading[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]
245 South Eighteenth Street, Wednesday,..
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[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 2 July 2015.]
Census records, passport applications, draft cards: many people are familiar with these resources because of their..
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One of the trends in my ancestry is the curious one whereby, when given the choice between staying in a locale or moving on, my nineteenth-century forebears often remained behind as other..
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Eight new Early New England Families Study Project sketches have now been posted on Americanancestors.org: James Badcock of Portsmouth/Westerly, Rhode Island, and Hugh Clark of Watertown/Roxbury, Jonas Clark of Cambridge, Thomas Dyer of Weymouth, John Fairbanks of..
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For the last few months I have been working with Judi Garner of the Jewish Heritage Center, here at NEHGS, on an exhibit of twentieth-century Jewish photographers and their subjects, and we are finally finished. The photos are framed and hung; the labels have been..
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When I was writing my new book, The Stranger in My Genes – about the DNA test I took that shockingly suggested my father wasn't really my father – I thought my story was unusual, if not unique. Boy, was I wrong.
After the ebook version was released on August 23, I..
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[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 29 June 2015.]
Over the years I have had the chance to discuss the subject of ethnicity (and identity) with avid genealogists and..
Continue reading[Author’s note: This post concludes the series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary which began here.]
Many years ago, during a visit with my wife to her maternal grandparents, her grandfather asked if we could deliver some books which he had sold..
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