You have undoubtedly seen online exchanges that go something like:
“That genealogical claim is wrong/unproved.”
Reply: “Prove that it is wrong/unproved!”
I first experienced this back in the early days of the Internet when I posted a caution that the royal ancestry attributed to Mayflower passenger Richard Warren was not proved. I was immediately challenged to prove my claim. Continue reading Error fatigue
Another anniversary is approaching. In April it will be six years since the first Early New England Families Study Project sketches were published on AmericanAncestors. While many of you have been following the project all these years, it is probably a good time to do a little recapping for newer readers.
The Early New England Family Study Project was conceived as a companion to the Great Migration Study Project and a fitting use for the massive compilation done by Clarence Almon Torrey, published by NEHGS in the four-volume New England Marriages Prior to 1700, which is also available as an AmericanAncestors database. Torrey’s work covers information gleaned from thousands of books, periodicals, and manuscripts in the NEHGS library about couples who lived in New England from 1620 through 1700. The total number of marriages treated by Torrey is estimated to be 37,000! Continue reading An approaching anniversary
When I was in school, I was better at English than math, but there were still a few sticky wickets I had to deal with. I could not spell. I missed the first day on “adverbs” and never caught up. I hated reading “essays.”
The “essay” is simply a “short piece of writing on a particular subject,” but as I remember it, we were assigned readings from men like Thoreau, Emerson, and Socrates which mostly just blew over my young teen-aged head. I vowed that whatever I did when I grew up, it would not involve writing essays.
Hmm. Well, when Scott Steward reminded me that we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of Vita Brevis, I was rather startled to realize that I have been writing essays for five years. Continue reading A broadening education
The 2020 commemoration for the 400th anniversary of the arrival in New England of the ship Mayflower and her passengers is fast approaching. In the next two years we will be hearing a lot of words quoted from Gov. William Bradford’s first-person account of the Pilgrims’ passage in Of Plimouth Plantation.
Bradford’s manuscript, itself, has a history of passages. Compiled by Bradford between about 1630 and 1650, and used by many succeeding New England historians, the manuscript disappeared from Boston during the American Revolution. A century later it was discovered in the library of the Bishop of London (having been appropriated by British occupiers during the war) and returned to Massachusetts. Continue reading ‘What could now sustain them?’
This week I received my Fall issue of The Genealogist [TG], published by the American Society of Genealogists (ASG). It struck me that this might be one of genealogy’s best kept secrets.
TG has been published twice a year over 32 years. It was founded in 1980 by Neil D. Thompson, FASG,[1] and Neil edited the first ten volumes through 1989. In 1997, the magazine was revived by ASG under the editorship of Charles M. Hansen, FASG, and Gale Ion Harris, FASG, who have produced volumes 11 (1997) through 32 (2018). A full list of articles published in volumes 1–31, and sample articles, are posted on the society’s website: Continue reading A well-kept secret
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”
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
Santa Claus arrived in July with a portable hard drive full of the newly-digitized images from the microfilm of Clarence Almon Torrey’s twelve-volume manuscript, New England Marriages Prior to 1700. It has been forty years since I last had quality time with Clarence. Hard to remember the months and months spent in the stacks going through every book in the library to match his “short” citations and create a bibliography.
For readers who haven’t been introduced, Clarence Almon Torrey spent decades in the library at NEHGS extracting every mention of a seventeenth-century New England marriage from nearly every book, pamphlet, and manuscript in the collection up until about 1960. Continue reading Using “squnch” in a sentence
Sometimes it is best not to count things. I have just finished my spreadsheet listing all marriages in Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 that took place in or prior to 1643 for individuals who arrived in New England after 1640 (with a whole bunch whose date of arrival is not known). Guess how many make the list?
As I start writing, the total is 1,182, although I am still culling out some duplicates, and there will be others who get eliminated for one thing or another, as we’ll see below. If I can figure out how to complete 100 sketches per year (instead of in 5 years), I will have this batch done by the time I am 82. Continue reading Counting up
The big, green Buick we had when I was a child was named “Betsey.” Like all cars she needed maintenance. So with Betsey in mind, I have scheduled a “tune up” of the Early New England Families Study Project to be done after I finish the second volume of Early New England Families 1641-1700, which is nearly done.