All posts by Julie Wilmot

'You must be from Minnesota'

Before I began working at NEHGS in November 2015, I had a job where I interacted with between thirty and fifty different people every day. One of those people was a linguist, who, upon hearing me speak, said, “You aren’t from here.” She was right. As I’ve mentioned in ..

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A belated Christmas gift

Some people are extraordinarily difficult to shop for. My parents fall into that category. They’ve collected several things over the years, so even thinking of something they would like is a challenge. My father is also the sort of person who goes out and buys whatever..

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A New Hampshire ghost town

Old Hill Village Meeting House, courtesy touringnh.com.

Recently, while researching a case, I stumbled across Hill, a small town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire. Hill was originally formed as New Chester in 1754, and was incorporated in 1778. The town was renamed..

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A Midwestern femme fatale

Image courtesy of the Kokomo Tribune.

We have a tendency to envision our ancestors as upstanding members of society. In some cases, they were. In others, they were anything but. I first stumbled across Belle Gunness while researching the Midwestern ancestry of a..

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Grassroots genealogy

Map showing the area around Errol. Courtesy of the University of Texas Library

When most people learn that I grew up in a town of three hundred people, they’re amazed. Some aren’t aware such small places still exist. Others want to know if we have electricity or..

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Irregular border marriages in Scotland

Courtesy of heritage-history.com

Not long ago, I was searching for a record of an 1830s marriage between two prominent Scottish families. I was certain I would have an easy time locating this particular record, having identified the parish and county in which the..

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An untapped genealogical resource

Courtesy of The Patten Lumbermen's Museum

Long before I loved genealogy, I fell head-over-heels for oral history. My great-grandfather, Everett Eames, died in 2005. By that time, I was nineteen, and had been regaled with stories of his years in the logging camps of..

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