I was recently on holiday in London and Prague, and in the latter city I had a rather serendipitous encounter, as it seemed – but perhaps was not! While touring the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle – an impressive..

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Marital entanglements gave Regina Shober Gray [1] grist for the mill: Georgie Blake’s summer romance at Marion had played out to the extent that Miss Blake’s fiancé swore “he could not marry..Continue reading →

I have been working on various genealogical projects since boyhood, with – as I hope – increasing research ability. Happily, there are times when a lucky Google search cuts through years of dead ends: as yesterday, when I went looking..

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This entry from the Regina Shober Gray [1] diary touches on many of the themes in the larger work: births and deaths, worrying illnesses – including a threatened repeat of an earlier cholera..Continue reading →

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 9 September 2016.]

One of the trends in my ancestry is the curious one whereby, when given the..

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A recent review of my ancestral royal lines has suggested that they are all, in one way or another, problematic – either the line breaks here, in America, or there, in the British Isles. One approach I’ve tried, in a desultory way, is to..

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The aftermath of the Civil War continued to affect Regina Shober Gray [1] and her family, sometimes in surprising ways. The question in October 1865 was how to provide for the diarist’s..Continue reading →

An episode from early in the Civil War had a sequel in October 1865, and Regina Shober Gray [1] wrote about it as she reviewed other news from her family in Philadelphia. The earlier entry,..Continue reading →

Even on holiday the diarist Regina Shober Gray [1] could not escape anxieties about the health of family members – indeed, her sister Lizzie was beginning a fatal decline, and would die..Continue reading →

The Grays’ summer was flying by in Marion, and Regina Shober Gray [1] faced new social responsibilities as her daughter Mary [2] ventured into society:

Sunday, 6 August 1865: A week ago..

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