My grandfather[1] came from New York, and when I was growing up it was understood that the Stewards were from New York and the Ayers (my grandmother’s family) were from Boston. A little..

Real estate transactions might not seem very romantic, or as offering much in the way of narrative, but sometimes proximity and dates can signal ongoing relationships. One in my..

Much like genealogical research, photo collecting can be a serendipitous process – sometimes one finds answers, and interesting ones at that, when least..

I recently discovered an online app. that allows me to scan my photographs. As I like to be able to refer to a record of my collection (still somewhat maddening if I forget the subject’s name), this has been a revelation. One of the vernacular photos I bought some time..

One of the features of this anniversary year – the four hundredth since the Mayflower’s landing at Plymouth as well as the 175th anniversary of the Society’s founding in 1845 – has been a focus on early members of the Society, people no one alive today can have known...

Another trove in my grandfather’s box of family papers is a stack of canceled passports. Most of them are for my grandfather, ranging from the 1950s into the 1980s, but one – a handsome little book, containing a parchment that folds out to four times the stored size –..

It would appear that I am not finished with my self-imposed task of sorting through my grandfather’s box of family papers. As I was preparing to put the box away, I found that I had by no means exhausted its treasures, from old passports and (miniature) Bibles to a..

After my parents were married, my maternal grandmother[1] gave my mother a dowry of a kind, one suited to her new life in New England: the gift of Boston..

When my grandmother[1]