The question came up after last week’s post about the length of mourning periods between remarriages in seventeenth-century New England. It has always been my (undocumented) impression that the traditional one-year mourning period was usually observed except for..
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On 31 May 1619 John Shipway, the son of John Shipway, was baptized in Charfield in Gloucestershire.[1] Or so it the record shows. However, in 1897, this record was found to be part of an elaborate fraud..
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A recent quiz in The Weekly Genealogist asked readers to share the nature of any secrets they’d uncovered about their ancestors. More than one third of respondents indicated that they had not uncovered any secrets – to which I say, “Hah! You..
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As those who have applied to hereditary societies may already know, several groups have a policy of requiring every birth, marriage, and death certificate for the most recent three generations..
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There is a remote area in the study of family history. Some will call it a myth, or say it has no proper place in the field of study. It hides from anyone who would study it like a registrar, and rarely cloaks itself in any..
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I opened Pandora’s box. Traditionally, Daniel Fisher is credited with marrying Abigail Marrett/Marriot/Marrott, etc., daughter of Great Migration parents Thomas and Susan (Wolfenden) Marrett.[1]
This is supported by the record of marriage in Dedham of Daniell Fisher to..
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[Author's note: This series, on the German origin of the Boucher family of Baltimore, began here.]
With regard to my great-great-great-grandfather Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Esprit Boucher (bp. 1799), I feel on firm ground in ascribing ..
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Is truth really stranger than fiction? I’ll let you be the judge. Out of the blue, I received a lengthy message this summer from a woman in Phoenix, through ancestry.com. Here’s an abridged version:
“Hello. Based on your family tree, I..
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Some of the most exciting news lately for people with New York State ancestry has been the releasing of the New York State vital records indices through the fantastic group
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