Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In this diary entry Mrs. Gray [1] depicts some of the economic forces on an upper-class Boston family, one dependent on the largesse of wealthier family members. Her brother John Bedford..Continue reading
Courtesy of Arlene Ovalle-Child
In 2010 I visited the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. An exhibit that caught my eye was called Within these Walls, whichtold the stories of five families who lived in a house in Ipswich, Massachusetts for more than..
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Figure 1. Click on images to expand them
Whenever I am working in records or sites from another country – and thus not in the English language – I do my best to leave them in that language, especially if my only option for translation is that which is built into the..
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The beginning of summer and the influx of tourists to the city of Boston has me thinking about a fun activity I did last year: a historic tavern tour. This was an entertaining group outing where we went on a historical tour of the city, all the while stopping at..
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Sample page from a Saint Patrick volume of marriage records.
If you have heard about our Historic Catholic Records Online project, in which NEHGS is digitizing and making accessible the sacramental records of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, you might be..
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Courtesy of Findagrave.com
While I have written about reported birthdates ranging over several years, something else that happens from time to time is the reporting of death dates, especially gravestones, being off by a few years. Sometimes, when a gravestone date..
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It is urban legend that I got my start doing human genealogy by tracing Thoroughbred horse pedigrees when I worked at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky in the early 1970s. I was already familiar with the five-generation pedigree chart before I got there, which was a great..
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William Burgis, "Detail from a south east view of ye great town of Boston in New England in America," ca. 1722-23. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library
The practice of “warning out” individuals from New England communities can be traced to the mid-seventeenth..
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“We’re so sorry Uncle Albert ….” - Paul and Linda McCartney
“Tablets of the Missing” at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, Philippines. Courtesy of lostatseamemorials.com
In the fall of 1978, shortly after our marriage, I was introduced to various..
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Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925-2013)
Last month, I wrote about the tradition of given names. I postulated that given names were either chosen by parents because they honored a family member (both living and deceased) or because parents liked the way a name sounded,..
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