Massachusetts towns

There are any number of reference books with information about when and how the towns of Massachusetts were incorporated. One is Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities, and Towns in Massachusetts, by Paul Guzzi, Secretary of the Commonwealth, published in 1975...

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'At what a terrible cost'

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from Regina Shober Gray’s diary began here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
While in Zurich, the Grays [1] met some friends from home and had some Philadelphia news:

Hotel Baus-au..

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ICYMI: King Richard III's Matrilineal Kin

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 1 April 2015.]

Barbara (Spooner) Wilberforce, wife of William, and the actual matrilineal descendant of Richard III’s sister.

News of King Richard III’s reburial last week was interesting,..

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Loving Register style

Register style would help clarify family groups among descendants of my grandmother (seated, center).

I simply love Register style as a way of presenting descendants of a particular ancestor. Chris Child’s recent post made me realize just how much I love it. It is..

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An active pursuit

While the variety of televised programs about family history have certainly increased interest in the hobby, I fear that it has begun to supply a skewed approach to genealogical research. So many of these shows show others doing the research for the person, and then..

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A vote of confidence

Yesterday afternoon, sometime after 2 p.m., Vita Brevis marked a major milestone in the life of a blog with its one-millionth page view. Since it officially launched on 10 January 2014, with Robert Charles Anderson’s Deep Puritan Roots post, Vita Brevis has published..

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'The lofty heights'

[Author's noteThis series of excerpts from Regina Shober Gray’s diary began here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
A great feature of Regina Shober Gray’s diary is the way she translates what she sees into words that..Continue reading

Birth order vs. will order

In the Early New England Families Study Project sketch for Joseph Andrews of Hingham, I included a commentary about the problem I was having establishing the birth order for Joseph’s children. Recently, an inquirer wondered why I had not used the order the children are..

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ICYMI: A helping hand

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 30 March 2015.]

Chris Child helping Jean get started in the 4th floor library at NEHGS.

Before I began researching my ancestry, I was overwhelmed by the undertaking. It seemed like an impossible..

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A New England Hogwarts

Image from Bradford’s History “of Plimoth Plantation.” From the Original Manuscript (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1928), opposite p. 531 in the Appendix.

In 2014, I wrote a blog post about the greatness that is J.K. Rowling. My main point was that, as in your own..

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