In praise of tax lists

Courtesy of NARA

One of my personal “Great Moments in Family History Research” occurred several years ago in the town hall of Pomfret, Connecticut. I was immersed in a volume of early Pomfret land records at a small table set aside for researchers, when I happened..

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Scrope v. Grosvenor

In July 1385, King Richard II of England led an army on an ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Scotland. While the invasion itself would play a role in British history, it was a chance meeting – beginning on the battlefield – that resulted in one of the first known..

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Anne Cassidy, district nurse

Annie and Anne Cassidy in 1916.

The coronavirus crisis has inspired me to think of past health heroes. My paternal grandmother, Anne P. (Cassidy) Dwyer (1892–1964) of Fall River, Massachusetts, immediately comes to mind. As a first-generation American, daughter of..

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Overlooked no longer

Click on the images to expand them.

Just the other day I received an email from a friend in Provincetown. It started out cheerily enough with him telling me of an exhilarating walk he had taken at Great Island in Wellfleet, but it struck a despairing note at the end..

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'A remarkable old lady'

When I joined NEHGS with my aunt in 1992, we were the first members of our family to join this organization. While several members of our family had an interest in genealogy, no one was near enough to the Boston area to join NEHGS. (Now, of course, with our vast online..

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Sins of the fathers

Major General Israel Putnam (1718-1790). Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

In family history research, we often glean valuable information from genealogies published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the period when genealogical publishing was enjoying..

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Phillips House

This is usually the time of year that many house museums open for the season. While the museums are closed this year due to the coronavirus, I thought I would look back at some of my favorites. One that stands out is the Phillips House, a beautiful Federal-style..

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Plagues are personal

Baptismal record for Laers, son of Truels Laersen, living at Bruk 4 of Broe, from the Kirkebok for Rennesøy Palm Sunday 24 March 1771.

While I was researching and writing “The Early Years” segment of the book I have been writing about my..

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Gone to the dogs

My daughter adopted her first dog back in July. Emje is a 9-year-old, 78-pound creature who curls up in your lap like a cat. His papers say he is a Pit Bull, but he has an unusually shaped body that got us thinking he may be a mixed breed. To find out for sure, we did..

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Built environment

Today, the NEHGS headquarters at 99—101 Newbury Street stands eight stories tall, several stories higher than the neighboring buildings. However, the present building at 99—101 Newbury was not always the tallest on the block. It began as a three-story bank building.

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