Category Archives: A-genealogists-diary

'A free citizen'

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
[ Author's note: This series, on Mrs. Gray's reading habits, began here.]

By the winter of 1861, an American civil war loomed. Regina Shober Gray[1] – a native of Pennsylvania with Southern..

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'Of course nobody stopped talking'

[Author's note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
These entries, from 1860–61, focus less on Regina Shober Gray’s [1] reading than on the successive deaths from..Continue reading →

ICYMI: Family papers

[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 August 2015.]

My grandfather died almost 25 years ago, and sometime before that he gave me a box of “family papers.” The box itself is rather striking: a metal strong box, easily portable, with my..

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'More than worth the money'

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Regina Shober Gray’s [1] diary shows her as part of a wide network of families: in the following entries, from summer..Continue reading →

'By dint of much skipping'

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In May 1860, Regina Shober Gray [1] was visiting her family in Philadelphia.

245 South Eighteenth Street, Wednesday,..

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'What a wonderful experience'

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Regina Shober Gray [1] was an energetic and well-educated woman of her time. Her diary abounds with visits to the theater and to commercial art galleries (the precursors of museums), so I..Continue reading →

Lost generations

John Henry Beeckman's nephew, Robert Livingston Beeckman (1866-1935).

One of the trends in my ancestry is the curious one whereby, when given the choice between staying in a locale or moving on, my nineteenth-century forebears often remained behind as other..

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Let's put on a show!

For the last few months I have been working with Judi Garner of the Jewish Heritage Center, here at NEHGS, on an exhibit of twentieth-century Jewish photographers and their subjects, and we are finally finished. The photos are framed and hung; the labels have been..

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‘Veiling mists and disguising clouds’

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

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Mrs. Gray’s [1] summer was winding down, and while autumn impended she could..Continue reading →

Friendly rivalries

was taken. That's Don and Rosser doing the honors." (7 September 1944)
My photography collection recently took a decided step into new territory when I started acquiring vernacular photographs – images characterized, generally, by their lack of provenance and offering..Continue reading →