During my recent sabbatical, I made a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, to see one of my great-grandfather’s earliest commissions, the 1902 Mercantile Exchange Bank (today the Old Florida National..

Continue reading →

The birth of the new Princess of Cambridge marks the latest addition to the main line of the British royal family: that is, the line closest in..

Continue reading →

Mrs. Gray and her family frequently attended the theater and the opera. When they did so, it was often in concentrated doses, presumably as the singers and actors performed their repertory for just a few days before departing to..Continue reading →

Mrs. Gray’s Boston, at least during the 1860s, was one largely arrayed..

Continue reading →

Regina Shober Gray kept a diary for 25 years. Taking a smaller portion of the diary – the period between 1861 and 1870 – and with a focus (for Women’s History Month..

Continue reading →

Regina Shober Gray kept a diary for 25 years, through the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, through the deaths of several of her siblings and, in 1880,..

Continue reading →

One of the most attractive characters in the Gray diary is Mrs. Gray’s youngest son, Morris Gray (1856–1931), later a Boston lawyer and president of the Museum of..

Continue reading →

Two of Dr. Francis H. Gray’s uncles married Gardners, so the Grays’ web of family connections included Mr. and Mrs. John L. Gardner Jr. – better known to..

Continue reading →

Regina Shober Gray (1818–1885) spent the last forty years of her life in Boston, but she remained strongly connected to her native Philadelphia – and to her..

Continue reading →

As I read along in the Gray diary, I am finding certain recurring themes. One, every New Year’s Day, is concern over the arrival (or delay) of “the Philadelphia box,” containing presents for the Gray children in Boston from Mrs. Gray’s..

Continue reading →