Category Archives: American-history

Mrs. Gray at the theater

Brady's National Portrait Gallery.
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

Immigration of the Slapshot

Letter from the Black Hawks seeking authorization to import three players.*

While my personal ancestry does not have anyone who immigrated later than the 1700s, I have long been intrigued by the experiences of those who came in the latter 1800s and the early 1900s,..

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Where did the first Boston Marathon winner go?

John J. McDermott, winner of the first Boston Marathon. Boston Sunday Journal, 1 May 1898.

As a lifetime Bostonian who has seen her share of snowstorms (especially this year), I always look forward to Patriot’s Day (April 20 this year). It’s the official anniversary..

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Finding Revolutionary War Ancestors

Frederick Wingdorf's record in the Index to Revolutionary War Service Records.

Patriots’ Day—the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord—is fast approaching here in Massachusetts. This particular holiday makes many of us a little reflective. Was my..

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Twin Pastimes: Baseball and Genealogy

David's signed Bill Henry baseball card.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved baseball. My father would tell me stories about his own childhood, recalling Ted Williams batting at Boston’s Fenway Park, and Warren Spahn pitching at the former Boston Braves field. My..

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Crossing Paths: Two Stories of Buchenwald

U.S. Army troops in Germany, 1945. Photograph by Herbert Gorfinkle. From the Papers of Herbert Gorfinkle, P-904 at the American Jewish Historical Society-New England Archives.

April 11, 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp...

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Beacon Hill Place

At center, a view of the intersection of Tremont and Beacon Streets. G. W. Bromley & Co., Atlas of the City of Boston: City Proper and Roxbury (1890), Plate 2. Click on the images to expand them.

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

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In Search of Livelihoods

You know the names and dates, but do you know how your early New England ancestors worked to survive? Tracing these individual stories is challenging with limited records, but not impossible.

As a child, I used my allowance to purchase a family tree fan chart at the..

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Women in the Gray diary: Part Two

Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

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..

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Women in the Gray diary: Part One

Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

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,..

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