Category Archives: American-history

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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Family ties

What is it that they say about coincidences, that there are no coincidences? The word is defined as suggesting a remarkable concurrence of circumstances that seem to have “no apparent causal connection.” The OED shows a 1598 usage meaning “exactly contemporaneous” and..

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History as art

© 2020 Nina Tugarina

It is always a mystery how an artist gets inspiration. It could be a book, a person, an object, or even an historical event. Massachusetts, a state with many historical turning points, has always attracted artists. It is impossible to count how..

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Lemuel Shattuck, visionary

Figure 1

Lemuel Shattuck founded the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1845 with four of his Boston friends: Charles Ewer, Samuel Gardner Drake, John Wingate Thornton, and William Henry Montague.[1] The new society was incorporated for the “purpose of..

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Courage and innovation

Climbing Mount Washington with a view of the other Presidential Mountains, ca. 1870. Courtesy of the Mt. Washington Auto Road website

New Hampshire has a special place in my heart. My friends and I camp in the White Mountains every summer and each year we find..

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Mothers of Cape Cod

Courtesy of Claire Vail Photography (see link below)

I learned a few years ago that I have Mayflower ancestors along two lines of descent. Not a big surprise, as NEHGS makes it known that “More than 30 million people around the world have Mayflower ancestors.” My..

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Family Treasures: View from the pressroom

When Curt and I arrived at Puritan Capital printers for the press check, there was a sign greeting us and showing a live shot of our press and pressmen. (Ellen was unfortunately not able to join us.)

As I said in Family Treasures: View from the index, Curator of..

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Lessons in oral history

Grow Hill. Courtesy of Connecticut Day Trips

It was the stuff that dreams are made of. Novice genealogists, my wife and I had traveled from our home in Ohio to rural Windham County, Connecticut, on our first foray into family history field research, in hopes of..

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Complicated responsibilities

Cover for the 1895 Treasurer's Report: Scituate, Rhode Island (Providence: J. R. Day Printer, 1895).

Seven hundred thirty-eight pounds of pork, 152 bushels of corn, 65 heads of cabbage, 3 tons of oats, and 60 gallons of cider – and, no, this isn’t a farmer’s market...

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