Category Archives: American-history

The last Grand Sachem

General Grant with some of his officers, Ely Parker among them. From The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes

Some years ago I was looking through a set of books that had been given to me by my wife’s grandmother. They were pictorial and history..

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The fabric is all

It has been a while since I’ve written an installment about the Rev. Thomas Cary’s diary. Indeed, it has been a while since I’ve written a post about anything, since I’ve been on a five-week trip with my husband along the East Coast as part of his sabbatical. Now I’m..

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History repeats

The Boston Red Sox in 1916. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Between 1919 and 2003, a Boston loss in the fall classic of the World Series was, sadly, a familiar occurrence. In the decades before 1919, things were different. The Boston Americans rallied to beat the..

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Something about Sarah

Marriage of Ichabod Bumpus and Sarah Coombs

She was right there, exactly where I had left her – twenty or so years ago. Even now, she seemed to stare back at me from her vantage point in time, one made up of long-ago names and foggy dates in an old ahnentafel. I..

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Keeping up with the Joneses

Hannah Maria (Salisbury) Olmsted

My earlier discussion of genealogical uncertainty focused on uncertain genealogical connections. This discussion will explore uncertainty in biographical information about ancestors or relatives.

Years ago, when I started exploring..

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'An ornament to the city'

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
The third and final entry in the Regina Shober Gray [1] diary on the death of her sister Lizzie [2] turns from private grief to the public response to the news.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston,..

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Abel, Jabel, or Isabel?

Click on images to expand them.

A recent example of using transcribed records reminded me that many genealogists who wrote turn of the century family histories were using the same original records that were later transcribed – and thus the records that are often..

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Noble contributions

The Society's Treat Rotunda was the setting Saturday for Gary Boyd Roberts's seminar marking the publication of his new book, The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants to the American Colonies, Québec, or the United States. More than thirty participants thronged the room to..

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Germans in the Queen City

Founded in December 1788, Cincinnati has long been a city with a rich cultural heritage, forged largely from the influences of its significant immigrant populations. Situated at the junction of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, Cincinnati was viewed as a natural destination..

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Cousins of St. Casimir

Above, left: Eugénie Vallée. Above, right: Marie Trottier.

This blog post, a sequel to “The widow of St. Casimir,” contrasts the lives of two women, Eugénie Vallée (1880–1973) and Marie Trottier (1855–1928), first cousins born in St. Casimir, Québec a generation..

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