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

The name of “John” Alden was passed down for five consecutive generations.

John¹ Alden, of course, was the passenger on Mayflower with his soon-to-be bride, Priscilla Mullins.

John² Alden, their first son and second child, was born about 1626. He went to the big city,..

In gathering records on people – especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – I often find people listed with middle initials. Sometimes finding the full middle names can be challenging; sometimes it’s impossible! (In some cases, such as Harry S. Truman..

One might be surprised to learn that the profession of “historian” in America is a fairly recent creation. The American Historical Association..

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

This past week we held our annual Volunteer Luncheon, thanking all the volunteers at NEHGS for the prodigious amount of work they do to help our Society. Here on the database team, we have many volunteers who help scan and index the original material from which we..

Concluding the story of my great-grandparents’ years in Telluride, Colorado:

During her second pregnancy, my great-grandmother Alice (Pheasey) McLean suffered from a kidney ailment then known as Bright’s disease. Alice’s eyesight..

One of the best sources I use is Biographical sketches of graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Langdon Sibley compiled the first three volumes, covering the classes of 1642 through 1689 (published between 1873 and 1885). The collection is..

The Stamp Act, passed in 1765 by the British Parliament, was a levied tax on legal documents, almanacs, and newspapers – basically, any form of paper used in the American colonies. The reason Britain passed the Stamp Act was to pay for the British troops stationed in..

My recent post about twins in the family – correcting my ancestor Sarah (Johnson) Eaton’s ancestry – reminded me of various corrections to my family papers over the years. As I had indicated there, when I started my genealogical..