Category Archives: Family-stories

Voices from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

View of St. Bartholomew's Church, Groton

One of my current projects is a new genealogy of the Winthrop family of Suffolk in England and then Massachusetts Bay in New England. I am in the process of reading through the Winthrop Papers, a six-volume collection of..

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Object Lessons

I recently paid a visit to Baltimore to photograph some of the surviving architectural commissions of my great-grandfather Edward Hughes Glidden. I had a great time traversing the city, from Battle Monument Square to Druid Hill Park, from the financial district to..

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What we inherit, or, critical analysis

The seventy-ninth anniversary of my parents’ marriage falls on 30 March 2014. They were married for 71 years before my mother’s death at age 99 years, 6 months, and 9 days in 2006.  Mom was my connection to genealogy. Her mother was the last of her branch of the family..

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Progress on Western Massachusetts Families in 1790

After publication of Western Massachusetts Families in 1790 in book form, the project continues as a database on AmericanAncestors.org and is becoming a more and more useful resource. While there were some 14,171 households listed in Berkshire and Hampshire Counties in..

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The Indian and African-American populations of Stoughton

David Allen Lambert and Jennifer Pustz will speak at NEHGS on Wednesday, March 26, on “Uncovering African American Stories.”

As a community historian for Stoughton, Massachusetts, I have studied all local families from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth..

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A serendipitous reunion

One fall weekend in 2008 my wife, Karen, and I were visiting her parents at their home on Long Island. After dinner one evening, my mother-in-law asked if I might like to see a collection of journals kept by her maternal grandfather, Glenn Welmer Douglass (1884–1968),..

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The last name's the thing

As a genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, there are many aspects of my job that I truly enjoy – especially when it involves helping those new to the hobby of family history get off on the right foot. One of my favorite experiences is the chance..

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Mid-century migration from Iraq to Mexico to the United States

The Records of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Boston Office at the American Jewish Historical Society, New England Archives, http://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=365459#a1

While interning at the American Jewish Historical Society—New England Archives and..

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Picking families for the Early New England Families Study Project

My father, borrowing a line from Henry Ford, used to tease me that I could pick any color apple I wanted in the basket “as long as it was red.” (They were all red.) I have been asked to explain how I choose which families to do for the Early New England Families Study..

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An interview with Marilynne Roach: Part One

Photo by Joyce Kelly

Marilynne K. Roach will lecture tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (99-101 Newbury Street  in Boston). Marilynne’s most recent book is Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the..

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