Category Archives: Family-stories

Landlines

The landline rang unexpectedly last Friday. Its sudden clamor gave us all a bit of a jolt. A day or so before, I’d made the journey north to Oregon for a visit with my father and my once-upon-a-time "force to be reckoned with" step-mother. As the phone rang that day I..

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Good deeds

360 Prospect Street, Fall River, Massachusetts, 1962. The houses to the right have been torn down or moved. The cupola of Sacred Heart Academy, far right, is another demolished building.

In the summer of 1962, when I was three, my parents bought their first home on..

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"Love and affection"

Sara Theodora Ilsley, July 1896

One does not turn readily to probate matters for cozy human interest stories, so I was surprised (and delighted) to find a momentary bright spot in the will of my great-great-grandmother Emily Anne Finlay, the “relict of Francis G...

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Full circle

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

As a Scottish woman feeling the impact of Brexit, I, like many others in the United Kingdom, have started the process of claiming Irish citizenship. I am a summer intern with the development team at NEHGS,..

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Still relevant today

The conversations at my family dinner table usually center around daily activities: what the kids did at school, which beach are we going to this weekend, whose pool can we finagle an invitation to – normal things. Recently, while my kids and I visited with my older..

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Underwear Days

Apple rights

There are Remembering Days when we remember stories about family lives for the benefit of our descendants. There are Researching Days when we hunt for clues to our ancestors’ lives and their stories. And there are Underwear Days, when Remembering and..

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The elusive Banyars

St. George's Church, Hanover Square. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I almost hesitate to post this blog, as so much remains to be found – but the roughest outline of a family behind one of my intractable brick walls seems a good excuse to write about it (and seek the..

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Who's buried where?

Phinehas Child stone. Images courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society

A recent news article discussed the current use of an old Boston cemetery, with the permission of the church, as a dog park, prompting a neighborhood discussion. (This reminded me of David..

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'Pruning the tree'

The Misses Ogle and Long

With all of their ‘lives’ so scattered about, I really had nowhere to run and certainly nowhere to hide. There were papers and pictures everywhere, and in the midst of the fray of utter ancestry I caught my grandmother "Miss Ogle" (no pun..

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Philoprogenitive ancestors

Rev. Samuel Willard (1639-1707), fourth child of Maj. Samuel Willard. Portrait from the 1915 Willard Genealogy

Recently a genealogical colleague made a Facebook post on his “newly discovered philoprogenitive” ancestor. This was a word I had to look up, with the..

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