Category Archives: Family-stories

Well be gone

"My Old House"

Researching family history takes us to many places: libraries, museums, various genealogical repositories (New England Historic Genealogical Society, of course!), cemeteries, and . . . driveways. An historical archaeological adventure is the sort of..

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ICYMI: The Name Game

[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 4 February 2015.]

Bonus note: Vita Brevis blogger Penny Stratton is retiring from NEHGS today after ten years on the Publications team. In honor of her departure, I asked her to pick a post to run..

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Another day at the beach

I am fortunate in having photographs of many of my relatives, and more fortunate still in that I can identify so many of them. Often the work has been done for me, as to names; sometimes my work is cut out for me in terms of fitting them into the family tree. I have..

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Taking a road trip without stops

As many readers will already know, when I am not immersed in genealogy I am probably doing something that involves reading about, watching, studying, or writing about hockey. Such was the case this past weekend, as I traveled by car from Boston to Buffalo, New York,..

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"Some very satisfactory items"

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
By this period of the Gray diary, the month of June was generally a month in which Mrs. Gray visited her surviving siblings in Philadelphia and Pottsville, Pennsylvania. In 1873, the..Continue reading

Origin stories

Every family has a story about its origins, particularly about how the immigrant(s) came to the New World. Often these stories can seriously stretch credibility, but we can accept them as folklore if not fact. We do not often think about tracking down the origins of..

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"Most cordially welcomed"

[Author's note: This series began here and continues here.]

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In June 1871, Regina Shober Gray [1] was in Pennsylvania, and her omnibus diary entry for 9 June covers the first ten days of her..Continue reading

Grassroots genealogy

Map showing the area around Errol. Courtesy of the University of Texas Library

When most people learn that I grew up in a town of three hundred people, they’re amazed. Some aren’t aware such small places still exist. Others want to know if we have electricity or..

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Medical genealogy

Figure One: Sample genogram, courtesy of National Society of Genetic Counselors, http://nsgc.org/p/cm/ld/fid=143, accessed 30 May 2016.

Twenty-first century genealogists enthusiastically debate the relative merits of different types of DNA testing: autosomal..

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"What utter madness it seems"

Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Continuing my occasional series on the month of May in Regina Shober Gray’s diary, [1] I thought it might be interesting to look at the first five years after the end of the Civil War. One..Continue reading