[Author's note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 3 September 2014.]
When I started out as a genealogical writer, I followed the model of genealogies published earlier in the twentieth century. The genealogical world they depicted was an orderly one, with..
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My review of almost sixty years’ worth of Baltimore city directories has yielded much information on my great-great-great-grandfather E. W. Boucher; my great-great-grandfather William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899) and his two wives; and many of..
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[Editor's note: This post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 22 August 2014.]
Now that my book on genealogical research methods (Elements of Genealogical Analysis) is out, I have turned my attention to the series of lectures I will be delivering in October and..
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The recent gift of some family photos reminds me that, well as in some ways I knew my maternal grandfather, there will always be things one cannot know, save by lucky chance. My grandfather was..
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As we are missing (most of) the 1890 Federal Census, the value of city directories for the years around 1890 is all the greater. Looking at the Boucher family of Baltimore, the 1880s proved somewhat chaotic, with the family shop and..
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I have been reviewing Baltimore city directories with a view to better understanding the movements of the William Boucher Jr. household during the nineteenth century. In 1860, the year of the Federal Census, my great-great-grandfather Wm. Boucher..
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In my previous blog post, I wrote about my Irish great-grandparents raising their children in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Yet as I began sorting through my genealogical research in preparation for NEHGS’ upcoming ..
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[Editor’s Note: Alicia’s series began here and continues here.]
Contested will
It is not often that a will is contested, but in the case of John Dickson, we have a nice, brief example.
John died on 22 March 1736/37, and by 4 April 1737 a formal petition had been..
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In September of 2014, I wrote a blog posted entitled “My ancestor was born ... where?!” about my family’s unexpected ties to Saint Helena, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. My..
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