Category Archives: Massachusetts

Unscrambling Census Records

Map of Boston in 1870. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been researching the lives and descendants of Irish immigrant Bostonians Edward J. Costello (1866-1926 [?]) and Mary Josephine Maloney (c. 1872-1943). This genealogical journey has taken..

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Ships Logs and Genealogy

I spent over a decade volunteering at the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport, Massachusetts. During that time I’ve helped with many projects, but one of the most exciting began when I uncovered a ship log with an unusual provenance. Unlike the vast majority of..

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The Unsolved 19th-Century Mystery in the Parking Lot

When George Washington Flint was buried in 1873, I doubt anyone suspected that in little over a century, his final resting spot would one day be the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts.

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Genetic Distance Zero

12th generation mt DNA descendants of Juliana Carpenter. Left: Avis (Miller) Shurtleff. Right: Joyce (Houghton) Pratt.

For many years, my family’s brick wall stood firm at the unknown parentage of Betsey Doty, who married Ebenezer Besse in Plymouth on 26 September..

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Stories of People in Poverty: The Trail Continues

1864 Tewksbury Almshouse Intake Records #21827 and #21828 for Margaret Kellaher and John C. Kellaher.

I wrote about Margaret (Mulligan) Kelleher and her infant son John Cornelius Kelleher a few months ago in a previous Vita Brevis post. While I thought the trail had..

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Uncovering Stories of People in Poverty

The old administration building at Tewksbury Hospital, formerly the Tewksbury Almshouse.

I recently visited the Boston City Archives, located near the Charles River in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The city archives house city departmental records, school records,..

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How a Pirate Shipwreck Near Cape Cod Became a Local Legend

Map showing location of the Whydah Gally wreck

"For many years after this shipwreck, a man, of a very singular and frightful aspect, used, every spring and autumn, to be seen travelling on the Cape, who was supposed to have been one of Bellamy’s crew." —B.A...

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Finding Jane Cronan: The Missing Counihan Sister

Sisters Mary Counihan Rhodes (1850–1907) and Ellen Counihan Bielenberg (1846–1919) lived in different hemispheres but never lost touch with one another.

I recently solved a long-standing family mystery after discovering a new DNA match to other descendants of my..

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Lodgers or Relatives? (Part II)

2011 photograph of St. Jean Baptiste Church in Lynn, Massachusetts.

In a recent post I examined the curious case of young “lodger” George Stepper, who was enumerated in the 1920 census in the home of Joshua and Mary (Craven) Harron in Revere, Massachusetts. As I..

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Governors of Massachusetts

Massachusetts made history with the recent victory of state Attorney General Maura Healey as our next governor, becoming both the first elected female governor in the bay state and the first openly lesbian governor in the United States.1 When Healey became the nominee..

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