When I first started researching my family I found an antique cross-stitch sampler that was passed down through my maternal grandmother’s family. I was eager to discover which of my ancestors had made it and I thought it should be easy to figure out. After all, it..
Continue reading
“She tells white lies to ice a wedding cake.” - Margot Asquith
As students of family history, we spend our time and curiosity trying to discover the reasons why our ancestors kept so many secrets!..
Continue reading
One hundred years ago today, on 29 May 1917, Rose Kennedy gave birth to the future president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a charming three-story Colonial on a lovely street in Brookline, Massachusetts. That same..
Continue reading
May is Jewish Heritage Month, so in its honor I decided to look into my own Jewish heritage.
Even though I work at a genealogical society, I always felt that it was a worthless pursuit to try to trace..
Continue reading
Many of the vernacular photos I’ve bought in the last few months have no information about the sitter – sometimes the subject is identified by a nickname, such as “Stinky.” I recently bought an intriguing image of a man (apparently) dancing,..
Continue reading
Shortly after I began work at NEHGS about ten years ago, we went into all-hands-on-deck mode. The occasion was the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference, which was in Boston that year and bringing many visitors to the building. A newbie, I was assigned the..
Continue reading
Recently, I've started visiting the cemeteries of my ancestors. Fortunately, most of my maternal ancestors stayed in the Boston area after immigrating, so it hasn’t been too difficult.
A few months ago, I visited St. Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury in search of the..
Continue reading
Behind the scenes, the NEHGS web team is hard at work preparing the searchable version of our Roman Catholic Archdiocese records. As part of that process, our volunteers create spreadsheets that associate information with a specific image file. I proofread these..
Continue reading
As the New England Regional Genealogical Conference was held recently in Springfield, Massachusetts, I am reminded of my brief genealogical connection to that city and the incredible value..
Continue reading