Category Archives: Photographs

House and Property History

When thinking about genealogy, I believe that our homes can sometimes be an overlooked or undervalued resource. Research documents families and the history of a particular place and space. One home can have dozens of owners, but if your family is one of them, then it..

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Focusing In on My Photographer Ancestor

My 2nd-great-grandfather Ephraim Chamberlain had an interesting career as a photographer. Traditional genealogical research showed that he was born in Sweden, Oxford County, Maine, on 11 August 1843 and died in Wakefield, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, on 22 October..

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A Village Photographer Comes Back to Life

At the turn of the twentieth century, Mary True Randall set up a photography studio with a dark room in her father’s house opposite Pittsford, Vermont’s Village Green. For almost 20 years, her camera captured children in formal poses and at play, quaint scenes of rural..

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George Albion Paine: A Teenage Civil War Veteran

Observance of Memorial Day always compels me to think about the members of my extended family from Block Island who served in the Civil War, and the long-term effects of the war on their lives. This carte-de-visite photo of eighteen-year-old George Albion Paine, taken..

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Finding Francis Ward Lewis

Photograph of Francis Ward Lewis. Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

When I was growing up, my father would sometimes solemnly remind me to remember Francis Ward Lewis. I would just nod absentmindedly in..

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Linking Parents and Children—Without the Help of Vital Records

Photograph of children from the author’s family tree. From top left: Amy Hart, Vivian Hart, Harriet Hart (center), Florence Hart, Mary-Elizabeth Hart. C. 1909, Westwood, New Jersey.

On November 2, 2022, my husband and I welcomed our first child: a son, named Jack..

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Identifying Another “Boarder”

A recent series of posts on lodgers who are possibly relatives hit close to home in my search for information about my wife's great-grandfather. In three consecutive Scotland census reports he is listed first as boarder, then as son, and finally lodger. It took some..

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Finding Belo in the Archives

Photo of the author with her grandparents.

My grandfather, Salvador Sanchez, was born 15 February 1921 in Mexico. It was there that he met my grandmother, Rosa Fonseca, and started a family before immigrating to the United States in 1957.

Belo, as we called him,..

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Uncovering a Lesser-Known Roosevelt Legacy

Photo postcard sent by Philip James Roosevelt, 1915. From the collections of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, recently digitized by American Ancestors/NEHGS.

Unlike the old-world monarchies of Europe, the United States has no hereditary titles. Even so, some..

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The Brief Life of NEHGS’ Youngest Founding Member

On my first day working at New England Historic Genealogical Society, I noticed a collection of framed ambrotype photographs of founding members of NEHGS, taken in the 1850s. While the vast majority of the men in the photographs were in their older years, one man was..

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