The skies are orange here today. Words like “contained” and “perimeter,” along with phrases like “mandatory evacuation” and “defensible space,” float through the smoke-laden air. The smoke curls indolently outward, towards the..
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All summer, I have been waiting for the release of the Digital Atlas of Dungarvan, a project spearheaded by the Royal Irish Academy. For more than 30 years, the Royal Irish Academy has published the Irish Historic..
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[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 22 July 2019.]
My great-grandfather John W. Rhodes lived in Wareham, Massachusetts for most of his life. Though I remember him well, I knew nothing of his..
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[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 6 January 2020.]
For whatever reason, my grandmother’s ancestors stayed put. They ignored the call to go west (“young man!”) or to secure the nation’s manifest destiny...
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Now that a few of our shelter-in-place orders have been lifted, my wife Nancy and I have started to get back to the more ‘normal’ side of life. I have to admit, it’s been pretty nice not having to treat toilet paper like some new form of..
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[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 28 April 2020.]
While I was researching and writing “The Early..
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Watching the videos of Mayflower II being escorted through the Cape Cod Canal brings weird thoughts to my mind. What if there had been a canal in 1620? Would “Plimoth Plantation” have been “Long Island Plantation”? Things would have been different, but since there was..
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My grandfather[1] came from New York, and when I was growing up it was understood that the Stewards were from New York and the Ayers (my grandmother’s family) were from Boston. A little..
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Whenever I find myself doing Massachusetts research that predates 1800, I return to a collection of early town plans, 1794-1795, that are as much a documentary source as they..
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