Category Archives: Spotlight

An Unexpected Discovery in Family Documents

Cover of Gertrude Conlon's MCOF payment book.

One day while visiting my parents, I looked through some documents that belonged to my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Rose (Breen) Conlon. She lived with my family for two years until her death in 1992, and my mother..

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The Sport of Genealogy

NEHGS staff and tour participant.

After a week of researching in Washington, D.C., with the NEHGS tour, one of the many things I have learned is that genealogy is more of a sport than a hobby. It takes physical and mental strength and endurance to pursue the..

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A tour of Boston, circa 1891

Washington Street, Boston, circa 1891.

As a librarian at NEHGS, I love stumbling across items in our research library collection that bring the past to life in an unexpected way. I recently had one such happy “stumbling” experience when we discovered a work called ..

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"Busy Little Brains"

Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, entries for 5-7 February 1864. R. Stanton Avery Special Collections

One of the most attractive characters in the Gray diary is Mrs. Gray’s youngest son, Morris Gray (1856–1931), later a Boston lawyer and president of the Museum of..

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Widow Lydia Scottow’s wardrobe

Page from Joshua Scottow's will

Although I am descended from some good seamstresses, the talent did not descend to either my mother or me. My grandmother’s home was filled with remnants of cloth, lace, trim, etc., passed down to her. I still have some of this..

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What the "Dad file" taught me about recent history

George Rohrbach at age 18, with his niece Norma Johnson.

Recently I sifted through a box that turned out to be a treasure box because it yielded some great information about a recent ancestor. The ancestor was my father, George Rohrbach (1909-1999), and I was the..

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The “Orange Wars” of Chinese New Year

Oranges and money envelopes given for luck during the Lunar New Year.

With all the snow flying in Massachusetts these past few weeks, I nearly forgot that now is the time of the “orange wars.” At the beginning of every year, I must also mind the lunar calendar as..

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RootsTech Wrap Up

Attendees at RootsTech 2015. Photo by Ryan Woods.

When the RootsTech/FGS conference opened Thursday morning at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, February 12, close to 22,000 attendees were there to learn, mingle, and teach other passionate genealogists from around..

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A Historic Collaboration with FamilySearch

From the Ohio Tax Records database* supplied to NEHGS by FamilySearch.org

Last week a group of NEHGS staff members joined 22,000 attendees at the 2015 RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, for four days of learning, research, and fun. At the keynote session..

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Making Sense of Money in Colonial America

£2 Colonial currency from the Colony of Rhode Island. National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

Prior to the Coinage Act of 1792, which established the dollar, the English pound was the primary form of currency in colonial America. The..

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