Mary. D. Hudson is my toughest brick wall. She is my Great, Great Grandmother on my mother’s paternal side. Verbal history tells us that she was orphaned in the Great Boston Fire and then raised by family. All research has failed to prove this. Questions remain; if she didn’t know her parents as all her documents state, then where did…
Laura May Whitman Balentine had lain unmarked since 1927. Dying of TB she passed leaving 6 children motherless. There was no money for a headstone. She lay unidentified and I worried when I passed, there would be no one left to know where she was. I wanted her identified. To mark her grave, I had to take a long investigative…
Finally I am formatting the book I hope to write. Although I will provide documentation, I will abandon the well known version of formatted genealogy with lineages and dates. I intend on taking my gathered facts and research and instead write them out narratively. Instead of sharing my enthusiasm, I have watched non-researchers stare blankly at gathered lineages. I have…
I read wonderful blogs where the author has researched and then written story after story, reporting all sorts of interesting information for the reader. I long to be that author. But reality sets me apart. I work more than full time, live alone and my research is my passion that is saved for those lone moments of quiet, typically in…
Yesterday my Aunt Eunice passed away at age 90. There is heartbreak and relief. Relief because the last thing she would want for her proud, intellectual self would be to live in a nursing home with dementia. Heartbreak because I did have a bond with her that was important. She had expectations for me. She and my Grandmother had announced…
When you are following many lines at once, they can show you pictures of the information. You have an impression of who lived where and when from each line. You find ancestral neighbors, you find families that married into and out of each others lines. Mostly in my fathers family, people showed up from far away and made a home…
I have always loved Cohasset. I once belonged to an Artists Co-op there. This presented me with opportunities for driving through the town, seeing the sites and enjoying its people when I worked the counter. Now I find that my Grandfathers family comes from not only Bridgewater, but Cohasset as well. They were some of the founding families. Any time…
Planning trips to find Ancestral places, I looked over my Grandfathers line. My Grandfather’s Mom was Laura Whitman, her father was Alfred Whitman from Charles Whitman.All from Abington but from there we have a line of Nicholas and Elijahs all from Bridgewater, Mass. All of whom married women from the same town. Exploring Bridgewater history, I read that the Whitman…
My paternal side is rich with Scotch and German. But my maternal side has its share of each as well. My Great Great Grandmother was alive until I was 12. Her husband had long passed so I never knew him. I had no connection emotionally to him as I did her. Now as I fill in my chart, he interests…
It is always very exciting to learn that you come from an ancestor that has a statue or a home or some other tangible piece that you can photograph and say, “Hey! This is my Grandparent!” I come from not only John Winthrop of Salem, Mass., but Roger Conant as well. Roger Conant has historical markers in that area that…