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When Records Are Wrong: Why Original Research is Necessary
Posted on December 11, 2023 4 Comments
In my recent piece about Resurrecting the Dead Part Two. I relearned an important lesson. It doesn’t matter what the books, genealogies or sources say—they can and often are wrong. My research into Peter HALL showed: NAME With a very common name like Peter HALL middle initials matter. In everyone’s tree, including my own of […]
Resurrecting the Dead Part One: Start with a Timeline
Posted on November 29, 2023 7 Comments
If you have read any of my earlier blog posts, like Trees into Stories, you may know I favor ancestor stories over adding more to the tree. So in that spirit I want to talk about playing God as a family historian. We literally get to recreate the life of an ancestor who for all […]
Resurrecting the Dead Part Two: Bringing them to Life “Peter P HALL”
Posted on November 28, 2023 8 Comments
With our time line in place and our research into Peter HALL’s Pension we can begin to sketch out as much as we can of Peter Hall’s life. We don’t have to start at the Beginning I jumped into a more familiar part of history and will back fill as I go. This has been […]
Revolutionary War Details in Ancestor’s Pension Files: Peter P Hall
Posted on November 11, 2023 4 Comments
In honor of Veteran’s Day I decided to look a little closer into the pension files of some ancestors. While reading through the Pension Application files I found this lovely letter. A bit heart breaking but, worth sharing. The point is we all need to take the time to read deeply and reflect on the […]
Old Rehoboth, Massachusetts & the Ring of Green: Mapping the Past on Greenwood Ave, East Providence, Rhode Island
Posted on October 16, 2023 12 Comments
Background Two years ago in the lead up to visiting Rehoboth and Swansea, Massachusetts I contacted the East Providence Historical Society and I asked for help in locating the original home lot of Robert WHEATON on the Ring of Green. Sandra Turgeon and I exchanged emails and arranged to meet at the East Providence Historical […]
Special Ancestors: Asa Ami Paden
Posted on October 7, 2023 4 Comments
I happened to think of Asa today when teaching a genealogy class. I was talking about being the custodian of historic documents and it made me think of my cousin, Nancy Black Young [my 2nd cousin twice removed], who had sent me a few years ago, documents regarding my 2nd great uncle, Asa PADEN. But […]
Family Heirlooms: Egyptian Cosmetic Spoon
Posted on August 27, 2023 5 Comments
This is an example of starting to write about a particular object and ending up with much more than you bargained for. All the memories of a beloved place come streaming back. So no matter the writing—let it take you where it wants to go. This figure sat on the coffee table of my grandparents […]
Fact or Fiction? A Revolutionary War soldier talked to a boy, who became a Civil War soldier
Posted on August 25, 2023 5 Comments
“There will be stories, and only some of them will be true.” DUANE F. MOSIER These words my Dad spoke after his diagnosis with lung cancer. They were words of wisdom he passed on to me and his grandchildren. In my The Challenge: Tokyo Rose I proved that a story he told about testifying at […]
Mind The Gap: Making the Connection to the Royal STEWARTs of Scotland
Posted on August 17, 2023 12 Comments
Sometimes you can prove a connection without being able to flesh out the in-between. Thus like the announcements at the train station “Mind the Gap.” Sometimes people grasp at anything to make the connection and falsify the record in doing so. This is part of a cautionary tale to be careful even when evaluating something […]
We Can’t Write What We Don’t Know: A Journey from the Fjords of Norway to the Shores of New York Mid 19th Century
Posted on August 8, 2023 2 Comments
If you decide you want to write about an ancestor be prepared to go down many gopher holes you never dreamed of visiting. Almost every time I decide to dig deeper into an ancestor’s story I end up researching things I never knew anything about. My last blog post Deep Diving: Water Wheels and Papermaking […]
Wheaton Wood 