August 8, 1775 — 250 years ago this day — a Gloucester, Massachusetts, militia company scrambled and successfully fought off a shore raid by marines from HMS Falcon, menacing Gloucester Harbor. Dogtown resident and militiaman Peter Lurvey, age 35 — my ancestor — was fatally shot, dying later in the day. He is my only […]
Two companies of men from Gloucester, Massachusetts, fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 250 years ago today: Captain Nathaniel Warner’s company in Col. Moses Little’s 17th Regiment, and Capt. John Row’s company in Col. Ebenezer Bridge’s 11th Regiment.[1] Both companies have muster rolls and related documents surviving in the Massachusetts State Archives. One of […]
250 years ago today — May 6, 1775 — Julie’s ancestor Samuel Harmon was commissioned as lieutenant of the militia company of the “Second Society” of the town of Suffield in “His Majesty’s Colony of Connceticut in New-England,” by its Governor, Jonathan Trumbull. There is indeed a typo in “Connecticut”. A fortnight after the Lexington […]
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Recent addition to a Charlemagne bookshelf: huge pedigree of all known descendants of Charlemagne through eight generations, roughly to the year 1000. This side, generations 1-5; other side, generations 6-8, so you need two copies if you want to display it! Published in 1967, with 79 pp. of dense and, for some lines, still-definitive annotation, […]
Monday, September 11, 2023
Two adult William Smiths were living in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1775 and 1776. They were perhaps 12 years apart in age, and I have no evidence they were related. One of them—the older one—is my ancestor. By 1775, the older colonial New England habit of distinguishing same-name men by “senior,” “junior,” “3rd,” etc., in order […]
Last night, on the cusp between Father’s Day and Juneteenth, I took a closer look at my male-line ancestors. I knew they had enslaved people in Kentucky, and before that in Virginia. But wills and inventories had told only part of the story. For example, Richard Taylor, who fought in the Revolution, died intestate in […]
Working through footnotes for the current issue of The American Genealogist and stumbled on this rare appearance of heraldry in a probate register: arms of John Agmondisham, Esquire, of Rowbarne, parish of East Horsley, Surrey, in the registers of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury for 1572. [In the new style, this is TNA PROB 11/55/103; […]
Monday, December 10, 2012
In the previous post I figured out that my ancestor, Benjamin Allen of Salisbury and Rehoboth, was actually my neighbor for ten years when I lived by the Newman Cemetery in Rehoboth (now Rumford, RI)—and his gravestone may be extant, though misidentified in the RI Cemetery Database. On a sunny day last month I was […]
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
I have been completely ground to a halt by the Liljenquist collection of Civil War portraits at the Library of Congress. Seven hundred cased photographic portraits of Civil War soldiers and sailors and their families — most of them anonymous — were donated last fall by the Liljenquist family, specifically the two boys, Jason and […]
I just found this story, “An habitation enforced,” in an odd volume of Kipling in the East Washington barn. A young Gilded-Age Baltimore businessman, convalescing after nervous exhaustion, lands with his Connecticut wife for a rest-holiday on a farm in the English countryside. He regains his health as they fall in love with the place, […]
