This week’s theme is Father’s Day. My father was a contrarian. He always loved the underdog best and often took the less popular side of an argument. One of his more interesting assertions was that if he had lived during the American Revolution, he would have been a Loyalist instead of fighting for the Revolution….
The theme for the 23rd week was “Going to the Chapel.” I have a copy of an interesting document for Frederick Hagell and Elizabeth Eleanor Parsley from their parish church in Canterbury, England. It lists their banns of marriage. For three Sundays in 1839 they had to announce their intention to marry in case there…
I’m still catching up from my move, so this and the next post will be short. The 22nd theme was “So Far Away.” I thought of an ancestor on my father’s side whose details still need some fleshing out. I wonder where her grave was located; close to family or far away from where her…
Theme is Military. Today is Memorial Day, made official in 1868 after the Civil War. I’ve known about two ancestors who fought for the Union for a while now; Solomon Gleason Barber, my paternal grandfather’s grandfather and Ora Butler Douglas, a 3rd great-uncle on my maternal side. Though some of my paternal grandfather’s ancestors moved…
The theme for week 20 was “language.” I’m in the middle of packing for a move, so this post will be short. Do you notice anything different about Aeltje van Couwenhoven’s headstone? It was written in Dutch, not English. Quite a few people in the Dutch community at that time still spoke Dutch as a…
From London to Houston The above photo was taken sometime in 1916, in Houston, Texas. The couple sitting in the center are my 2nd great-grandparents Walter and Jane Ellen (nee Hagell) Avenell. The theme this week is Mother’s Day, and Jane Ellen is the mother of Bertrand (top left), Eleanor (next to Bertrand) and Walter…
There was a news update this week about the Brinckerhoff Cemetery where my ancestor Aeltje van Cowenhoven Brinckerhoff was buried. The Friends of Brinckerhoff Colonial Cemetery, a nonprofit organization, just signed a contract to purchase the landmarked site.
This week’s theme is “Close Up.” When I first started delving into the Dutch history of New York City, I started to notice people in databases like Ancestry having birth places or death places in Long Island City, a neighborhood of the borough of Queens. That is not very far from the neighborhood I live…
One of the great things about the 52 Ancestors exercise is that it points out the gaps in my family history as well as the more researched parts. As this week’s theme is cemeteries, I will write about a fairly well-researched ancestor and a cemetery I have yet to visit. Philander Seward was born to…
This week’s theme (really last week’s theme) was “Storms.” I don’t have any family stories of storms at this time, though if I were to sit down with my ancestor Benjamin Morse Melcher’s ship log on microfilm, I’d probably find some mentioned. Instead, I’m going to write about a storm that came up in my…