While researching some of my husband’s Kittitian ancestors who settled in Harlem in the early 1900s, I have been coming across lots of information about immigrants from the West Indies, and their influence on the Harlem Renaissance period of the 1920s. Escaping the decline of the sugar industry and looking…
Published November 29, 2014
I just learned that there was a custom in the US of dressing up in costumes on Thanksgiving. This practice seems to have been popular in some areas of the country from the 19th century until the early 1950s. This solves a mystery about a photo of my grandparents, labeled…
Published November 24, 2014
Researching my husband’s maternal grandfather’s British tree was a daunting task. Due in part to his non-combat death during World War II, I had almost no information to go on – just his name and two or three random facts. One of these random facts eventually opened up a wonderful,…
Published November 1, 2014
I’m having trouble finding much information about my great grandmother Catherine. She died young in 1913, at age 42, and there isn’t a long life’s worth of documentation on her. Catherine Agnes was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1861, of Irish parents. Her surname shows up sometimes as McElmeel, McElmee,…
Published October 26, 2014
My husband’s paternal family tree comes from St. Kitts, a beautiful island in the Caribbean that was a British territory until its independence in 1983. His Kittitian ancestors are an interesting blend of British, French, African, and Madeiran lines. The Madeirans came to St. Kitts and Nevis in the mid-1800s,…
Published October 2, 2014
My mother’s family tree is composed primarily of German, English, and Scotch Irish ancestors who came to the US as far back as the 1600s. They eventually settled in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, but the earliest immigrants among them started out in New England and Long Island. After reading…
Read More The Townsends of Oyster Bay and Washington’s spy ring
Published September 29, 2014
On my Brewster/Betterton family tree, there is a large branch of Dutch and English ancestors who lived in the area of Albany, NY and the Hudson River valley. One such ancestor was Peter (Pieter) Mees Hogeboom. He was a Dutch merchant and landowner who lived during the 18th century in…
Published September 24, 2014
I have been looking a lot lately at my husband’s ancestors from Northern Ireland, specifically the Macauleys from County Antrim and County Down. In the late 1800s, this Irish Catholic family owned a linen manufacturing business in Belfast, called Hugh Macauley & Sons. How they rose economically to become mill…