Museums and historic sites tell the story of your ancestors’ occupations part 1

Samuel Adams Brewery, Boston, Mass.

In 17th century Boston records, William Gibson is often referred to as the cordwainer, apparently so people did not confuse him with another William Gibson whose wife also was named Hannah. But what’s a cordwainer? A shoemaker. If you didn’t know that old-fashioned term, check out the glossary of old occupations and trades.

If you’re wondering what your ancestor did all day and what tools he used, you can learn more at Massachusetts museums centering on occupations. For example, a bunch of local museums have shoemaking displays, but the city of Lynn was particularly known for it, which is why Lynn Heritage State Park includes a shoemaking exhibit. (While you’re there, you may want to explore Lynn’s connections to the world-famous Lydia Pinkham’s medicinal cure-alls.)

Below, you’ll find suggestions of places to visit (or, if you’re not local to Massachusetts, explore online) to learn more about your ancestors’ occupations. Some of these places feature live demonstrations of their craft, while others have tours, displays, classes, and/or hands-on activities. This is not an all-inclusive list; there are many historical societies with great collections and larger community museums (such as Plimouth Plantation and Old Sturbridge Village) that cover multiple occupations in one location as well.

Before you go, contact the museum about hours and admission fees. Some have seasonal schedules and limited hours.

Brewer:

Harpoon Brewery in Boston.

Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston. Founded in 1985 with old family recipes. 

Canal Worker:

Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Uxbridge. 

Candy Maker:

Captain Jackson’s Historic Chocolate Shop at the Clough House in Boston. In the same building as the Printing Offices of Edes and Gill. Demonstrations, history, and samples.

Clockmaker:

Willard House & Clock Museum in North Grafton. Three generations of clockmakers, starting in 1766.

Cordwainers and Other Leather Workers:

Peabody Leather Workers Museum in Peabody. Adjacent to the George Peabody House Museum and Library. At one time, Peabody was known as the Leather Capital of the World. 

Customs Collector:

Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport. Includes displays of famous shipwrecks, model clipper ships, and the history of the Coast Guard. 

Salem Maritime National Historic Site in Salem. Includes the U.S. Custom House where author Nathaniel Hawthorne once worked; replica of the 1797 tall ship Friendship of Salem; the 1675 Narbonne house with artifacts from archeological digs in its backyard; and the 1762 Derby house. 

Farmer:

Appleton Farms in Ipswich. America’s oldest working farm. 

Hadley Farm Museum in Hadley. In the 1782 barn, see vehicles and equipment used from late 18th to early 20th centuries. 

Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm in Newbury. 1690 manor house and hands-on activities.

Firefighter:

Boston Fire Museum in Boston. Also see the links page for other fire museums. 

Furniture builder:

Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture is a web site that brings together almost a dozen cultural institutions. Includes a list of exhibitions and events. 

Glassmaker:

Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich. Watch glassblowing demonstrations. 

Gardener:

Frederick Law Olmstead National Historic Site in Boston. House and office of landscape architect famed for the Emerald Necklace parks.

Lyman Estate Greenhouses in Waltham. Includes some of the oldest surviving greenhouses in the country, with its 1804 grape house, 1820 camellia house, 1840 orchid house, and a 1930 greenhouse.  

Reconstructed forge and mill at Saugus Ironworks by Daderot

Ironmonger:

Saugus Iron Works. Reconstruction of the first successful iron works in the Colonies, in operation from 1646 to 1670, plus the 1680 Iron Works House.

Lighthouse Keeper:

Bass River Lighthouse in West Dennis. Part of the Lighthouse Inn and restaurant.

See also New England Lighthouses: A Virtual Guide web site. 

Lobstermen:

Cape Ann Harbor Tours’ lobstering/harbor tour from Gloucester features a boat tour and lobstering demonstration.

Read Part 2 for more museums and historic sites M through Z.

Surname changes in genealogy

Ellis Island by Ingfbruno via Wikimedia Commons

How many times have you heard the line: "My ancestor had his name changed at Ellis Island"? This is one of the most common myths (along with the three brothers story and the Indian princess story) in genealogy.

Scenario 1

An Irish man came to the United States and “at Ellis Island changed his last name to Green.” The family didn’t know what the original name was or why it may have changed. Tracing the family through the censuses, however, showed the immigrant claimed he arrived in 1888, four years before Ellis Island became an immigration station (1892-1954).

Ellis Island was the most well-known and busiest immigration station in the country. Before that, immigrants arriving in New York were processed at Castle Garden from 1855 to 1890. On the northeast and mid-Atlantic coast, other popular ports were Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston—in addition to Canadian border crossings. Ellis Island, however, marked the 1890 transition when the federal government took control of immigration and inspection.

When people disembarked from a ship, they were greeted by an immigration officer who spoke the same language, or were sent to one who did. That officer had the original ship manifest in his hands and checked off the names—which were written when the people boarded the ship in the first place—as the passengers shuffled through his station. He did not misinterpret what someone said and wrote down something totally different, declaring “from now on your name will be Smith.” Besides the checkmarks, you’ll see the American immigration officer’s notations on the ship manifests, sometimes telling the story of immigrants who were ill upon arrival and ended up in the immigration hospital or the ones who were deported for communicable diseases or political views or mental illness.

It’s quite possible that the Irish immigrant decided to switch his name to Green (and lose his Irish brogue) after seeing anti-Irish signs in windows (“Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply”), which would diminish his prospects. Since he became a naturalized citizen, if the immigrant did change his name shortly after coming to this country, his naturalization papers would show his original name and alias because he needed to prove his arrival date and length of residency. From naturalization papers, obituaries, and possibly the Irish immigrant’s gravestone, the family may be able to gather enough clues to cross the Atlantic to do research in Ireland.

Scenario 2

Other people may have changed their names to sound more American or to break away from the past and start a new life. The surname of one family, who came from Italy in 1904, changed over time. You could see the surname’s evolution when you put records in order by date. Sometime after the deaths of two young daughters in 1908, the family used the new surname. Why it was chosen is a mystery. The name could have stemmed from a city in Italy, but not the one connected to the family’s known origins. But it also could have come from a shortened but jumbled version of the original surname. The spelling of both the immigrant name and the American name was inconsistent in early records, probably because the record taker was not Italian speaking and the family was not yet fluent in English.

At first thought, perhaps the surname changed because the husband was a notorious adulterer. (It was even a story in the local newspaper!) But that didn’t explain why his brother and family, who arrived in 1910, changed their surname too. Although it’s a stereotype, the name change could be an attempt to hide from the criminal element in the States or to cover up the family background in the mother country. 

Scenario 3

A first-generation American officially changed his surname several years after his marriage in the 1930s. With almost a quarter of the population from Portugal or the Azores, his city had so many families using the same Portuguese surname that they had aliases or descriptions added to their names to tell them apart. He adopted the surname of the family he lived with, which people already used as his alias. His name change was recorded in the court house.

Be wary of family stories that start with a name change at Ellis Island, but dig deep and you may be able to uncover whether and why a surname was changed.

Finding the original or official vital records in Massachusetts

courtesy of National Archives

Vital records are often considered original sources for the events they represent, but that doesn’t mean the records themselves are truly the original.

Before Massachusetts changed over to preprinted, individual forms for each person, town clerks used large, bound ledger books for vital records. In addition to the event date, there’s another column specifically for the date of record or when the entry was submitted by the informant (clergy, medical doctor, justice of the peace, family member, etc.). You may find the event dates are mixed up, with March following June, to account for the different sources.

The town clerk is not the witness to an event, just the recorder. It’s the doctor or clergy who made weekly, monthly, or annual visits to the town clerk, providing information on who was born, married, or died. It could be data from scraps of paper in an itinerant preacher’s pockets or mildew-stained ledger books that had been used for decades, possibly gnawed on by a church mouse. Words can smudge, rips and tears happen. Let’s also not forget that events sometimes were written hours or days afterwards, when one’s memory may be slightly askew, especially if the informant didn’t know the family well. For instance, the groom’s name could be mistaken for his father’s or the birth date may mistakenly fall on one side of midnight, instead of the other.

You may be able to track down those original records from doctors and clergy, so make sure you take note of the informant’s name and address. But remember, not everyone had record-keeping skills like midwife Martha Ballard (1735-1812) of Massachusetts and Maine, who recorded 816 deliveries in 27 years in her diary.

Town and State Records

Before digital access, the Vital Records to 1850 series, by the New England Historic Genealogical Society and others, was one of the most widely used sources in Massachusetts. You’ll find the series referenced in many genealogy books and journals as well as DAR applications. These are transcriptions of town records—including church, cemetery, and family records such as Bibles—usually listed alphabetically by surname (or, in some cases, by multiple spellings of the same/similar name), not date. John Slaughter’s web site includes records from these so-called “tan books.” Not all towns and cities in Massachusetts were covered. If you had relatives from the Berkshires, luckily Blanche C. Stockwell transcribed records from several towns and deposited her manuscripts at the Berkshire Athenaeum. Her transcriptions for Sheffield and a few other towns are available online.

Jay and Delene Holbrook filmed records from 315 towns and cities in Massachusetts, now available on subscription site Ancestry.com as “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988.” FamilySearch.org has images of “Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Towns Records, 1579-2001,” with some indexes already available.

Starting in 1841, Massachusetts required town clerks to copy their birth, marriage, and records and send them to the state. The town clerk’s copy is considered the original, and it sometimes has more details than the state version, but the most widely available records tend to be the state’s version (except as noted above in Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org collections). It’s often difficult to tell the two versions apart. No doubt the state requirement was much easier after the invention of the mimeograph, carbon paper, photocopiers, and scanners.

When looking at records online, pay attention to the source, whether it’s from the town/city or state. If you can’t read a record or if you want to verify its accuracy, contact the town clerk.

Records of Today

If you’ve been to a town clerk for a Massachusetts marriage license, you already know the prospective bride and groom must show up at the town hall together, with their birth certificates, and each fills out separate paperwork. The couple then brings the clerk-issued license to wed to the clergy or justice of the peace, which the officiator signs and returns to the town clerk after the ceremony. (The bride and groom also may sign the church ledger and receive a wedding certificate from clergy. Another resource to check!) Afterwards, the couple orders a copy of their official marriage certificate.

For births, the mother or the parents fill out a form, then the hospital inputs the data using Electronic Birth Certificate software. For deaths, the informant fills out the form, which is entered onto the official form, before being signed by the doctor. 

Birth, marriage, and death records today are submitted to the town or city in which the event occurred, and sometimes to the place where a person lives/lived, as well as to the state. Since the records are done electronically, there’s no variation among the town and state versions. The bonus, of course, is that the documents are perfectly legible.

Collateral genealogy: A case study

Tucked away in an 1867 Blackfriars edition of Shakespeare’s complete works, I discovered an old photograph of a man holding a young child. The book’s provenance, the photo’s time period, and the man’s cheekbones suggest that he could be grand-uncle John. Since John died in 1941, my aunt didn’t remember anything about him except that he drowned. Her cousin Florence’s neatly drawn family chart, however, indicated that John had married Mae and had a son William who died as an infant.

Over the years I have pieced together some of John’s life, except his marriage. Mae was only a name, no details, not even dates. I decided to spend a few hours online, using Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, to see how much I could learn about grand-uncle John’s mysterious wife and marriage.

The first step was to find a marriage certificate at FamilySearch.org. In 1912, a few days shy of his 24th birthday, John married 17-year-old “Mary” in a Catholic church in his hometown. With her parents’ full names and her approximate birth year, I tried to find Mary’s birth certificate, but had no luck. The details were not specific enough, since I didn’t know where she was born. But I did find her parents’ marriage record in Boston, showing John S. was from western Massachusetts while Bridget was an immigrant from Ireland. Could it be the same family?

Then I found an Ancestry.com Member Tree with a “Mary Agnes” born in 1895 to a John and Bridget. Mary Agnes and her siblings have no data beyond the 1900 and 1910 census—except for the youngest sister who marries into the main branch of the poster’s family tree. The mother, Bridget, didn’t have a maiden name in the tree, but the attached 1910 census, two years before John and Mae marry, is in the correct town. I think I have a match.

With the first flush of success, I excitedly send an email to the tree poster, asking if she has more details on Mary Agnes. I mention that I think she married my grand-uncle. But the poster only says, “No, sorry I don’t. Good luck.”

Making Sense of the Census

I follow my hunch that Mae and Mary Agnes are one and the same, figuring I would track down the clues from Mary Agnes’ family in the censuses until either the data proved or disproved that she married my John. 

The 1900 census shows Mary Agnes’ father John was born in Massachusetts, her mother Bridget in Ireland, agreeing with the Boston marriage certificate. Her three older brothers were born in Rhode Island, while Mary Agnes and her younger sister were born in Connecticut. Since the 1900 census asked for month and year of birth, I know Mary Agnes was born in December of 1895. Although the earliest vital records for Connecticut start in the 1630s, statewide registration started in 1897 (two years after Mary Agnes’ birth) and was not fully implemented until 1915. It’s possible that Mary Agnes and her younger sister were born in the same Connecticut town where they are listed in the 1900 census.

By 1910, Mary Agnes is 15 and living in the same New Jersey neighborhood where she’ll marry her future husband two years later. By 1920, I don’t find John and Mae in the census. (My family, I already know, evaded the census taker that year. I have searched page by page and tried all sorts of name configurations—but only John’s married sister shows up.) In the 1930 census, John is living with his parents, married but with no wife listed in the household. At this point, I’m suspecting cousin Florence’s inkling of a divorce in the family may be correct.

Tracking the Collateral Lines

Since I couldn’t find Mary Agnes in the 1920 and 1930 censuses, I started to track down her siblings, one by one. From the 1900 census, I knew the three older brothers’ birth months and years, and all three were born in Rhode Island. It wasn’t difficult finding their draft registration cards—all were born in Pawtucket, but now I had street addresses and occupations.

At Ancestry.com, I do a general search on oldest brother John, and find a Michigan death and burial index that not only matches his birth date but agrees with the parents’ names on Mary’s 1912 marriage certificate. I trace him through the censuses, unsuccessfully search for a marriage or obituary, and find no sign of a sister Mary.

So I continue with the next brother. I find Thomas and his wife, in Pennsylvania, living with his widowed mother Bridget and sister “May,” age 24, single (and using maiden name) in the 1920 census. By 1930, Bridget is living with her third son Thomas in the same town where John and Mae married, but Mae is missing.

Widening the Search

Using her birth year, birth place, and parents’ names in the Ancestry.com search engine, I come across a Mary Agnes who died in 1982 in California. Could it be my John’s wife remarried? I couldn’t find an obituary and I only had the city and a new last name as found on the California Death Indexes and Social Security Death Indexes. But it was worth investigating.

On the 1940 California census, I found a Mary Agnes with her husband Frank, two sons, and Irish-born mother Bridget—all the details fit, including her 1895 birth in Connecticut. But here was the clincher: Mary and her family lived in Long Beach in 1935, but her mother Bridget lived in New Jersey in 1935, in the same town where daughter Mae married my John 23 years before.

Narrowing a Time Frame

Not surprisingly, I didn’t find a divorce record for John and Mae online. Nor did I find a marriage record for Mae and her second husband Frank. Checking the city directories, published every two years, I followed both John and Mae’s families from 1911 to 1931. In 1917, “Mrs. John” is listed separately from John, who lived a few blocks away. In the 1919 directory, his mother-in-law “Bridget, wid[ow of] John” removed to another city 80 miles away, probably taking Mae with her. Based on the 1940 census, Frank and Mary Agnes’ son was born in 1932 in the same state where Mae lived with her brother in 1920. So she probably didn’t return to the old neighborhood. Mae packed up her bags and headed west.

And as for baby William in cousin Florence’s family tree? Well, there’s only so much research you can do online before needing to visit record repositories and relatives.

For privacy reasons, no surnames were used in this case study. All of the data mentioned has been cited in my database. Ancestry.com is a subscription-based web site while FamilySearch.org offers free access to genealogy records.

Sharing your family health history at the doctor’s office

Yassine Mrabet, Wikimedia Commons under public domain

When you’re collecting your genealogy information, it’s also important to learn your family’s health histories. Your doctor can use that data to uncover hereditary health problems and how they may affect you and your family.

To start, you want to create health portraits for yourself, your children, siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Some of the basic data you should collect include: ethnic and racial background; major illnesses and chronic health problems; surgeries and hospitalizations; medications, immunizations; lifestyle habits (diet, weight, exercise, smoking and other addictions); emotional and behavioral problems; and cause of death. It’s also important to add birth and death dates as well as age at onset or diagnosis for each health event.

Some genealogy software programs track medical conditions and DNA results, such as Legacy Family Tree, RootsMagic, and Family Tree Maker. In addition, you can use:

• Cleveland Clinic’s Health & Your Family Tree, a simple form to fill out for members of your family
• The Surgeon General’s My Family Health Portrait tool
• Genetic Alliance’s Does It Run In the Family tool
• GenoPro, a family tree software program that specializes in medical history and genograms. Instead of basic pedigree charts, GenoPro creates genograms, with detailed health histories, emotional relationships, social relationships, even household configurations. For fun, check out Harry Potter’s tree, based on the J.K. Rowling book series.

Combining genealogy with genetic research

Courtesy of Jcmorin

Sitting down with a genetic counselor is much like speaking to a genealogist with a medical degree. After all, a genetic counselor works  with charts that resemble pedigrees and family trees, though without names, just squares for males and circles for females, with lines connecting relationships. Genetic counselors can help map out the likelihood of being a carrier or being infected by certain inherited traits and diseases.

In much the same way, DNA research has shown specific markers carry a higher probability of certain inherited diseases. For example, actress Angelina Jolie learned she had the BRCA1 gene, making her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Coupled with her family’s history of cancer, Jolie opted for a preventive double mastectomy. (See "My Medical Choice," New York Times, 14 May 2013.)

In another case, Janine Jagger, Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia, had several years of abdominal pain and fevers with no known cause. Another doctor suggested she could have familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), which is typically found in people of Middle Eastern descent—though none appear on Jagger's known family tree. Oddly enough, she discovered in an old newspaper that one of her ancestors, Captain William Smith Young (b. 1829), was "attacked with fever and ague to which he is subject." He was a steamboat captain of the ill-fated Narragansett, which hit another steamboat in 1880. The crash, which made front-page news across the country, caused the deaths of 50 passengers. During the formal inquiry, the captain's testimony was reported verbatim in the New York Times, including the passage that he was unable to attend a court appearance due to symptoms similar to Jagger's. Since finding the newspaper account, she has connected to other Young descendants and found a pattern of FMF. (See "All I Want for Ramadan Is My Own Mutation," Huffington Post, 8 November 2013.)

So, when you’re typing data into your genealogy database, don’t overlook the medical fields such as cause of death, hospitalization, or illness. Seeing patterns recorded in death certificates, medical reports, and obituaries or having first-hand knowledge or hearing family stories of a medical nature may increase your awareness of risk factors and prevention for possible diseases, such as certain cancers, heart disease, substance abuse, diabetes, and depression.

You may not need a genetic counselor, but if you're like me, you'll bring your family tree charts to your doctor to discuss your deep medical history. Genealogy not only keeps your mind busy, it can help you live longer and better.

Finding romance in genealogy

Do you know your parents’ or grandparents’ love story? How they met and where and when? Did they ever take you on side trips to show you the memorable places and events in their lives, such as where they went on a first date, where they became engaged, where they were married, where they first lived as newlyweds?

To me, it’s a mystery how my parents met, since my father was a few years older and they attended high schools in different towns. Although I don’t know the stories, I have snapshots and memorabilia from those early days, lovingly placed in a scrapbook my mother made. The Broadway playbills, the cocktail napkins from jazz clubs, the movie tickets, even a bar of soap from their honeymoon hotel—all of these cherished items create almost a timeline of their first years together. Flipping through the pages gives me a totally romantic, even glamorous vision of their lives, before children came into the picture.

Maybe you don’t have a scrapbook that tells the story. But if you cannot ask the actual couple—or the people who knew them—look for other sources. Maybe you’ll find a stack of Valentine’s Day, holiday, anniversary, or birthday cards wrapped in a ribbon. Or, better yet, old letters. John Adams (1735-1826) and his wife Abigail (Smith) Adams (1744-1818) wrote more than a thousand letters to each other. You can read them on the Massachusetts Historical Society web site. Even if you’re not related to the president’s family, you can glean much about family life, politics, history, and amour of the times.

If you or your relatives don’t possess the actual pages, you can look for letters, day books, journals, diaries, postcards, photographs, ephemera—even oral histories—at libraries, historical societies, museums, private collections, and even eBay.

Sometimes, romantic or familial thoughts come when envelopes and stationary are not available. One of my collateral great greats wrote a short family history in his old account book, the text of which appeared in the History of the Town of New Marlborough, Massachusetts by Harry D. Sisson (1937). Apparently, in 1859 his aunt was visiting from Michigan and Noah Gibson wanted to scribble her stories somewhere handy before he forgot. Unfortunately, Aunt Alice gave a romantic twist to the family history, turning my 6th great grandfather into an immigrant sea captain (two things he was not) and his son into a minuteman tragically dying at the Battle of Lexington (he died a few years earlier, in 1757 to be exact).

Don’t overlook the possibility that someone published something your ancestors wrote. For instance, when Judge Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) wrote in his diaries, he had no idea people would be reading them hundreds of years later. His writings say much about his love for his family and the little details that made up their everyday life. As a widower, he even shared in his diary his attempts to woo a lady—and her eventual rejection.

People don’t have to be famous to be published either. Soldiers from Massachusetts who fought in the Civil War often had their letters to parents, siblings, sweethearts, and wives published in the local newspaper, The Quincy Patriot. Numerous soldier letters have been printed or are available online.

Speaking of newspapers, you may find a treasure trove of love stories, from golden anniversary articles, mentions in the local gossip column, and obituaries to letters, poetry, and stories. And if you descend from high school or college sweethearts, look for yearbooks and alumni publications.