If you have researched families in 17th and 18th century New England, you have probably learned that the label “junior,” when applied to a name, does not have the same meaning it does today. Back then, “junior” signified that there was another, older person of that name, in the same community. Unlike today, that older [...]
I came across the following while researching a line for a client. Although this particular document did not prove relevant to my research, I thought it was worth sharing with my readers. The document I examined is a typed copy of an original that describes the inter-generational custody, over eight generations, of a family heirloom, [...]
This month is the 250th birthday of John Quincy Adams, as Danielle Cournoyer reminds us on the Vita Brevis blog. This reminds me of my own little JQA story, from a few years ago, a timely illustration of some of the “gotchas” you can face when using transcriptions. I was researching a line in my [...]
