(My)Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Left: Primrose Fitzgerald and Christine  Right: Barbara Walsh and Duncan

On New Year's Eve 1952 a future genealogist was born. Duncan was about two weeks older and never let me forget it. The picture was taken about a month later, but  I think this was about as close to a "newborn" picture as you might have gotten back then. Oddly I just noticed the picture on the wall. It's a repro of a Wanda Gag lithograph chock-a-block full of cats.  The print hangs in my house to this day. My future as an ailurophile was portended.

Thankfully my mother was a packrat. I found this tidbit as well:

The day I was born just happened to be the birthday of my grandfather Harry W. Rogers, who had passed away the previous February. Another interesting coincidence I think. A New Year's Eve birthday...well any holiday birthday...is not ideal in the mind of a young child. Today I look at it as a fresh start in every way for the new year. Happy New Years!

Christmas Traditions

Chris in 1954- Amesbury, Massachusetts

Every family passes along those Christmas traditions- open the gifts on Christmas Eve, open the gifts on Christmas Day, white elephants, gift swaps, name pulls.... and it goes on and on. But Christmas food traditions are pretty interesting. In my mother's family it was always hot oyster stew on Christmas Eve. This came from her father's side of the family and I began to wonder why.

After a thorough search of the internet I had no clear answers and apparently lots of people wondered the same thing. I found the question asked and answered in a million different ways. Some said it comes from the Feast of Seven Fishes where Catholics avoided meat on certain feast days. Somehow in Anglo-Protestant America this origin became quietly obscured. Some say the Irish brought it with them substituting oysters for the traditional ling fish. Others had the origins in Germany. My mother's family was not Catholic or Irish or German. They were Yankee, Protestant and went back in New England to coastal Maine and Cape Cod. Chances are good it was a practical decision. Oysters were cheap and plentiful. Christmas, the next day, was an occasion for a big holiday meal. It would make sense to have the somewhat lighter meal of stew the night before. My family was in good company. In the December 23, 1931 edition of the Fitchburg Sentinel I found this:

Brockelmans was a popular Fitchburg grocery vendor of the time and this was a thinly disguised advertisement. 39¢ a pint is a great price for New England oysters. I paid considerably more for mine.

One thing I did find in my search is that while oyster stew was a tradition in many families all over the country, the commenters were evenly divided between the oyster lovers and the oyster haters. After years of oyster stew, the tradition quietly died among the haters and new food traditions were born. My brother is one of the haters. I however, will make my stew, thinking of my mom as I do and upholding the family tradition for just a little bit longer.

What's in a Name?

Primrose Rogers at about 4

I've been thinking a lot about family names. Not the last names so much, but the first names.
You see, my mother's name was Primrose Rogers and her mother was Primrose Victoria Tapply.
My joke has always been "there but for the grace of God".......My mother spent a lot of years
hating and resenting her name, but in the last years of her life she embraced it. I was surprised a bit because I had heard so many complaints over the years.

There is a naming tradition in our family that has come down several generations: my great great
grandfather was Winslow Brainard Rogers. Nowadays naming in honor of someone is considered a curse in some circles, but I think it's very nice. Thus we have:

Now no one could tell me where the names Winslow or Brainard came from. I have found no evidence of anyone further back in the tree with that name, but Winslow Brainard died in the American Civil War and now we have several generations in memory of him and his family.

There are a lot of "names in honor of" in my tree, but those aren't the names that fascinate me. My grandmother's family was late Victorian/early Edwardian so Primrose and her sisters Mabel, Ethyl and Beatrice make perfect sense and yet they sound so strange to modern ears. I once heard this type of name referred to as "heavily embroidered" and I would say that is accurate. I've written about the mystery of Cassandria Hooper Harrington, another interesting name. But I have Sophronia Richardson Smith on the other side of the tree. You may not realize it, but if you read The Five Little Peppers  you've heard this name. Remember Phronsie? And one of Sophronia's  brothers-in-law was Greenleaf Smith. Wow! That's an interesting choice. The mid-nineteenth century is full of Abigails and Lavinias and Letitias and Claras. Names went in and out of style then, just as they do now.

Sadly the Irish side sounds very Catholic and pretty traditional...at least what I've found so far. I would love to turn up a good Sinead or Fintan, but that seems unlikely.

Of course the Colonial ancestors turned up some of the names one might expect...poor Thankful Ham.  I also found another interesting naming tradition which you can read about here. One of my ancestors was named Benoni Eaton Knapp. This intrigued me. I found out that the name Benoni was given to babies born "under unfortunate circumstances" such as the death of the mother, the father predeceasing the child, or an illegitimate child. The name literally means "Alas, my poor son". Kind of a sad thing to visit on a child and so far I have not discovered how this poor man was "unfortunate".

I think names are an important consideration when doing genealogy. They can give you important clues about family relationships. What stories are waiting to be told?

The Mysterious Andrew Fitzgerald

I know very little about my father's side of the family. I know even less about his father's side of the family. When I began I knew that someone on that side was possibly named Andrew and he married Catherine. She was a Fitzgerald as well. The census records bore this out. I found Andrew, Catherine, my grandfather John J. and his siblings. I kept working back and back through the records trying to piece that side of the family together. I found what I was sure was an early census, a marriage record and then....a passenger list. But the curious thing was that on every document I found a different birth date for Andrew Senior....different ages. It was all very curious.

My father never knew much about the family. Almost nothing about his father's family. His cousin Catherine knew a little bit, but she was never close to my father. And he said the family was always "secretive" and closed-mouthed. My dad was an only child and his closest cousins were on his mother's side. A dead end.

I decided to try something that was suggested on Ancestry and make a table with all the pertinent information. Maybe my error would reveal itself.

From this I would guess that the passenger I found was the wrong Andrew. I remember seeing an immigration certificate in the family papers that gave 1850 as the year he arrived. But this can't be him.

I suspect that the 1870 census was possibly a mistake by the census-taker or a lie. But why? And the birthdates are all over the place. I looked carefully at each record. In each I found Andrew Fitzgerald and his wife Catherine, an address in Charlestown (in later years Charles River Avenue) and his profession stated as laborer or teamster. My guess is that he worked on the docks as a driver.

If Andrew was born in 1814 or 1815, he would have been 82 when he died. If he were born in 1834 he would be in his 60's. Certainly whoever certified his death would have known the difference. I can understand why an immigrant would make himself older...but almost 20 years older?

So I'm no closer to an answer, but at least I have a timeline for his life. I'm hoping someone out there may have an suggestion. It's all very mysterious....

Veterans Day

my dad-possibly somewhere in England

Today, in honor of Veterans Day, I want to spend a moment on just a few of the veterans in my tree.
As I began my research I knew about my dad and my Civil War ancestor. I found many, many more.
So here's a salute to just a few:
John J Fitzgerald -World War II
Brainard Winslow Rogers- Korean War
William Frederick Smith- Spanish American War
Winslow Brainard Rogers- American Civil War
Isaac E Johnson- American Civil War
Aaron Rogers-Revolutionary War
A nation's gratitude to them all....and mine as well.

Edward Winslow Rogers-The Story of the Railroad Men

On the left you have Eugene Harrington Rogers. At the time this story begins, he had lived in Fitchburg, Massachusetts for some years, was working as a sign and artistic painter and living on Chestnut Street. On the right is my great grandfather Edward Winslow Rogers. I made a surprising discovery, which has lead to what I think is a romantic tale and the merging of two old families.

 I have relished a great resource on Ancestry in the local and city directories. Some of these go back a long way, some list occupation and some will list a death date. That was how I tracked down a date for my grandfather Fitzgerald. But I was looking at the Fitchburg Directory for 1891. Most unexpectedly I found this

So this is the first listing of Edward in Fitchburg, where he had moved from Holden to be near his brother. I knew OCRR meant railroad....but which one? That lead me to the story of the Old Colony railroad. The Old Colony Railroad served lower Massachusetts, the Cape and parts of Rhode Island. They ran large steam trains and I found a good example.

Old Colony did very well for a time, carrying people to the shore at a time when few people might have had an automobile. As the line prospered, they added a northern spur which ran to Fitchburg.

Courtesy of the OCRR museum

Edward became a railroad fireman, boarded on Day Street which was walking distance to the wonderful old Union Depot in downtown Fitchburg.

Sadly that station was torn down in the sixties. Several rail lines ran out of the station including the Fitchburg Railroad. I knew that my great grandfather Smith had worked for the Fitchburg Railroad, but I never knew that "Ned" had been a railroad man as well. So I went back to the directories to be sure.

And there was George F Smith, a railroad engineer for the Fitchburg Railroad, living on Goodrich Street with his grown daughter boarding in his home. My imagination began to work. George had contact with the other engineers and firemen who came through the station. Here is this newcomer to town, Ned Rogers, a lonely boarder and George invites him home to Sunday dinner. At the dinner table are his three lovely daughters, including his eldest, Cora. Now maybe it didn't happen quite that way, but I'd like to think that I've discovered the story of the meeting of Cora Elizabeth Smith  and Edward Winslow Rogers, my great grandparents. They were married in 1893.

Rebecca Shelley Chamberlain

Not so very long ago, a woman in her sixties, a woman who seemed overfond of her cat and most certainly a woman alone would have been the subject of local gossip. Rebecca Chamberlain was in her sixties, respectable, married and the mother of 12 living children. She lived in Billerica, Massachusetts with her husband William. How she got caught up the hysteria is not known. In fact, not much is known about Rebecca beyond these basic facts.  She was arrested on the charge of "mischief"and was jailed in Cambridge. Later accounts state that she was accused of witchcraft- "mischief" was the common euphemism for that charge. Rebecca, my ninth great grandmother, died in jail in September 1692 before a trial could be held.  On this day, when modern mischief has an entirely different meaning, it's good to reflect a moment on how far we've come.

Leaf Twig and Stem is a Genealogy Gem!

One of the first things I did when I began working on my family tree was looking around for advice and help from other family genealogists. I read a lot of blogs, I visited a lot of pages and I checked a few books out of the library. It was overwhelming. About the same time I began going to the gym every day and I needed something to fill that time on the cardio equipment. Podcasts became my go-to entertainment. Almost immediately I discovered The Family History Podcast-Genealogy Made Easy. This took me step by step through some of the processes I had found confusing. I worked my way back through all the episodes and then I discovered Lisa Louise Cooke's newer podcast: Genealogy Gems. Lisa has recently really embraced all sorts of technology, so this was a great new find. When Lisa did a three-part series on genealogy bloggers I was interested and intrigued with the idea of carrying my research one step further-but not totally convinced. Blogging is work, right? But as I listened to other bloggers who wrote in to tell her of their blogging success, I began to think about this more seriously. And that is really how this blog was born.

Lisa put out a call to genealogy bloggers and I responded. This month she featured some of those emails and blog links on her latest podcast. Leaf Twig and Stem was included. You can listen to the podcast here. I was thrilled to be included and happy to be able to report to her that one of my blogging goals had already been met; one of the GeneaBloggers is a cousin through two different family lines. So I am reaching those missing family branches!

If you want to check out the original Family History podcast series, Lisa had made it available here.
Thanks for the mention, Lisa.

Another Mappy Monday- Finding the Tapplys in 1915

I enlarged this map as far as Blogger would allow, but this reproduction of the panoramic view of Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1915 hardly does the full map justice. I found this gem in the map collection site for the Library of Congress. You can go here and see if there is a panoramic view of the place your ancestor lived.  It is a wonderful collection.

I spent a long time zooming in on various parts of this map to see what I could recognize. Of course
I spotted the top of Main Street and the familiar church building right away.

The drawing of the buildings is really charming and it appears that there was a streetcar running up and down Main Street in those days. The little vignettes around the border of the map are of various important buildings and businesses in Fitchburg. Of course the reason I picked the map from 1915 was that Charles Tapply and his family were living in Fitchburg having moved there from Newton. A look at an old city directory gave me a listing for the family.

My aunt Bea was working as a stenographer, my great grandfather was a grocer and Aunt Mabel was living at home. This is the 88 Winter Street house that my grandmother recalled from her girlhood. A quick zoom on the map shows about where that would be.

The red arrow points to the corner of Winter and Boutelle Streets, right about where number 88 would be. Uncle Charlie was working as a teamster and living nearby on Pacific Street.

The area where my grandmother lived when I knew her is on the far left of the big map and is just shown as woods. Fitchburg was still a growing city in 1915.

Now and Then in Holden, Massachusetts

I'm always on the lookout for interesting photos that relate to the family. Today I was noodling around
and ended up on the website of the Holden Historical Society in Holden, Massachusetts. It was
interesting because the photo was taken at the intersection of Main Street and Boyden Road. The Rogers family homestead, where members of the Rogers family lived for over 100 years, is just down the street about half a block.

Courtesy of the Holden Historical Society

You are looking down Main and you can see Boyden just to the right. The small cape style building on

the right was a school building known as Center School. It was built in 1820 to replace an earlier building, but this photo dates from 1880-1900.  I imagine members of the family went to school in that building. Amazing to see how rural Holden was even then!

So of course I had to go to Google street view and see what it looked like today. That little white building in the center of the picture is that same one-room schoolhouse which is now a hair salon. And you can see Boyden Road on the right. Main Street is a busy road these days, but Holden is still a pretty, green little suburb.

Sophronia Richardson Smith

Or Genealogical Coincidence....

South Russell Street

Yesterday I was exploring the recently indexed records that have been added to FamilySearch and of course that led down another rabbit hole. Before I knew it I was exploring the unindexed records (which you have to browse) using dates from my tree to narrow the search. I found the death record, or I should say the coroner's report, for my 2X great grandmother Sophronia Richardson Smith. Sophronia came from Litchfield, Maine, married Reuben Lowell Smith and raised their family in the area around Boston. They lived in Waltham, Groton, Concord, and Littleton. What caught my attention was the address on this record:

44 South Russell Street is an area on what's called the "back side" of Beacon Hill. The large houses were broken up into small apartments. So in 1894, at the time of her death, Sophronia was living in an apartment in that neighborhood. Maybe with one of her children. But that address seemed awfully familiar. So I did some poking in my records and found this:

This record is from the City Directory files on Ancestry. This is the 1948 directory from several pages

of Rogers living in Boston. In 1948, my mom Primrose Rogers, had left her hometown of Fitchburg and was a secretary living in Boston at 54 South Russell in a little apartment. As a child I heard many stories about her life in Boston at this time just before she married my dad.

Sophronia's great grandchild ended up living just a block away from her last home. Not a wild coincidence, but considering the size of the city of Boston??  I thought it was interesting.