Solo Scot

My grandmother said her ancestors came from Scotland, but the truth is, most came from England. On the 1870 Canadian Census forms, ones origin (meaning ancestry) was declared, and almost all of my many Nova Scotia families listed themselves as English. One exception was the Ralstons. They were described as Scotch. Perhaps my grandmother was from a matriarchal family, culturally.

Into the Woods

John Woods lived here in Wayland, Massachusetts, but not in this old house. Dated 1761, the “Reverend Josiah Bridge House” was built over a hundred years after John, with his wife Mary and family, moved eight miles west as one of the thirteen founders of the town of Marlborough. Back then, this place was in

Survivor

She looked like Queen Victoria to her grandson (my father), but her life was anything but regal.Teresa O’Day grew up along with the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1860s and ’70s. As the Bridge grew, so did the shadow over her neighborhood in southern Manhattan. She was a daughter of immigrants who survived the Irish Famine, yet

Hill Tavern

A new building is coming to the growing city of Malden, Massachusetts. This is a busy corner and perhaps the oldest in the city. The previous structure, built in 1900 was taken down because it was determined to be unsafe. In 1657, 364 years ago, a tavern stood within a stone’s throw of here, owned

Long Ago

On June 17, 1775, the Three Cranes Tavern of Charlestown, Massachusetts, burned to the ground during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Gone for centuries, it was unearthed in the 1980s in preparation for Boston’s “Big Dig”— the most expensive highway project in American history. This archeological dig found a wealth of pottery, glass, coins, smoking pipes,

Saplings

By the trunk of every family tree are saplings that we suspect are connected somewhere below. James Lynch is one of those saplings. I know a lot about him, but not where we connect. He and his wife, Margaret Collins, were both Irish immigrants—James arriving in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1857. The two married in 1859

The Cooper and His Wife

The oldest structure I found on the shore of York Harbor in Maine was this weather-beaten one, with a sign that said “Fish House 1838.” Believe it or not, my ancestors were here 202 years before then. William Dixon came to America along with 700+ Puritans led by future governor John Winthrop. They came in

Crowded House

Michael Lynch left his family’s tiny patch of rented turf on the shore of Dingle Bay in 1855 with his new bride Mary Fenton, and headed to Connecticut, never to return. (One census states that Mary came a year after her husband.) Michael ended up in Bozrahville, Connecticut, a little mill town on the Yantic

Beach Glass

Peter Etters, my 6x great-grandfather, was raised a Mennonite, knew Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, and lived here in Quincy, Massachusetts—until the trouble started. Like the other subjects of this onsite drawing series, Peter was an immigrant to America. He came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1735 from Bern, Switzerland, with his father, Johannes, and some

Witch Witnesses

I have 2048 9x great-grandfathers. Technically, everyone does. We have two birth parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents…it just keeps doubling. I’d never be able to trace them all, particularly in Ireland where an overwhelming majority of my ancestry comes from. However, for the thin slice of my father’s Colonial predecessors, history has been very well