A package arrived in the mail last month from the Cogswell Family Association, along with a very nice letter and a copy of their latest newsletter. This journal is published three times a year, and it was filled with news, stories, photos and histories. I help edit the New Hampshire Mayflower Society newsletter, but our little journal is not much compared to this valuable little gem. Malcolm Cogswell sent me this nice package; he is the editor of the newsletter. He had read my blog posting in November about the shipwreck of the “Angel Gabriel” and thus sent me the journal, and some more information about the shipwreck, as well as an invitation by the Cogswell Family Historian to add my lineage to their data base.
I thought this was not only an extremely kind gesture, but it was also evidence of the power of blogging about genealogy. Previously I had relied on sending snail mail or email to the folks who had genealogical websites, or perhaps posting information and brickwall conundrums on genealogical bulletin boards. I usually found distant cousin relationships, good clues to expand the family tree, and sometimes brickwall breakthroughs- but they often took many months or sometimes many years to receive answers. This is one of the fastest replies I have ever had to good genealogical information!
Malcolm sent me the April 2008 issue, which had some updated information on the shipwreck of the “Angel Gabriel” in Pemaquid, Maine on August 15, 1635. The hurricane which caused the disaster is thought to be a strong Category 4 hurricane, according to a recent analysis by the Atmospheric Oceanic Meteorological Laboratory. It also caused severe damage at Plymouth (houses blown down), and at Dorchester (from accounts by John Winthrop). It was the same storm that sank the “Watch and Wait” and shipwrecked Anthony Thacher and his wife on the island off Gloucester still known today as Thacher’s Island. It was a storm that touched the lives of many New Englanders, from Massachusetts to Maine.
See my blog about the shipwreck here.
Thanks to Malcolm Cogswell and the Cogswell Family Association!
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Copyright 2009, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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