Wednesday, July 29, 2026

"Our Lady Beneath the Chain" for Weathervane Wednesday

 Today's weathervane was photographed in Prague, Hungary.





This Maltese Cross weathervane was photographed at the Our Lady Beneath the Chain church in the Malá Strana neighborhood of Prague in Hungary.  It is very close to the Charles Bridge on Lazenska Street, and around the corner from the John Lennon Wall.  This church was built betweeen 1158 and 1182 and was the headquarters for the Sorvereign Military Order of Malta.  So the Maltese Cross weathervane is very appropriate.

This church got it's strange name for the chain that was placed across the Vltava River (the Moldau) and boats had to pay a toll to the Knights of Malta. This church was once part of a large Gothic fortress.  

This church was one block from our hotel in Prague earlier this summer.  We walked by it several times. It is a few blocks from the Church of Our Lady of Victories, which is also the Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague, another historic site.

The Maltese cross is also the symbol of firefighters, the national symbol for Malta, and the crusaders. 

For the truly curious:

Click here to see over 550 more weathervanes: 


-------------------------------

To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, " "Our Lady Beneath the Chain" for Weathervane Wednesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 29, 2026, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/07/our-lady-beneath-chain-for-weathervane.html: accessed [access date]). 

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Seventeen Years of the Nutfield Genealogy Blog

 


Seventeen years ago I was writing short sketches on local history for a Londonderry website.  I submitted the stories each month, and learned that I was part of something called a community "blog".  It was easy to do, and I thought "I can do my own blog" and so I started Nutfield Genealogy on July 27th, 2009.  The first story I wrote was about my long time brickwall ancestor project that started in the 1970s when I was in high school - all about my great grandmother's stories that we were related to a Queen in Hawaii. I remember being very nervous about pushing the publish button.  The rest is history (pun intended). 

The first people to read my blog were my mother and other other family members.  I remember being quite shocked to learn that complete strangers were reading and commenting on my blog posts. Who were these people? That experience was weird, but fun.  And even more fun to learn that some of these strangers were distant cousins.  Making cousin connections is still my favorite part of genealogy blogging. 

Years ago I joined the genealogy blogging community and made friends with genealogy bloggers from all over the USA and the world.  It was fun to meet up with these people at genealogy workshops and genealogy conferences in New England, Salt Lake City, and all over.  We currently still have communities on Facbook, Substack, Threads, and we used to have converstations on Twitter and Google+  (remember Twitter and G+?).  My favorite genealogy blogging memories from before COVID are events held by the New England Genealogy Bloggers group that used to meet up once or twice a year.  I miss those days.  

I've gone from posting about 25 times a month to just a few times a month. But I'm not stopping, and I'm still researching in the background.  You might run across me at your favorite archive or library in New England, while I stil plug away at my family history after more than fifty years of research.  It's a never ending story. 

Thank you for reading, commenting, and following Nutfield Genealogy!

------------------------------

For the Truly Curious:

17 years, first post was July 27, 2009 "Hawaii - the Boston connection to a royal lineage"   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/07/hawaii-boston-connection-to-royal.html  

3,525 Blog posts and pages written and published

6913 Comments (I've noticed that comments are down in the past five years. I get maybe one or two comments each month. No idea why this trend is happening!)  I've deleted an almost equal number of spammy comments, too. 

Most popular blog post "A Favorite Christmas Gift! You might want one, too!" published December 30, 2012 with over 250,000 reads  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-favorite-christmas-gift-you-might.html   

I have the links to five permanent pages (look up under the image at the top of this blog page to see the links) on my home page.  The most popular page is the first one "Surnames from my Family Tree"  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/p/surnames-to-9-generations.html  There are hundreds of surnames listed in two groups (my Paternal lineage and my Maternal lineage) with links to the "Surname Saturday" post for that surname.  This page has received many hits and lots of email as folks make cousin connections.  Take a peek and see if we have a common ancestor!

 All time number of page views as of 7:00 AM today (July 26, 2026):   8,891,947  

-----------------------

To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Seventeen Years of the Nutfield Genealogy Blog", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 26, 2026, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/07/seventeen-years-of-nutfield-genealogy.html: accessed [access date]). 

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

My Revolutionary War Ancestors - George Fint of Reading, Massachusetts

 

The George Flint House in North Reading, Mass.

This is the 12th post I have written about a Revolutionary War veteran ancestor.  George Flint, my 5th great grandfather, was the son of George Flint (b. 1686) and Jerusha Pope, born on 16 November 1728 in what is now the town of North Reading, Massachusetts.  His mother, Jerusha, was the daughter of Joseph Pope and Bethshua Folger (the sister to Abiah Folger, Benjamin Franklin's mother).  Joseph and Bethshua Pope were notorious witnesses in the 1692 Salem witch trials, and accused their neighbors John Proctor, Martha Corey, and Rebecca Nurse of witchcraft.  

On 13 November 1753 George Flint married Hannah Phelps in Andover, Massachusetts.  Hannah is a "brickwall ancestor", and I have not been able to identify her parents or her ancestors. Phelps is a very common name in Andover, Massachusetts.  George and Hannah had seven children between 1755 and 1770, including my 4th great grandmother, Phebe Flint, born on 8 March 1763 in North Reading.  Phebe married her cousin, John Flint, who was the son of Jonathan Flint and Lydia Proctor.  Jonathan Flint is the son of Mary Collston, also imprisoned for witchcraft along with her mother and grandmother.  Lydia Proctor is the granddaughter of John Proctor, who was accused by the Pope (see the paragraph above) and hanged as a witch on 19 August 1692.  This family tree is full of people who both survived and also died during the 1692 hysteria.  

George Flint served in the American Revolution as a Sargent.  He first answered the Lexington Alarm under Colonel David Green in the 2nd Middlesex County Regiment. David Green is the great grandson of my ancestor Thomas Green of Malden, Massachusetts.  He later served under Captains Amos Upton and John Flint (a cousin) in the 3rd Reading Company.  

George Flint died on 31 August 1808 in North Reading.  His wife, Hannah, had died three years earlier on 5 May 1805. I have not been able to locate a gravestone or burial site for either George or Hannah Flint. He apparently died intestate. 

For the truly curious:

Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, by William Richard Cutter, Volume 1, page 267.  

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution, Volume 16, page 226. 

Other blog posts about my Revolutionary War Ancestors: 

#1 Colonel Joshua Burnham of Milford, NH:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/02/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-colonel.html  

#2  Major Andrew Munroe of Lexington, MA:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/03/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-major.html  

#3 Jonathan Flint of Reading, Massachusetts:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/03/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-jonathan.html   

#4 Daniel Glover of Marblehead, Massachusetts:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-daniel.html  

#5 Levi Younger of Gloucester, Massachusetts:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-levi.html  

#6 Nathaniel Treadwell of Ipswich, Massachusetts:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-nathaniel.html 

#7 Captain Westley Burnham of Essex, Massachusetts:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-captain.html  

#8 Abner Poland, Sr. of Essex, Massachusetts    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/05/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-abner_02014071889.html   

#9 Abner Poland, Jr. of Essex, Massachusetts    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/05/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-abner_02014071889.html  

#10  Robert Wilson of Danvers, Massachusetts    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/03/my-revolutionary-war-patriots-robert.html   

#11  Amos Burnham of Ipswich, Massachusetts   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/06/my-revolutionary-war-ancestors-amos.html   

-------------------------

To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "My Revolutionary War Ancestors - George Fint of Reading, Massachusetts", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 21, 2026, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/07/my-revolutionary-war-ancestors-george.html: accessed [access date]). 

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

A New Bedford Whale for Weathervane Wednesday

 Today's featured weathervane was photographed in New Bedford, Massachusetts.




This two dimensional sperm whale weathervane is located on the cupola over the front door of the Fairfield Inn on the waterfront in New Bedford harbor.  It is a very appropriate weathervane for the location, since New Bedford is famous as a whaling seaport and home to Herman Melville, the author of the novel Moby Dick: or, The Whale, published in 1851.  The New Bedford Whaling Museum is situated a few blocks from the hotel. 

Although this weathervane is only two dimensional, I liked the details including the teeth inside the whales mouth, and the fins on the tail.  Below I have listed links to nine other whale weathervanes we have photographed, and most are sperm whales located near historic whaling ports or other locations related to the whaling industry. 


Once we checked into the hotel, we saw that our guestroom was right behind the weathervane!  This is the view of the whale weathervane through the hotel window. 



For the truly curious:

Click here for over 550 Weathervane Wednesday posts:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Weathervane%20Wednesday  

More whale weathervanes:











-------------------

To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "A New Bedford Whale for Weathervane Wednesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 15, 2026, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-new-bedford-whale-for-weathervane.html: accessed [access date]).