Day Three NERGC 2013, Manchester, NH

Today was the last day of NERGC, days full of great sessions, lots of meetups with new and old friends, and a wonderful conference program.  I arrived late and missed the first session but while hanging out in the lobby I chanced to meet Elroy Davis, the "Green Mountain Genealogist", who introduced himself, several women from Canada with roots from Nutfield Settlers, and another young couple who overheard our Nutfield conversation and wanted directions to Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry before they drove home to New York.

The first session I went to hear was Elissa Scalise Powell's "Eating an Elephant: Managing Large Projects".  She had some great ideas and tools for breaking down any large project, such as family reunions, genealogy books, society indexing projects, or even a portfolio to present to the Board for Certification of Genealogists. I really enjoyed it, and so did the audience, because there were lots of questions after the talk, and a line of attendees who wanted to talk with Elissa after the session.

I met up with Pam Carter, Diane Boumenot and my husband for lunch.  We were discussing the next GeneaBlogger meetup, and Diane proposed a field trip to NEHGS.  Stay tuned for an announcement of a day trip to the NEHGS library for sometime in June or July.  If this is successful, we might try a few more field trips to different repositories around New England at different times of the year.  If you are interested, leave a comment!

Colleen Fitzpatrick

After lunch I tried a session on "Forensic Genealogy:  SCI meets Roots" with Colleen Fitzpatrick.  This is a subject I would really like to learn more about, and NERGC was the perfect place to try it out.  I was expecting a rather dry lecture, but Colleen was very witty, and made the subject incredibly fun and interesting.  I'm tempted to buy a copy of her book, which is coming out soon in a new edition.

For the last few sessions I decided to try the cemetery track, although I had already missed the first lecture (you just can't do EVERYTHING at NERGC!).  The first was "The Sociology of Cemeteries" by Helen A. Shaw, which explained the different types of cemeteries where you might find your ancestors based on geography, ethnic group, religion, occupation, etc.  I never knew there were sections of cemeteries just for certain occupations (such as circus performers), or for fraternal organizations such as Elks or Masons.  She had some great photographs to illustrate her talk, although it was a slide show.  I can't even remember the last time I saw a slide show!  At least she had no technical problems with getting her computer to talk to her projector, which had happened in at least three of the sessions I saw during NERGC 2013.

Donna Walcovy gets excited
about gravestone carving, and you will, too,
if you have a chance to hear her lecture! 

The last session was one I would highly recommend to anyone who has a chance to see hear Donna Walcovy.  It was called "The Symbolism on New England Gravestones", which to me is a fascinating subject, and I was expecting a rather straightforward lecture.  Instead Donna has a hilarious presentation of examples of wonderful stone carving from the 1600's up to modern gravestones.  She had some wonderful examples of all types of symbolic carving, and gave the history of the changing beliefs about death and religion in New England.  Her syllabus had a lot of great links and a bibliography that will keep me busy reading about gravestones for quite some time in the upcoming year.  I enjoyed it very much, and it was a terrific conclusion to the conference.

It wasn't the last lecture of the day, though, because at the banquet sponsored by NEHGS we heard from New Hampshire's own Milli Knudsen about forensic genealogy in her "Cold Case Unit" talk.  Milli works for the New Hampshire State Police, where she first volunteered as a genealogist to help with unsolved "cold cases".  She gave examples of how police detectives use techniques similar to genealogists in determining time lines, identities of friends, family and aquaintances, examining documents and indexing and organizing clues. She has developed spreadsheets for indexing evidence that the detectives are now using to help solve these cases.

Milli's lecture was extremely interesting, yet slightly unsettling as we heard the details on how many New Hampshire women's murders are still unsolved.  Pam Carter and I walked together to the garage, not wanting to be walking alone late at night after hearing about these scary crimes! I think I sprinted to my car! It was a rather creepy way to end the night. But then I drove home thinking about Donna Walcovy's funny names for some of the gravestone carvings and it made me smile all the way from Manchester to Londonderry.  There were too many great memories from these four days at NERGC to let the cold case stories get me down!

NERGC 2015 will be held April 14 - 19, 2015 in Providence, Rhode Island.  Follow the website and blog for more information:

NERGC website  www.nergc.org

NERGC blog  www.nerc.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Day Two NERGC 2013, Manchester, NH

Today was a great day for the New England GeneaBloggers!  When I arrived at the NERGC Expo I was initially disappointed with the set up for the blogger area.  No sign, no easy access, desolate and boring are the best words to describe the space given.  I immediately asked for a sign, decorated it with beads and balloons, moved tables around, and even (shocking!) moved and removed some barriers to open up our area to the Expo Hall.  Bloggers drifted in during the morning block of time left empty on the schedule for visiting the vendors.  I don’t know how many bloggers used it the rest of the day.  I was busy in sessions instead of in the Expo Hall.

The first session I attended was “A Rural New Hampshire Barter/Cash System” with Richard Kimball.  He developed an entire case study based on an account book that belonged to his ancestor Ebenezer Marden of Chester, New Hampshire.  This was fascinating to me not only because I know Chester (right next door to Derry), but because I have been trying to analyze my own 4^th great grandfather’s account book.  After listening to Kimball’s explanation of the entries in this book as barters, I think I can now decipher the entries in my great grandfather’s book, which is about 30 years older than the book in the case study.  You can read my other blog post about my ancestor’s book at this link here.

I then went to lunch with blogger Pam Carter at the Massachusetts Genealogical Council’s luncheon with Laura Prescott’s talk on “Jousting with the Gatekeepers”.  It was a humorous look at the absurd experiences some researchers have had with town clerks, archivists, and other assorted characters.  Laura gave some good advice on how to deal with these personalities, and how to prepare for possible denials of access to documents.  Then I took advantage of another chance to hear Steve Morse present “Genealogy Beyond the Y Chromosome: Autosomes Exposed”.   

After a nice dinner at the hotel pub with bloggers Midge Frazel, her husband, Steve, Jennifer Zinck and Russ Worthington, we all headed up to the 12^th floor Presidential Suite for the Special Interest Group for Genealogy Blogging.  I’m very glad that they gave us this room instead of a conference hall.  It was like having another Blogger Bash in someone’s living room.  I’m sure that this atmosphere helped the conversation flow much better. 
 

At first we had a few bloggers sitting around the table, and we started introductions and discussion….

Then a few more showed up and we had to borrow chairs from the next room…

Then we had to get a few more chairs from a conference room…

Then we moved the sofa around and closer to the table…

And then we moved in another sofa and some chairs… It was a full house!  Folks were standing in the back. You couldn't have squeezed in more people!  What a great crowd, with bloggers like Midge who has blogged for seven years, down to new bloggers, including Lori Lynn Price who only started her blog in December.  We even had four or five people who were just thinking of starting their first blog.  Advice, ideas, questions and opinions flowed back and forth from everyone.  A big THANK YOU to everyone who showed up!  

The Geneablogger community is wonderful online, but in person it works even better.  I'm so glad that in New England we have the chance to meetup once or twice a year, instead of just virtually getting together on the internet. 

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Day One NERGC 2013, Manchester, NH

 

Day One of the 2013 NERGC started with me passing out blogger beads and WiFi codes to the bloggers in attendance at the conference. I counted about a dozen bloggers today, and I know I missed some of them.  I hope to catch up to the rest of you tomorrow when we will have a designated Blogger Area in the Expo center- yahoo!  Here I am, early in the morning, posing with bloggers Lori Thornton, Marian Pierre Louis and Liz Loveland before the opening session. 

GeneaBlogger Meetup in the hotel lobby

Genealogist Sandra McLean Clunies gave the opening talk on “Millhand Migrations to 19^th Century Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts”.  As a resident of the Merrimack Valley, surrounded by Manchester, Nashua, Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill with their respective millyards and mill buildings, this was extremely interesting to me.  I had three generations of my family work in the same shoe mill in Beverly, Massachusetts, including three of my four great grandfathers, so the subject is of particular interest to my family tree research.  She gave three examples of millworkers from her family tree, and how she documented their lives.  I had met Sandra at the NERGC 2011 conference, and she was my “advisor” at the Ancestor Roadshow.  This was the first time I had heard her speak, and I enjoyed her expertise and dry sense of humor very much.

 

Sandra Clunies

The next session I wanted to attend was completely full, and so I ducked into the room next door, and it was completely full, too! I found one of the last seats available in Jayne Jordan’s talk on the “Oyster River Settlement and the Native Peoples”, which turned out to be interesting because I had several ancestors involved in those conflicts (HEARD, HAM, the villain Capt Richard WALDRON, etc).  My third choice turned out to be not so bad.

I caught up with blogger Sara Campbell for lunch, and then rushed off to hear “What Exactly is a Reasonably Exhaustive Search” by Laura Murphy DeGrazia.  Again, I got one of the last available seats in the room.  I’ve decided that either NERGC underestimated the size of the rooms needed or I’m just slow in getting in the door.  Many people were turned away from this lecture, which is a shame because it was one of the best of the day.  Laura gave many, many good examples of the Genealogy Proof Standard and used a great case study as an example.  I could have listened to another hour or two of this subject.  It is definitely a subject that would make a great one day workshop.

The last session of the day was “Access to Records for Genealogists: An Open Forum” by the Massachusetts Genealogical Council.  The participants on the panel presented a fun skit illustrating the absurdities of recent attempts at legislating “privacy” by banning access to the SSDI.  This was followed by a very thoughtful discussion by the crowd and the panel, especially by Rich McCoy, from the Vermont Department of Health.  The MGC will have a booth in the Expo, and the members encouraged everyone to sign their petition.  This same group will also be hosting a Special Interest Group tomorrow night called “Record Access Denied”.  I wish I could attend, but I’ll be hosting the geneablogger SIG at the same time.   

Barbara Matthews and Michael LeClerc
ham it up for the Records Access skit

At the end of the day I got together with my Mayflower Cousin John Payzant (he is the Governor of the New Hampshire Mayflower Society) to host the NH Mayflower booth during the Society Fair.  I was too tired after all of today's activities to check out the Expo, but I did walk through on my way to the car garage.  The Expo looks great, and I can’t wait to check it out thoroughly tomorrow morning.  More NERGC news tomorrow!

New England Regional Genealogy Conference  www.nergc.org

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo                                

Thank You to Family Tree Magazine!

Thank you Family Tree Magazine for naming Nutfield Genealogy on their 2013 Top 40 Genealogy Blogs!  Just about when I realized that I had let my subscription to Family Tree Magazine lapse, genealogy friends started posting congratulations to me on Facebook and Twitter.  It was confirmed when my friend Midge Frazel sent me a scan of the article, and I was on the list. ThomasMacEntee was the first to post a link on his blog to the article itself on his blog. 

Several other New England Genealogy blogs made the “Top 40”:

Dick Eastman “Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter”

   http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/

Midge Frazel “Granite in my Blood”

   http://granite-in-my-blood.blogspot.com/

Cynthia Shenette “Heritage Zen”

   http://heritagezen.blogspot.com/

Of course, there are blogs from all over the United States and Canada on this list, and you would enjoy any one of them.  There are also blogs listed in categories such as “Good Advice”,  “Tech Support”,  “Gravestone Matters”,  “Heritage Help”,  “Shop Talk” and “Story Time”.   There is something for everyone on this list, and I hope you find a few to add to your blog reader or bookmarks. 

Click here to read the article about the Family Tree Magazine Top 40 Genealogy Blogs:

http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/Top-40-Genealogy-Blogs-2013

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

The First Tech Day at NERGC

The Tech Day events today were a great prequel to the 2013 NERGC conference in Manchester, New Hampshire.  I was thoroughly fascinated by the lectures, and the time flew.  I also met dozens of new people, from places as close as the Manchester Public Library to Washington State.  Everyone enjoyed NERGC’s very first Tech Day program, which was attended by about 150 people.  In the next room over, Librarians and Teachers were enjoying their own set of lectures and talks.

Stephen P. Morse

We heard from Dr. Stephen P. Morse twice.  If you haven’t used his “One Step” searchpages for Ellis Island and other genealogy websites, you are missing out on a true technical marvel.  Steve Morse holds degrees in electrical engineering, and is the architect of the Intel 8086 chip which made the first desktop IBM PCs available in the 1970s. In his first lecture he explained the concept of Deep Linking, and how he used that to make his internet searching website.  In his afternoon lecture he explained the Beider Morse Phonetic Name Matching Algorithm used by search engines inside websites such as Ellis Island and Sephardic Gen. The story behind the invention of these technical tools was fascinating, and too long to tell here in a blog.  If you ever have the chance to hear Dr. Morse, take advantage!

There was an interruption in the afternoon session when we first heard the perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombings had been caught, and then it was announced to be a false alarm. For the home town crowd, we were on pins and needles for a few moments.

New Hampshire’s own genealogist Laura Prescott presented a lecture on Publishing Your Genealogy Online.  She gave examples of free and low cost ways of showing your research on the internet.  Unfortunately, none of the vendors of these products will be at the NERGC Expo, such as Ancestry, TNG or Legacy.  She also showed a few screenshots of the new FamilySearch website, which changed only yesterday.  I played with the new site a little last night, and it is very different looking, but all the same search features are in the same places.  Be sure to check it out yourself.

Josh Taylor presents the Family House game

FindMyPast was the sponsor of TechDay, and presented the luncheon.  Josh Taylor, brightsolid’s business development manager, presented a corporate background of all the products in the brightsolid family tree, such as Scotland’s People, FindMyPast, Genes Reunited and a new game at the website www.FamilyHouse.com    He also spoke at the end of the afternoon on tools and methods of sharing genealogy online, including wikis, cloud computing, and other tools. 

The Expo was not open yet today, but I was able to register so I could skip that step first thing tomorrow morning.  Maybe I can sleep in a little bit later. I have to stay at NERGC until evening since I’ll be representing the New Hampshire Mayflower Society at the society fair tomorrow night.

New England Regional Genealogy Conference www.nergc.org

Steve Morse's Webpages  http://stevemorse.org/

Laura Prescott, genealogist http://www.lauraprescott.com/

Findmypast.com  http://www.findmypast.com/ 

Family House  http://www.familyhouse.com/

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Weathervane Wednesday ~ A Two Masted Ship

Every Wednesday for almost a year and half I've been posting photographs of weathervanes located in or near the Nutfield area (the former name for the land where Londonderry, Derry and Windham, New Hampshire are now located). Most are historically interesting or just whimsical and fun weathervanes. Today's weathervane can be seen in Massachusetts. Have fun guessing where you may have seen this weather vane.

Do you know the location of weather vane #91? Scroll down to see the answer....

Today's weather vane can be found on top of the cupola above the Post Office in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is a two masted ship, perhaps representing the Mayflower which sailed to this town in 1620 from England?   The ship is a rather flat three dimensional figure.  There were several other sailing ship weather vanes in Plymouth, and I'll be featuring them in the next two weeks.  Perhaps you will recognize some of them?

Click here to see the entire collection of Weathervane Wednesday posts!

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tombstone Tuesday ~ More Bangs Boys buried in Brewster

This tombstone was photographed in the Old Burial Ground, 

Brewster, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. 

In Memory of two sons of

Mr. BENJn & Mrs. DESIRE BANGS

Viz JOSHUA BANGS died

at Rhode Island Febry. 3rd 1778

Aged 26 Years & 11 Months

ISAAC BANGS died at 

Virginia Sept. 12th, 1780

Aged 27 Years & 9 Months

When the last trump that rends the skies

Shall bid those distant atoms rise

It instantly must be obey'd

And they will rise to Christ their head. 

Benjamin Bangs was born 24 June 1721 in Harwich, Massachusetts, died on 31 October 1769 in Brewster; married on 4 January 1749 in Harwich to Desire Dillingham.  She was born on 30 November 1729 in Harwich, and died 13 August 1807 in Brewster.

The son Joshua Bangs was born on 26 March 1751 in Harwich, and died on 3 February 1778 in Rhode Island.  He was married on 10 February 1774 in Eastham to Mary Hatch, and had two sons.  The other son, Isaac Bangs was born in 1752 and died on 12 September 1780 in Virginia.  Both of these young men were soldiers and died during the Revolutionary War.  Their stone was honored with a bronze marker by the DAR.

Another post with a photograph of two young Bangs boys from this same family in the same cemetery
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/08/tombstone-tuesday-two-bangs-boys-in.html 

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

The Massachusetts / Ohio Connection

My mom grew up in the small town of Hamilton, Massachusetts.  It is a quiet place in the middle of Essex County, with old colonial houses.  One of its biggest claims to fame is the wagon train formed by Manasseh Cutler, which took the first settlers to Ohio in 1787.  She often pointed out this historical marker to me, but I couldn't imagine Western style pioneers in Hamilton when I was a little girl.  

THE COVERED WAGON

On December 3, 1787, the

first covered wagon to leave

Massachusetts for the west

set forth from this spot

arriving the next spring in 

the Northwest Territory and 

founding Marietta, Ohio.

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Massachusetts Bay Colony

Tercentenary Commission

The Congregational Church of Hamilton, Massachusetts

On the corner of Cutler Road and Bay Road. 

Reverend Manasseh Cutler (1742 – 1823) was born in Killingly, Connecticut.  He graduated from Yale and taught school and dabbled as a lawyer before becoming the pastor of the church in “The Hamlet” parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts (now known as the town of Hamilton).   He became interested in the settlement of the Northwest Territory (Ohio) in 1786 and was an agent of the Ohio Company of Associates,  which also included General Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Winthrop Sargent, James Mitchell Varnum , Richard Platt and Samuel Holden Parsons.  

Manasseh Cutler is the husband of my 3^rd cousin, 6 generations removed.  His wife was Mary Balch, born 16 November 1740 in Dedham, Massachusetts.   Our common ancestors are Benjamin Balch (1628 - after 1715) and Sarah Gardner (1627 – 1686) of Beverly, Massachusetts.  In the Ohio Company, Brigadier General Rufus Putnam is my 2^nd cousin, 6 generations removed.  Our common ancestors are John Putnam (1570/80 – 1662) and Priscilla Gould (b. abt. 1585) of Salem, Massachusetts.

The settlers who left Hamilton, Massachusetts reached Marietta, Ohio in the spring of 1788.  It was the first permanent settlement of Europeans in the present state of Ohio.  The settlers chartered their first Congregational church in 1796, and built the first building in 1807.   The documents and papers of the Ohio Company of Associates are held in the archives at Marietta College in Ohio. 

Departure on December 3, 1787, from Manasseh Cutler’s parsonage in "The Hamlet” parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts, of the first of two groups comprising the pioneers to the Ohio Country and the Northwest Territory. This image is from the book by Edwin Erle Sparks, The United States of America, Part 1, published in 1904.

Here is a list of the 48 pioneers all from New England (found at Wikipedia on a list carved onto a monument at Front Street in Marietta, Ohio).  Are you a descendant or relative of these families?  I can see several that are surnames from my family tree (Putnam, Munroe, Flint, Gardner).  General Rufus Putnam was a 2nd cousin, six generations removed.  So was Hezekiah Flint, who married Sally Putnam cousin to General Putnam.

General Rufus Putnam, Colonel Return J. Meigs, Sr. (arrived several days later than the others), Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, Major Anslem Tupper, Surveyor John Mathews, Major Haffield White, Captain Ezekiel Cooper, Captain Daniel Davis, Captain Jonathan Devoll (Devol), Captain Peregrine Foster, Captain William Gray, Captain Josiah Munroe (Munro), Captain Jethro Putnam, Jabez Barlow, Daniel Bushnell, Phineas Coburn, Ebenezer Corey (Cory), Samuel Cushing, Jarvis (Jervis) Cutler, Israel Danton, Jonas Davis, Allen Devoll, Gilbert Devoll, Jr., Isaac Dodge, Oliver Dodge, Samuel Felshaw, Hezekiah Flint, Hezekiah Flint, Jr., John Gardner, Benjamin Griswold, Elizur (Elisur) Kirtland, Theophilus Leonard (Learned), Joseph Lincoln, Simeon Martin, Henry Maxom, William Maxom (Mason), William Miller, William Moulton, Edmond (Edmund) Moulton, Amos Porter, Jr., Allen Putnam, Benjamin Shaw, Earl Sproat, David Wallace (Wallis), Joseph Wells, Josiah White, Peletiah White, Josiah Whitridge.

The website of the First Congregational Church, Hamilton, Massachusetts http://www.fcchamilton.org/ 

Wikipedia Ohio Company of Associates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Company_of_Associates  

Barbara Poole's blog "Life from the Roots" has two blog posts about Manasseh Cutler, her 4th great grandfather, at these links:

http://lifefromtheroots.blogspot.com/2010/01/tombstone-tuesday-manassah-cutler-and.html  

http://lifefromtheroots.blogspot.com/2010/01/dr-manasseh-cutler-minister-doctor.html   

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "The Massachusetts / Ohio Connection", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 15, 2013, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-massachusetts-ohio-connection.html: accessed [access date]).