November 23, 2024
Column

Ancestors magazine a rich resource

A few weeks ago, I talked about some of the online databases available to members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Let’s not overlook the society’s publications, including the popular magazine New England Ancestors. I always find something useful in the New England Online column by David Allen Lambert.

The spring issue points out the National Soldiers Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Togus, telling us that microfilm records for 1866-1934 are available at the National Archives branch in Waltham, Mass. Records may also be rented through Family History Centers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such as the center on Grandview Avenue and Essex Street in Bangor. (The Family History Library catalog is online at www.familysearch.org.)

There are databases with partial lists of burials in some National Cemeteries at www.interment.net/us/nat/veterans.htm.

The site lists some burials for:

. Togus National Cemetery, 3,415 burials.

. Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery, Augusta.

. Soldiers Lot, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, North Street, Augusta, 53 burials, many of them soldiers who died in the Civil War.

And how about this tidbit from Lambert’s column? The death index for New York City, 1898-1945, is available on the Web, in addition to some naturalization indexes for counties in that area.

And who made that information available? Volunteers from the Italian Genealogical Group, who also are working on other databases. Go to www.italiangen.org/databaselist.stm.

Other features of the issue include D. Brenton Simons’ “New England Pierponts,” James Boulden’s “The Puritans and Pirates of Providence Island,” Helen Hannon’s “Researching My Great-Grandfather, a Contraband in the Civil War United States Army: An Interview with William B. Gould IV,” and Henry Stimpson’s “Daniel Stimpson: A Nineteenth-Century Life in Massachusetts.”

The best-known of NEHGS publications, of course, is the quarterly it has printed for 160 years, “The New England Historical and Genealogical Register.” Bangor Public Library, Maine State Library and several other facilities carry this journal, known as The Register, and a few libraries have some indexes.

Many researchers use Register articles as examples to go by when writing up their own family history. And, the articles are well-sourced, as we say, with footnotes listing where the original information can be found.

Features of the spring issue include Cherry Bamberg’s “Comfort [Pearce] [Mathewson] Coggeshall and Her Children,” Nathaniel Taylor and John Fipphen’s “Another Husband for Mary [Phippen] [Wallis] [Morgan] Black: Samuel Morgan of Beverly, Mass.;” Leslie Mahler’s “Confirmation of Parentage of Judith Everard, Wife of Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, Mass.” and “Averina [Vibert] Lanphear, Probably Mother of George Lanphear of Rhode Island” by Patricia Law Hatcher and Michael Leclerc.

In addition, Hal Bradley has written “A Royal Descent of John Stratton” of Salem, Mass., which may give readers ideas about resources to check for their own possible royal connections.

A “Research Membership” to NEHGS, which includes use of online databases, both publications and free use of the library in Boston, is $75 individual, $90 family. There also are other categories.

You may join at www.NewEnglandAncestors.org or send a check to NEHGS, 101 Newbury St., Boston, MA 02116-3007.

How’s this for a title of a talk? Mac Young will speak on “Wikis, Blogs and Things That Go Bump on the Web” at the meeting of the Wassebec Genealogical Society at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 11, in the computer room at the Penquis Higher Education Center in Dover-Foxcroft.

For information or directions, call 564-3576 or e-mail wassebec@yahoo.com.

3364. BUMFORD-WEST. Seeking ancestors of Mary Bumford, married before 1861 to William West, who was born 1838 in Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, England. They had seven children between 1861 and 1871. Mary died after 1871, before 1881, in England. William came to Canada, was in the U.S. by 1903. He buried in the Episcopal cemetery in Limestone. Charles L. Willey, 31 School Ave., Limestone, ME 04750-1106; telephone 325-9164.

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or send e-mail, familyti@bangordailynews.net.


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