FINDMYPAST FRIDAY RECORDS COLLECTION RELEASES FOR 27JANUARY 2017

The 4.5 million new records in the Findmypast Friday releases for January 27th include records from
Australia and Ireland:

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Victoria Petty Sessions Registers
OVER 3 MILLION RECORDS   Did your ancestor have any dealings before the Court of Petty Sessions in Victoria? Discover if your ancestor was a plaintiff or a defendant and what issue was brought before the court.
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Queensland Custom House Shipping 1852-1885 Passengers and Crew
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PERSI Quarterly Index Update
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Titles: 46
Covering: English, Scottish and American publications
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Irish Newspapers
New articles: 1,297,009
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Covering: Leinster, Donegal, Kildare, Wicklow & Longford
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52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017 WEEK 2:RALPH ELLINGWOOD JR. OF BEVERLY, MA. PT3

My ancestor Ralph Ellingwood Jr died sometime between 8 April 1741, when he made out his will,
and 11 May 1741 when it was filed in court in Ipswich, Ma. There are some interesting points in it:

-Ralph's name is spelled Ellingwood, rather than the Ellinwood used by his father Ralph Sr. or the
Ellenwood used by his brother Benjamin and his descendants, It may have ben a way to differentiate
between the two families, since Benjamin was a successful merchant in Salem while Ralph was a
farmer in Beverly.

-Provisions were made for the widow of Ralph Jr's son Ralph III and her two oldest children, but
no mention is made of the other children of Ralph III in the will.

-Ralph makes sure his daughter Abigail is provided for "During her naturall Life, She Being not
Abele to provide for her self, for her comfortabele subsistance while in the World". Was Abigail sickly or was this because she was a 46 year old spinster at the time of her father's death? (She
lived for another 35 years.)

-Ralph Jr's real estate holdings are measured in poles, not acres, and I haven't a good head for
converting them to acres. But the total real estate was valued at 497 pounds, so he was land wealthy.

Here's the images of the two page will:

Essex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1638-1881.Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2014. (From records supplied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.) Case 8712 Image 33

Essex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1638-1881.Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2014. (From records supplied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.) Case 8712 Image 34

And here's my transcript of the document:
In the Name of God Amen I Ralph Ellingwood of Beverly
in the County of Essex in New England husbandman Being Weake
& Inferme in Bodey & Calling to mind that it is Appointed
By God for all men are to Dye Do make this my Last Will
& Testament & in the first place I Do Commit my sole into the
hands of God that Gave it & my Bodey to the Earth to Be
deasantly Buried  at the discresion of my Executors after named
& as for my Temporal Estate wherewith it has plesed God
to Bles me I Do Dispose of it after the foowing maner

Imprimus my Will is that all my personall Estate my Common Rights  &
a small oease of Land I now improve for a Gardin & adioyns on my
Sone Ebenezars Land Extending Westrly to the Way that LeadsDown to
the Water as the fenc now stands Be Sold by my Executors to
pay my just Depts & financall Charges & the overplus money
if any there Be to be Divided Eaqualy Among my Children
Sone Ralph Ellingwoods Children to have one Share

Item I give unto my daughter Abigail Ellingwood the Improvement of one
half of my Real Estate During her naturall Life, She Being not
Abele to provide for her self, for her comfortabele subsistance while
in the World.

my Will is that my two Grannsons Israele Ellingwood & Ralph
Ellingwood have the free use & Improvement of the Barne &
Wele there father Built on my Lands with Egres to & from the same
I give unto the children of my sone Ralph Ellingwood desesd one fifth
part of my Real Estate to be to them & there heirs for Ever Saving
my daughter Abigails Improvement

I give unto my sone Ebenezar Ellingwood & to his heirs one fifth of my Real
Estate

I give unto my sone Thomas Ellingwood & to his heirs one fifth of my Real
Estate

I give unto my daughter Returne Ellingwood one fifth, or in money
Aquivalant; of my Real Estate 

I give unto my daughter Martha Smith & to her heirs one fifth of my
Real Estate or an Aquivlanc in money

My Will is that my Sons Ebenezar Ellingwood &Thomas Ellingwood
together with my two Gransons Israell & Ralph Ellingwood if they
se cause Redeme my Lands in Equall proportion they paying unto my
two daughters Returne & Martha the value of there shares in my Estate
in money upon Apprisement the one half to to Be paid to each of them
in one year after my Desese the other half in one year after my
Daughter Abigails desese

My Will further is that if any of my children or granchildren
Shold Bring a Dept Against my Estate that it Shall Be
paid out of Such parsons Share

My will is that my Sone in Law Nehemiah Smith Improve
that half of my Lands I have in this my Will ordered for my
Daughter Abigails Support  & that he Render an Account yearly
unto my Executors of the produce or profits there of
& pay in the same to my sd Daughter that so She may not be
Deprived of the proper Benifits & in Case my Sone Smith Should
neglect to Improve the Land to the Best advantage according
to the nature thereof it shall & may be Lawfull for my
Executors to Rent the Same to Some other person

And Lastly I do Appoint my Sone Thomas Ellingwood & frind
Joseph Trask to be my sole executors of this my Last Will &
Testament hearby Revoking all other Wills By me heartofore
made & in Confrimation of This my Last Will &Testament I do
hearunto set my hand & seale this eight day of Aprele
one thousand seven hundred & forty one
Signed Sealed & published           Ralph (his mark) Ellingwood
In presents of
Israell Wood
John Stephens
Anthony Wood

 

52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017 WEEK 2:RALPH ELLINGWOOD JR. OF BEVERLY, MA. PT2

Other than the scandalous end of his first marriage. Ralph Ellingwood Jr.'s life was no different than his neighbors in colonial Beverly, Ma. He was a farmer, and served in the militia during King Philip's War. He and his brother John were part of the troop that fought in the Great Swamp Battle; John lost a finger during the fighting. Ralph was given a grant of land for his service.

Ralph and his wife Martha (Rowlandson) Ellingwood had seven children, all born in Beverly, Ma. and six of whom survived childhood:

Returne b.22May 1692, m.(1)Philip Giles 24Aug 1712; m.(2) Samuel Wardwell 20Dec 1716.
 
Ralph III b.18Apr 1694. m Sarah Woodbury 1712, died at sea 1728

Abigail b.22Jan 1695, d.20Jan 1775 at Beverly

Ebenezer b.29Aug 1697, d.in Amherst, NH

Martha  b.7Feb 1700, m.Nehemiah Smith 13Dec 1724, d.17Feb 1778 in Beverly

Thomas bp. 16 May 1703, m.(1) Abigail Wallis in Beverly 16Feb 1726; (2)Rebecca Livermore
at Sturbridge, Ma 17Nov 1757, d.1Jun1772 at Brimfield, Ma.

Esther bp.24 Aug 1707, d.21 Feb 1716

Ralph's  son Ralph III died at sea leaving a widow and children. His daughter Abigail may have been sickly. Ralph made provisions for these family members in his will.

To be continued...

BLOGIVERSARY: NOW WE ARE TEN

Ten years ago today I posted my first story on West In New England. During my genealogy research
online I'd found geneablogs written by Randy Seaver, Chris Dunham, and Tim Abbott, who as it turns out, are all my distant cousins.The thought struck me that if I had a geneablog of my own it might help distant cousins find me, and boy,  was I right! It's worked beyond my expectations as "cousin bait".

A few stats: This is post 2135. I've had  679,474 pageviews (most of which were likely by webcrawlers bots) and I  have 277 followers. I lost 15 followers since last year due to some change in Blogger,

These were my All Time Top Ten Posts on this day last year:

And this is the list as of today:

While the top four posts haven't changed, the other six have.

Since it doesn't look like I'll run out of things to write about anytime soon, I 'll keep on going until I do!

Finally, thanks to you folks who read what I write and encourage me by leaving comments!

FINDMYPAST FRIDAY RECORDS COLLECTION RELEASES FOR 20JANUARY 2017

The nearly 3.5 million new records released for this week's Findmypast Friday come from
Leicestershire and  Rutland, England:



Leicestershire Parish Records
OVER 1.8 MILLION RECORDS   Does your family tree have roots in Leicestershire? Trace your ancestors back to the 16th century with baptism, banns, marriage & burial records covering 50 parishes and uncover intimate details of their lives.
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Leicestershire Parish Records Browse
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Leicestershire Marriage Licences
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See if your ancestors were married by licence in a Leicestershire parish between 1604 and 1891 with records that reveal where they were married, when they were married and their residence.
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Leicestershire Marriage Licences Browse
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Leicestershire Wills and Probate Records
OVER 173,000 RECORDS
Search through thousands of wills and probate records from Leicestershire to shed light on your ancestor’s wealth, uncover the names of numerous family members and the date of your ancestor’s death.
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Leicestershire Wills and Probate Records Browse
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Leicestershire Electoral Registers Browse
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Rutland Parish Records
OVER 328,000 RECORDS
Explore thousands of baptisms, banns, marriages and burials from hundreds of parishes throughout the county of Rutland in the East Midlands of England. Uncover the lives of your Rutland ancestors with 400 years of records.
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Rutland Parish Records Browse
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52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017 WEEK 2:RALPH ELLINGWOOD JR. OF BEVERLY, MA. PT1

My 7x great grandfather Ralph Ellingwood Jr. was born in Salem, Ma. on 18 Mar 1657, the third
child asnd second son of Ralph and Elinor(Lynn)Ellingwood. His first wife was named Katherine,
but I haven't been able to find a record of the marriage online. In fact, I might have never learned  about it except for the way in which it ended. 

In June 1682, twenty five year old Ralph found himself being divorced by Katharine who stated
that she’d rather be dead than live with him. She sued on grounds of Ralph's "insufficiency"

Ralph for his part did what any man in 17th century Salem Ma.might do when faced with such an embarrassing situation: he claimed that it had to be witchcraft. Not exactly original, and highly ineffective in the light of the character witnesses Katherine had to testify in her behalf.

It must have been the talk of the town. Both husband and wife were given physical examinations, Katherine by a panel of “goodwives” and Ralph by two men(one of them a chirurgeon) appointed
by the Court. Based on their reports the Court granted Katherine her divorce and ordered she be allowed to take whatever clothes and property that she had brought with her into the marriage.

All of this might have been lost in the mists of time except that there was a court record of the proceedings and several centuries later the case is cited in several articles and a book about women
in Puritan society. I’ve not been able to read any of them in their entirety but what I have read
makes no mention of what happened after. So in the interest of fairness to Ralph, here’s the rest
of it:

Ralph remained single for nearly 9 years but in August of 1691 he wed Martha Rowlandson. The marriage lasted nearly 20 years before her death.

They had seven children

We don’t know what happened to Katherine after her divorce from Ralph, There is no record of her maiden name. Hopefully she too remarried and with a man she loved who gave her children of her own.

But if Ralph felt he had a point to prove to all of Salem and Beverly, Ma. the seven children he fathered may have done it.

You can read the court record at Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, Volume 8, pp356-357

52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017 WEEK 1:RALPH ELLINGWOOD SR. OF SALEM & BEVERLY, MA. PT2

I knew Ralph Ellingwood Sr. had left a will because my cousin Florence O'Connor had included the
text of the will and estate inventory in her book Ancestors and Descendants of Asa Freeman  Ellingwood and  Florilla (Dunham) Ellingwood. So I went over to AmericanAncestors to see if the
probate file was in the Essex County, MA: Early Probate Records, 1635-1681 database.

And it was .

But it was empty.

Just a photo of a little scrap of paper with the words "No Papers Found"

I downloaded it anyway.

Luckily, cousin Florence had cited her source for the will and inventory, The Essex County
Quarterly Court Files, and using that information I was able to find them on Googlebooks and  download them as well: 

Estate Of Ralph Ellinwood Of Beverly.

"January 7th 1673 The last will and testament of Raph Ellinwood who being weecke in body but of a good memory first I Comit my body to the earth and my Soule to god that gaue it Secondly I make helen my wife my lawfull executrix and to make use of all my estate to bring up our Children in the feare of the lord. Thirdly I make my son Raph my lawfull heire after his mothers decease but when he is Come to the age of twenty one yeares he is to haue the ten akres which was formerly old Robert Moltons lot and that our son Raph is to pay to our other four sons as namely John Joseph Beniamin & david and our too daughters Mary and Elizabeth each & either of them an equall portion only Raph a doble portion acording as the estate is prised to be paide as each comes to age onely I alow my wife hir thirds dureing the terme of hir life and after hir decease equaly her thirds are to be devided amongst our sons & daughters that then doe surviue."

[no signature] Witness: Thomas Piekton and his wife Ann. Proved in Salem court 3: 5m: 1674 by Tho. and Ann Piekton.

Inventory of the estate of Ralf Ellinwood of Beverly, taken Jan. 30, 1673, by Henery Skerry, sr., Tho. Rootes and John Massey: The lot commonly called Molton's lot, with the building, orcharding, etc., 135l.; plowabell Land, pasture, with part of the orchard, 130li.; 2 Cowes, 7li. 10s.; 2 Heffers with Calf, 5li. 10s.; 2 Oxen, 8li. 10s.; 1 Calfe, 1li.; 1 mare & 2 mare Colts, 3li.; 15 sheepe, with theare lambs, 7li. 10s.; 4 swine & 3 pigs, 3li. 5s.; 6 Loads of haye, 6li.; A Beed part Fethers & partt Flockes with 3 Fether pillowes with a bolster & Covering 3li. 10s.; a flock bed with 3 blancitts,1li. 10s.; 20 Bushels of Ingen Corne, 3li.; 15 Bushels of barly, 2li.; 2 bushels of peese, 8s.; 8 Flitches of Bacon, 3li. 10s.; 2 bushels of Ry, 7s.; 30li. of sheeps wooll, 1li. 10s.; 16li. of hempe, 8s.; 10li. of flax, 10s.; Chaines & Fetters & horse Trases, 16s.; Cart & wheles with a Cops & bolt with plow Iornes, 2li.; 3 Boxes For wheeles, 5s.; 6li. wedges, 2s.; axes & hoes, 8s.; 2 hacks & 1 pare of Fiar Tongs, 10s.; 2 Akers of Salt marsh Ground Laying to the Common, 1li.; 3 Iorne pots and a Scellett, 15s.; warming pan, 10s.; a brace Cettell & scellitt, 1li. 10s.; a barrell of a Gun, 3s.; 5 puter platters & an old pott & porrenger, 1li. 2s.; half a barrel of mackrell, 9s.; 10 bushels of Turnups, 10s.; 1 barrell & half of sider, 15s.; 3 spining wheels, 10s.; 2 Chests, 15s.; 20li. of Cheese, 6s. 8d.; 8li. of Cotten yearne, 16s.; woodden dishes & boles & earthen platters, 5s.; 2 old siths & 2 Repe hooks, 4s.; a sider prees & pounding Troff, 1li.; a connew, 10s.; 4 old bibels & sume other books, 18s.; 4 pare of sheets with pillo bears and Tabell clothes, 4li.; 5 yeards of home maide wollen Cloth, 2li.; mony, 3s.; a towell, 1s. 6d.; his best sute of home spun Cloth, 3li.; 2 wascots, a Cote an drawers, 1li. 5s.; his stockens, shewes, & hats, 1li.; 3 shirts & neck clothes, 1li. 10s.; 3 chaires, 5s.; total, 352li. 12s. 2d.
Attested 3: 5m: 1674 by Ellenor, the widow of the deceased. 
Essex County Quarterly Court Files, vol. 22, leaves, 6, 7. pp411-412

The Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts: 1665-1674 (Google eBook) Vol II
Essex Institute, Salem Ma 1917


I was puzzled over what the item "connew" was in the inventory and eventually realized it must mean "canoe".

52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017 WEEK 1:RALPH ELLINGWOOD SR. OF SALEM & BEVERLY, MA. PT1

My 8x great grandfather Ralph Ellinwood/Ellenwood/Ellingwood Sr, arrived on the Truelove in1635,  settled first in Salem, Ma., and later moved to Beverly.He was around 28 years old. Not long after arriving he married his first wife Elizabeth and they had at least one child, a son named Josiah who was baptized in 1644. Between then and 1655 something happened to the family because on 13 March 1655 Ralph married his second wife, Elinor Lynn.and then they proceeded to have eight children, all born at Salem, Ma. :

Stephen, baptized 16 March 1656 .
Ralph, born 18 March 1657 .
John, born 2 July 1659 
Joseph, born 12 May 1662
Mary, born 3 April 1664
Elizabeth, born 27 June 1666
Benjamin, born 1 April  1668
David ,born 6 July 1670

Ralph is one of my favorite ancestors. He testified in the Essex County Quarterly Court that a
neighbor had called hm and his wife Elinor a "bawd and a rogue". He and his son-in-law John
Smith were brought into court for trespassing on a neighbor's farm to steal dung. Our Mom liked
to tease our Dad about that one.

To be continued...

FINDMYPAST FRIDAY RECORDS COLLECTION RELEASES FOR 13 JANUARY 2017

Findmypast has added over 1.5 million new records to its database for this Findmypast
Friday:

BRAND NEW RECORDS:

Yorkshire & Derbyshire Methodist Baptisms
OVER 42,000 RECORDS   
Find out if your ancestor was baptised in a Methodist Church with thousands of records from the Sheffield district. This collection stretches across two counties and covers the years 1795 to 1997.
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Yorkshire & Derbyshire Methodist Marriages
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Explore transcripts of marriage records from the industrial Sheffield area of South Yorkshire covering eight branches of the Methodist Church to discover when, where, and to whom your ancestor was married.
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Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions 1485-2014
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Total records: 43,157
Covering: St Nicholas Church, Chiswick
Discover: Birth year, death year, monument type, inscription, memorial & position reference
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British Newspapers
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New titles:Cricket and Football Field, Lloyd's List & Homeward Mail from India, China and the East
Covering: Sporting news, maritime & shipping news and the history of the British Empire
Discover: News articles, family notices, letters, obituaries, advertisements, and more
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52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2017:AN OVERVIEW

For the 2017 edition of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks I'm going to work om the Ellingwoods and the
and the other families on that branch of my family tree.  I've already written quite a bit on the
Ellingwoods and some of that material will be reused and reexamined as I go along,  but before beginning I thought I'd give a brief overview.

Here's a descent chart from my immigrant ancestor Ralph Ellinwood Sr down to  my 2x great grandfather Asa Freeman Ellingwood:

While my ancestors on my Grandmother Barker's side of the family are all from the areas north and west of Boston, the West and Ellingwood sides have many ancestors from south of Boston in Plymouth County. A large number of them come from Asa Ellingwood's wife, Florilla Dunham.
Despite that Dunham line being predominantly from the Plymouth area, a marriage nearly two hundred years earlier made Asa and Florilla 5th cousins:

There's a lot of things here to cover, and these lines should keep my busy into next year.  I'll be starting off with Ralph Ellinwood Sr., my 8x great grandfather.

FINDMYPAST FRIDAY RECORDS COLLECTION RELEASES FOR 6 JANUARY 2017

Findmypast Fridays kicks off the new year by adding nearly 312,000 new records from England
and Ireland to the Findmpast databases:

BRAND NEW RECORDS

Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers
OVER 227,700 RECORDS   Find out if your Irish relatives had brushes with the law thanks to these new additions that reveal whether your ancestors were witnesses, complainants or defendants, their addresses, dates in court, details of verdicts and sentences.

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ADDITIONAL RECORDS FOR EXISTING SETS

Dorset Memorial Inscriptions
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Total records: 85,868
Covering: Inscriptions taken from gravestones, tombs, monuments and even stained glass windows from around the county
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Warwickshire Burials
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Total records: 1,129,563
Covering: Witton Cemetery (Birmingham) 1987-2011
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Northumberland & Durham Monumental Inscriptions
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Total records: 23,021
Covering: 26 churches & burial grounds in Northumberland & Co. Durham
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Ireland, Society Of Friends (Quaker) Congregational Records
New records: 5,737
Total records: 1,208,254
Covering: Quaker meetings held throughout Ireland from 1600 onwards
Discover: Details about the meetings your ancestor attended and the religious activities they engaged in
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JOHN ENDECOTT PT1

One of my genea-plans for 2017 is to do some blogposts about my 10x great grandfather John Endecott. I discovered Gov. Endecott was my ancestor this past fall, and I have to admit I had mixed feelings about that. I already knew some of  the more unpleasant aspects of his history. Still, he is a fascinating character. Consider these facts:

He was already in Salem, Ma. before the arrival of the Winthrop fleet and was the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Historians believe he was responsible for starting the Pequot War, the first clash between
the New England colonists and the Native Americans.

He was Governor five times during which he often clashed with the English government. He also knew my relatives Roger Conant, Samuel Maverick and Samuel Skeleton

He was a Puritan and persecuted members of other denominations, especially the Quakers, four of whom he executed by hanging.

He is the subject of poems by Whittier and Longfellow, as well as of a short story by Hawthorne. He doesn't come off well in any of them.

There's a lot to write about there, more than just one blogpost. So I'll be doing a series posts about Governor Endecott over the course of the coming year.

I like to joke about how my Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors might be horrified by their Catholic descendant.

I think John Endecott would have a downright conniption.

MY GENEA-PLANS FOR 2017

It took me a few days to come up with my 2017 genea-plans. I wanted to have some specific
new ones for this year along with those I usually make every year. This is what I've decided to
try to do in 2017:


 1. Remember to add more of my ancestors' siblings to the family tree. Most of the ones I need
to work on are in the older colonial families in the 17th and 18th centuries.

2.  Make a better effort to get out to the towns where my ancestors lived  and take photos of their homes and headstones.This will have to wait until the snow and mud seasons are over.

3. Continue reaching my goal of surpassing my previous year's total blogposts on West In New England, and post much more on The Old Colony Graveyard Rabbit(I won't set a goal for OCGR because when I've done it in previous years I usually fail miserably).

4. Keep posting photos of headstones in Mt. Vernon Cemetery to Find A Grave and fill more photo requests. The latter is another activity for after the snow and mud seasons.

5. Stay organized:  Keep putting images  I download into  the folder they belong in immediately,

6. Transcribe more of the documents I haven't done yet.

7. Find and download the wills and probate files of female ancestors.

8.  Research and write up the timeline for my ancestors who were involved in the Colonial New England Indian wars,

9. Finish the series about the "Hot Mess" probate file of ancestor Nathaniel Stowe which I forgot about last May. (Probably because it's such a "hot mess").

10. Get around  to writing  about my ancestor Gov. John Endecott. I keep pushing it aside, I think, because he did somethings that were nasty.

11. Keep whacking away at that John C Cutter brickwall.

12. And finally, as always, keep having fun researching my family tree.