EOGN's Other News

Harriet Paige finds inspiration and mystery in her antique tintypes

The sepia-toned portrait on the wall just inside Harriet Paige's front door catches the eye almost immediately upon entering her home. The young African-American man looks handsome in his derby, bow tie, white shirt and dress coat. His face is clean-shaven, boyish but serious. This is a photo of Paige's father, Nathaniel Mayfield, taken in the first decade of the 20th century when he was in his early 20s.

Other old photographs from the same era line the mantel over her fireplace or hang on opposite walls. Every picture tells a story, and Paige, a retired preschool teacher and Irvine, Calif., schools administrator, wishes she knew more about the people of the past who are ever-present in her home.

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Organizing Family History Records

One of the most common questions I get asked is, how to organize the stacks of paper, certificates, pedigree charts and family group sheets that you collect while doing your family history. Over the 15 years I have been researching my family history, I have developed a method of organization that enables me to always put my hands on the items I am looking for once they have been filed using this system.

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Society Honors Ohio Genealogist for her Life's Work

Elizabeth Cottle has been interested in genealogy all her life, and expanded the time she devoted to it after retiring with her husband to Marietta in the early 1970s. She's written 30 articles on the subject.

Saturday, she was honored by the Washington County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society for her lifetime of achievement in the subject. Mayor Michael Mullen also proclaimed Feb. 26 as Elizabeth Cottle Day in Marietta.

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Genealogists will discover plantation info in boxed set

Pelican Publishing Company has just released a beautiful boxed set of Old Louisiana Plantation Homes and Family Trees by Herman de Bachelle Seebold. Originally published in 1941, this is the definitive guide to the important plantation homes of Louisiana as well as the socially and historically prominent families who lived in them.

This two-volume boxed set contains a wealth of historical, architectural, and genealogical information. Volume 1 features descriptions and rare photographs of houses and plantations, many no longer extant. Some sites included are Ormond, Tezcuco, Evergreen, Waverly and Melrose plantations.

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Old Feliciana, Louisiana Stories shared at Library

Henry Carter remembers walking several miles to the one-room West Feliciana Parish church that also served as a school for black children in the early 1930s, burning through the soles of shoes his sharecropper parents could barely afford.
"There were buses for school, but not for us," he said.

Carter grew up on the Postelwaite Plantation near Cornor, his parents picking crops for a combined $1.15 per day.

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Finding one's family tree is quickly becoming a new trend for many

Finding one's family tree is quickly becoming a new trend for many on the Central Coast. Now, with the use of DNA, finding one's roots can include giving specimens to medical laboratories, rather than just following an endless paper trail of library and courthouse documents. The DNA gathered is used to determine where people came from and who else has the same lineage.

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Boston has real baggage, and soon a place to put it

As an assistant archivist with Boston's City Archives, in the Archives and Records Management Division of the city clerk's office, she retrieves, researches, and records documents that date to the city's birth. Ask Swett about Boston's first volume of city records, about passenger lists from ships arriving here during the Irish Famine, or about a 1777 John Hancock letter that denied Charlestown residents compensation for homes ravaged during the Battle of Bunker Hill, and she quickly points out their locations amid shelves and cartons at The Hemenway School in Hyde Park, the city's Archive Central.

But there's one thing she and other city archivists have a hard time finding here: space.

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Morgan Genealogical Society seeking family Bible records

Decades ago, the only recordings of births, marriages and deaths were scripted in family Bibles. The Morgan County (Alabama) Genealogical Society is seeking to help preserve and share this information. The society is collecting records for a forthcoming publication, according to Dene Walls, treasurer.

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Familial story

People obsessed with researching their family tree often get hooked by some kind of initial genealogical high - a half-told story about crazy Uncle Walter at a family reunion, or a long-forgotten letter discovered in a dusty old trunk. For Nancy Battick, the hook was a tintype of two young men in Civil War uniforms.

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Record of Generations

JIA Pu, records of genealogy (or family tree books), also called Zu Pu, are significant in the history of the Chinese people.  Jia Pu are records of a clan’s history and lineage that also express the worship of ancestors. Jia Pu contain entries on the migration of people and social evolution.

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