Winter 2025 Issue of American Ancestors Magazine Now Available
This issue of American Ancestors focuses on heraldry with articles on how heraldic arms and imagery are represented in a range of historic art and artifacts, including Boston tombstones and Scotland’s Lyon Register. In addition, author Suzanne Clary examines the life of one of the men enslaved, and later freed, by the family of Founding Father John Jay. Email us to share your thoughts on the issue! American Ancestors magazine is a benefit of membership. Join American Ancestors today to receive this and other great membership benefits. View Now
Today, we mourn the loss of Robert Charles Anderson, FASG (1944–2025), a monumental figure in genealogy and a dear friend to American Ancestors. With the support of our institution, Bob launched his Great Migration Study Project in 1988 and dedicated over thirty-five years to documenting the lives of the immigrants who came to New England between 1620 to 1640. Bob’s work in uncovering and disseminating the stories of these early settlers profoundly reshaped our understanding of New England’s past and enriched the studies and lives of countless descendants, researchers, and historians.
Bob’s legacy lives on through his prolific work, which includes fifteen Great Migration books and twenty-five volumes of the Great Migration Newsletter. Beyond his scholarly achievements, Bob was a gifted educator whose tours, lectures, and online courses captivated thousands. His passion for history and genealogy, coupled with his generosity in sharing knowledge, has left an indelible impact on our field and on all who had the privilege of working with him.
Upcoming Hybrid Author Event, March 5
Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy, author Jeffrey Boutwell with Robert D. Putnam
Venture back to the 19th century to meet the statesmen and abolitionists who fought alongside Presidents for racial and economic equality in our country. Chief among them was George Boutwell from Massachusetts, a right-hand man to Lincoln, whose “brittle Yankee personality” knocked him from the historical narrative (Wall Street Journal). Hear from Boutwell relative and biographer Jeffrey Boutwell. Join the live audience at our Boston headquarters or virtually via Zoom. Learn More
From American Ancestors
Free Download: Getting Started with Irish Research
Our FREE Guide To Getting Started with Irish Research will provide you with the tools and knowledge you need to embark on a genealogical journey to the Emerald Isle.
How can a person born in Puerto Rico be considered a citizen of Denmark? Genealogist Christopher Child untangles a complex web of politics and history to explain how one family became naturalized as U.S. citizens, and the path they took to get there. Read More
The Weekly Genealogist Survey
This Week's Survey:
Family Documents, Photographs, and Artifacts Relating to Funerals or Mourning
Share your thoughts about the survey!Please limit submissions to 150 words or fewer. Your submission may be featured in an upcoming newsletter or shared on social media; please note in your email if you do not want your story to be shared. Published responses may be edited for clarity and length.
Cathleen Babineau Hargreaves, Center Sandwich, New Hampshire: My grandparents Henry G. Sokop and Jane F. Maloney were married June 26, 1937, in Troy, New York. They immediately moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where they raised six children. They were devoted to each other. My Grammy died eight days before their sixty-sixth anniversary. Grandpa died less than two months later.
Carol Austin, Garden Grove, California: My great-grandparents Charles and Ora (Hebard) Grayum were married more than fifty years before Charles’s death in 1944. My husband and I will celebrate our seventieth anniversary in June.
Barbara Conner, Auburn, Michigan: My great-grandparents William and Carrie (Barnhart) Porter were married October 25, 1887, in Cedar County, Iowa, where they spent their lives. William and Carrie loved to fish and did so almost daily on the east branch of the West Nishnabotna River. They passed their love of fishing to their children and grandchildren. I believe that fishing helped them live long and calm lives. They were married for sixty-seven years. William died at age 92 and Carrie at age 96.
Cyndy Richardson, Barneveld, New York: My 3rd great-grandparents Justus Ackley (b. 1771) and Catherine Devoe (b. 1791) were married May 24, 1806. On February 24, 1874, the Rome [NY] Sentinel reported that “the venerable pair” was “probably the oldest [couple] in Oneida county.” Catherine died April 26, 1874, and Justus followed on May 22—just two days short of what would have been their sixty-eighth anniversary.
Carol Hannan, Brockport, New York: My grandparents Roy and Margaret (Rich) Hannan were married for seventy-two years. They both had difficult childhoods. Margaret’s father was an abusive drinker who abandoned Margaret after her mother died of tuberculosis when Margaret was sixteen. Roy contracted polio as a child. He was a young boy when his father died, and his mother went to work to support the family. Together, Roy and Margaret survived the Great Depression and World War II and built a family. They were separated only by Roy’s death.
Diane (Blakely) Saulnier, Fruita, Colorado: My parents, Harvey K. Blakely and Josephine Peoples, met in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on July 8, 1927. They eloped to Nantucket nine days later. They were married for fifty-nine years until my Dad's passing in August 1986.
Spotlight: Digital Archive of the James V. Brown Library, Pennsylvania
by Valerie Beaudrault
The city of Williamsport is located in central Pennsylvania. It is the seat of Lycoming County. The James V. Brown Library has made a number of resources available in its Digital Archive. The collection comprises more than 664,000 pages from forty-seven newspapers including Grit (1907-1983), Daily Gazette and Bulletin (1869-1909), The Williamsport Sun (1900-1922), Gazette and Bulletin (1901-1922), Sunday Grit (1884-1990) and The Muncy Luminary and Lycoming County Advertiser (1844-1922). There are eleven additional databases that include Williamsport city directories, vital statistics, funeral home records, and real estate tax records. The database can be searched by keyword or browsed. Search Now
Database News
Update: Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts Supplemental Membership Applications, 1560-1970
We are happy to announce that the “Supplemental Applications” volume has been added to this database. This update contains 12,400 pages, 136,123 records, and 324,844 names. This database provides records that include the applicant’s name, their colonial ancestor, and the birth, marriage, and death information for each generation of descendants on the application. In addition, the membership numbers for the state and the general society are displayed. This database is available to Individual-level and above American Ancestors members only. Search Now
As a family historian, you know that wills are important in your research—but have you created a will for yourself? Free Will, an easy and free online will creation tool, will guide you step-by-step through identifying beneficiaries for your assets, supporting the causes that are important to you, and planning for the preservation of your research. Learn More
