Friday, August 27, 2010

Confessions of a Name Collector - Adding Families to my Database

After the rather depressing realization that I had all of those poor Sources in my database for hundreds of 16th and 17th century English families (see Confessions of a Name Collector - English Sources), I have had an enjoyable three hours adding information to my database from scholarly publications whose veracity I trust.

My pile of "to be entered into the database" was reduced today by addition of the information in these sources today (names, dates, places, relationships, a summary of the publication and family):

* Richard L. Bush, "English Ancestry of Bennet Hodsoll, First Wife of Edmond Freeman of Sandwich, Massachusetts," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 164, Number 2 (April 2010), Pages 104-111.

* Jan Porter and Daniel F. Stramara, Jr., "The Origin of Gabriel Whelden of Yarmouth and Malden, Massachusetts," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 163, Number 4 (October 2009), Pages 253-261.

* Jane Fletcher Fiske, "The English Background of Richard Kent Sr. and Stephen Kent of Newbury, Massachusetts, and Mary, Wife of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 162, Number 4 (October 2010), Pages 245-254; Volume 163, Number 1 (January 2009), Pages 51-65.

* Eugene Cole Zubrinsky, "The Immigration and Marriage of William Carpenter of Amesbury, Wiltshire, and Providence, Rhode Island," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 164, Number 1 (January 2010), Pages 36-40.

* John Insley Coddington and Maclean W. Maclean, "The Blossom Family of Cambridgeshire, England, and New England," The American Genealogist, Volume 63, Number 2 (April 1988), Pages 65-77.

These articles are all from scholarly sources that have excellent research summaries, significant family history items like will and land records, and citations to original sources. I will never be able to duplicate the research performed by these researchers in the years I have left.

My hope is that by posting the citations for these articles that other researchers may find them using search engines and be lead to the article that might help them. It's sort of like paying it forward, and giving credit to those that have done the work.

Now don't worry about my doomy comments recently, there are no medical problems, knock on wood! I'm just thinking that my life expectancy is about 10 years and I'd rather do something other than turn microfilm reels in unreadable English parish registers.

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