Thursday, December 1, 2016

Searching the FREE MyHeritage "Compilation of Published Sources" Collection

Over the past year or so, I have been searching the "Compilation of Published Sources" collection,  with over 447,000 books and manuscripts, for articles about my ancestors.  This collection is FREE for every researcher to use - you don't have to have a MyHeritage subscription.

I could review the Record Matches that MyHeritage provides from this collection - I have over 11,000 Record Matches for this collection that apply to some of the 40,000 persons in my MyHeritage tree.  I find this difficult because there are over 500 pages of matches to look through, and there are many similar results for a specific person.

It's far easier, for this collection, to search for records using the MyHeritage SuperSearch on the "Compilation of Published Sources"  search page.

Today, I decided to search for articles about my 5th great-grandfather, Jonathan White (1732-1804) of Dartmouth, Massachusetts.  I used a search for First Name = jonathan, Last Name = white, and Keyword = dartmouth.  The keyword helps filter out stories for Jonathan Whites who did not live in Dartmouth.

One of the matches found was from the book The Old Dartmouth Historical Sketches, 1910:




The article of interest is the one on the right-hand side of the first image above - "Dr. Handy House, Westport," which ends on the second image.  The transcription of this article is:

Dr. Handy House, Westport
This house is located a short distance west of the Hix Bridge, at the northwest corner of the road leading to Westport Point and in 1904 was owned by a descendant of the famous Dr. Handy.
The land was originally set off to George Cadman, and that farm extended from the river west and included the Quaker meeting house, cemetery, and town house at Central village.
George Cadman's only child was Elizabeth, who married William White of Rochester.  Thus the name Cadman in this branch of the family disappeared from Dartmouth, but the numerous descendants by the name of White in that part of New England all trace their lineage back to Elizabeth Cadman.  They were married about 1714, and this property was placed at their disposal by George Cadman, and in his will, probated in 1729, was devised to William White and wife.
1794.  Jonathan White to Humphrey White.
1794.  Humphrey White, to Eli Handy, physician, and the house has remained in the Handy family since that date.
From an exterior view the impression might be gained that this house was originally built for a tavern or a road house, but the observer would scarcely discover that it was constructed at the separate dates covering 120 years.  This clearly appears by an interior examination.
The two front doors divide the house into three sections, forming six rooms on the lower floor and the same number on the second.  Beginning at the east end it will be observed that here is a heavy summer parallel to the end of the house extending through both rooms, and in the second story the heavy corner-posts are bracketed.  In the middle section there is no summer and the part of the corner-posts projecting into the room somewhat insignificant; while in the west rooms the summer and corner-posts have entirely disappeared.  In the east part a significant feature is the bracing from corner-post to girder, as shown in the interior.  In the east part the edges of all timbers chamfered.
The evidence is satisfactory to indicate that the east end was the original house; but it was built in 1714 to 16; that it had a west chimney which provided a fire-place for all the rooms; that about 1730 the owner desired to build a west addition, and that it became necessary to remove the original chimney and build the present east chimney; that Dr. Handy in 1821 built the west third of the house.
The house was purchased by Abbott P. Smith in 1911 and he has done much to restore the house to its original condition.  H.B.W.
The article provides clues to the location of this house, the layout of the house, and modification to the house over almost 200 years.  It's essentially a house history and description.

The source citation for this article is:

Henry B. Worth, "The Handy House, Westport," Old Dartmouth Historical Sketches, 1910 (Old Dartmouth Historical Society), No. 36: pages 9-10; accessed on MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com) in "Compilation of Published Sources" collection.

I perused more pages in this collection (there are 1130 images), and found much more information about some of my Dartmouth, Massachusetts ancestral families.

This book was digitized by the Internet Archive from a hard copy in the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  The MyHeritage OCR seems superior to the Internet Archive OCR, which enables better searching.  The MyHeritage match page includes a text transcription from the page, although I transcribed the article above myself.

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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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2 comments:

AC said...

Wow! 40000 individuals! So far, I have ZERO hits on the publications, but several on MyHeritage's own records, plus links to my own entries on FamilySearch, for which MyHertiage wants me to pay for a subscription to MyHeritage in order to link to the free FamiySearch entries. YMMV.

Michigan Girl said...

Randy. I've never used this source. I don't use My Heritage, but will certainly check for information. I've used Internet Archive a lot and downloaded quite a few books.
As always thanks for the excellent information.