Preserving the News from Home

I married a first generation American.  He is the only member of his family to live here in the United States, everyone else lives in Spain or Puerto Rico.  I remember years ago we used to write to family members because a long distance phone call to Spain was so expensive.  Later, the prices of the phone calls dropped and we could call more often.  In the 1990s we started emailing, and in the last few years we've used messaging and Facebook.  For the past year or two we have used Skype to make a video call to my mother-in-law.  Skype is free so we are able to do this almost every morning before my husband goes to work.  What changes I've seen in the past thirty years of our marriage!

While researching my family tree, I've seen many changes in correspondence over the centuries.  My background is almost all English, and most of my ancestors arrived in New England with the Great Migration, before 1640 with the Puritans.  I have no surviving letters, but there is evidence of correspondence in court records and town histories.  Some of these ancestors even traveled back and forth from England to Massachusetts many times.  At least one died on a voyage back to England when the ship disappeared (Reverend Thomas Mayhew (about 1620 – November 1657)).    How did the family, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, learn about this loss? 

I’m sure that many immigrants never heard from their families again once they arrived in America.  But we can’t be sure of that, can we?  My ancestor, Peter Hoogerzeil (1803 – 1889), stowed away on a Rotterdam, Netherlands ship to come to America in the 1820s.  He married the ship captain’s daughter.  How do I know this? Because of letters he wrote home to his family in the Netherlands.  Since he was a mariner, he traveled back and forth to the Netherlands very often, and his letters survived into the 20^th century.  

My uncle served in occupied Europe after World War II.  When he was in the Netherlands he dropped in to visit his Hogerzeil cousins in Dordrect.  They welcomed him with open arms, over 100 years after Peter Hoogerzeil left Dordrect, because of the family correspondence that went on over all those years. 

2nd from left, Uncle "Buddy" Joseph Gilman Allen, 

in Dordrect, Netherlands with Hogerzeil cousins

In the 1824 in Boston, Massachusetts my 4^th great grand aunt, Mary Lambert Jones (1803 – 1889) married Captain John Dominis, a ship captain.  They decided to remove from Boston and from Schenectady, New York to Honolulu, Hawaii in the 1830s.  The correspondence between Mary and her sisters and family in Boston was carefully preserved in the Hawaii State Archives.  Most of this correspondence is spread out over the last forty years of her life, after the death of her husband in 1846, at sea.

Can you imagine how long it took for letters to arrive from Hawaii to Boston in the 1840s and 1850s?  There was no formal postal system, and letters were given to ships sailing to New England on an honor system.  Even so, I’m not sure when the first news of the death of Captain Dominis reached the family.  I did find this newspaper clipping dated 24 May 1847 from the Salem Register.    The ship had disappeared four or five months earlier.  

I wonder if letters from home were accepted joyfully?  Or were they dreaded because such rare and infrequent correspondence probably carried news from home of who had died since the last letter, or who was ill, or who had disappeared at sea (it was a family of mariners).   Some of the letters to Mary Dominis were from her sisters asking her to return to Boston, but she only came home once after she was widowed, and she died in Hawaii in 1889.  Here is one from her niece in Boston written in 1848, shortly after she was widowed. 

                                          Dorchester  Aug. 13^th 1848

Dear Cousin

I found looking over my letters the other day

that I am in debt to you for two.  I thought that I must

do my best to pay you by writing to you this opportunity

I am at Aunt Agnes’ visiting they have a very pleasant

place near Granite Bridge the house is old fashioned

but very good the fireplaces about two yard long wide

and a yard and a half long the panes of glass in the

windows about as large as a sheet of note paper.

I suppose that you have almost set up business for your

self.  How do you like the house  I should like to see it

very much as I understand it is the handsomest on

the Island.  Sarah Ann is in Boston visiting I suppose

she will write to you this opportunity  we miss her

and the children very much she has two very pretty

little girls  I know that you long to see them.

Aunt Lee has left Charter St. at last and gone to

Bridgewater to live they have quite a farm I believe

keep cows hens etc.  Uncle William and Aunt Agnes send

love to your mother and she will write if she has

time but she has such a family that if the vessel

sails tomorrow she will not be able to. Do you… 

Later in the 1800s letters were carried to Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands) with more frequency, and they tended to be light hearted and chatty, such as this one below from San Francisco in 1865 to Mary Dominis from her eight year old niece:

                  San Francisco, Jan. 22th, 1865

Dear Auntie,

I have got your letter,

you told me to tell you what I got on

Christmas, I got a doll, it was dressed like

redriding hood, a little wash tub and board,

a pair of gloves, a basket, and a pair of

gold sleeve buttons.  Mama has had a fire

ever since she has been here.  Mama has

a blue silk, with tails way down to the

bottom of her dress.  Mrs. Chase sent us

some pictures of our house.  On Saturday

I went to the circus.  We go to ride almost

every day.  I go to school.  I love some

friends boarding here.  Give my love

to Lydia, Jhon, Tom and Willie.

            Good bye from Annie B. Aldrich

Do you have letters from your immigrant ancestors? Or from your ancestors who removed from one city to another, perhaps moving West across the United States?

With the advent of the telephone, internet and video calling, how do we preserve these conversations now?

Pearl Harbor Memories

Disasters can be great prompts for family history interviews. Many years ago, when my daughter was in high school, she used Pearl Harbor Day as the basis for interviewing some of the older members of our family.  After this we also did some interviews based around the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), the Kennedy Assassination (22 November 1963), and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.  Perhaps other infamous historical events can be used as similar interview prompts in other countries.

The USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor

The American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese on 7 December 1941, a day President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed “… a date that shall live in infamy.”   This was over 70 years ago, so very few relatives will be able to remember this date.  Here are the transcribed notes my daughter made:

"Where were you when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and what was your reaction?"

Phyllis (age 67 years at the time of the interview): I remember that day because I was six years old and the only thing I remember about it really is my mother crying because my brother was..., I had five brothers and the oldest one was sixteen I think at the time... and she knew that he was going to have to go to war. That really upset my mother. [Two of her five brothers ended up in the service; one in the Pacific and the other in Occupied Europe]

Shirley (age 76 years at the time at the time of the interview): I remember that. I was standing in the kitchen, ironing, I was ironing a blouse, getting ready to go to church. I heard the news, and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't absorb what it actually meant to me. It really didn't all sink in until later, but then I heard Kate Smith coming on and singing “God Bless America.” And standing there crying my eyes out as I ironed, because it was so touching. I was beginning to realize what it was going to mean to the country.

Robert (age 77 years at the time of this interview, he has since passed away): I was listening to a football game at my house on 7 Dearborn Avenue [Beverly, Massachusetts]. I was about your age, in high school. And my reaction was “Japan? Attacking us? We’ll have them wiped out by Christmas time.”

Shirley: At the time.... I’m a nurse. And I was taking care of a lady whose father was the ambassador to Japan. At the time of the war, before, and during the war. And Ambassador Grew, his name was, from Manchester (MA), and he was... She showed me lots of papers and things that he had written about what he claims in writing. And they showed me a copy of the letter, the family owns. That he had told the president, that Japan was about to do something, he didn’t know that Pearl Harbor was actually going to happen, but it was going to be Pearl Harbor. But he knew because of his position, and contacts, that there was about to be some sort of a war with Japan, and he was ignored completely. When he went and had an interview, I saw the letter that he wrote to the president, Roosevelt, and told him what was happening, and what steps he thought should be taken. Because, perhaps, president Roosevelt was old and ill at the time, he wasn’t using good judgment and he never furthered that information on. And then Pearl Harbor happened.

[See this link to a Wikipedia article about US Ambassador Joseph Grew (1880 – 1965),  who was interned by the Japanese following the Pearl Harbor attack  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew ]

Note: I still have the audio tapes of my daughter’s interviews. I remember she was very serious about the assignment, since September 11th, 2001 was only just two years earlier during her first week of high school.  This is especially memorable because my uncle has passed away since the interview. My aunt, uncle and Mom spoke for over an hour about the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and the home front during World War II. By the end of the World War II, my uncle Robert was serving as a paratrooper medic in Europe.

About ten years later I was able to take my mother to Hawaii with me, and one of the places she most wanted to visit was Pearl Harbor.  It was fun taking her to see the sights, and very moving to visit the USS Arizona with her and to hear more of her memories of that time period in history.  The museum at Pearl Harbor had some wonderful exhibits of the war and of the home front.  Visiting museums like this with your parents and grandparents can lead to lots of great family history memories. 

Vincent and I at Pearl Harbor with Mom, 2012

Planning a long distance research trip

Several years ago I was lucky enough to plan and carry out a successful research genealogy research trip to Honolulu, Hawaii.  We live on the East Coast of the United States, and it is a long, long distance to Hawaii.  It was also my first trip to Honolulu, so I knew that I would have to plan some fun time for my husband and I.  It can be difficult to balance work and play during a genealogy trip, and an exotic locale like Honolulu makes the balancing act even more difficult.  I hope these tips help you plan a similar trip!  They worked so well for me that we repeated our Hawaii genealogy trip again last year.

I had been writing, emailing and using online resources for a long time to research my extended family in Hawaii.  My 4x great aunt had removed to Honolulu from Boston in the 1830s.  I had spent 20 years researching our connection to these Hawaiian pioneers.  By this time I had exhausted all the snail mail and email contacts I had made.  It was time for personal research time in the Hawaii State Archives, the Bishop Museum Library, and the cemeteries.  It was also time to walk in the footsteps of my great aunt and cousins, and I was looking forward to seeing their homes, churches, and (of course!) the island where they all decided to stay instead of returning to Massachusetts.

My recommendations...

#1- Appointments- don't leave anything up to chance

When planning a long distance research trip to a new place, it is important to schedule all your research day and to make specific appointments.  I made appointments to meet in person with all the people who had been helping me via email, including librarians, archivists, curators and cousins.  We made one major appointment for each morning, and decided that the rest of the day would be used for additional research or for just relaxing.  We had only one week, so cousins were scheduled for weekends when libraries and archives would be closed.  This worked out well.

Scheduling appointments also meant that I could ask "Will your archive be open until noon that day?" or "May I search your files until 5pm?".  Even if the website for a repository says it will be open, you never know about local holidays, staff vacations, or budgetary closures until you ask the staff right up front if their place will be open on the exact day you wish to be there.

#2-  Don't bring too much stuff!

Extra suitcases can cost from $50 to more than $150 depending where you are going, and paper can weigh a lot.  Nowadays your suitcase is limited to 50 pounds, or less if you are overseas.  I had to digitize as much as possible and download everything to my mobile devices, Evernote or flash drives.

If you collect things (papers, brochures, books, documents) along the way, consider mailing or shipping them home.  There was a US Post Office right across the street from the Hawaii State Archives in Honolulu.  I bought several "If it fits, It ships" boxes (for $10 they will mail whatever you can cram into the box).  Fortunately for me, Hawaii is part of the United States, so this was a real bargain.  Shipping can be expensive, but not as expensive as an overweight suitcase, or the price of an additional suitcase on the plane.

#3 - Involve the family.

We had a research plan that involved both my husband and I at the Hawaii State Archives.  I was in charge of getting the documents from the archivist, and he was in charge of photographing as much as possible from each file or box.  I decided I wouldn't sit and read, I would look at the digitized images later.  We were able to photograph nearly a thousand personal letters in one afternoon.  I placed them on the table and he photographed each one, and then I'd pick them up and repeat the process.  After I was home I found that nearly 2/3 of these letters were of genealogical interest to my family, written from Boston and New England to the Hawaiian islands between the 1850s and 1910.

Other than making a family member your personal photographer (not just for documents, but for scenes inside and out), consider a "personal assistant" who can not only navigate maps to each archive and library, but who can find a good place nearby for lunch, and a great beach on the way back to the hotel.  My daughter was our navigator during a different research trip to Nova Scotia, and she found at least two great side trips for each day that were always on our way between scheduled appointments, and she was great at finding a fantastic restaurant for the end of each busy day.

#4- Use your contacts!

It was great to meet "in person" with archivists and curators I had only met virtually online before the trip.  They were also very useful in helping me to get appointments with other people once I was on the ground in Honolulu.  I met several new genealogists, and also visited several other historic homes that I did not know about until I was there.  Don't be shy about asking about taking photos where they usually aren't permitted if this is a home from your own family tree!  The worst they can say is "no."

#5- Remember the climate and geography

Hawaii is a lot more humid and hot than where I live in New Hampshire.  Remember that items you bring home may be moldy or mildewed.  (We had this experience bringing home old family photos from Puerto Rico).  If a family member gives you an artifact, how will you get it home? We had a family member give us an old cast iron pot in Spain. Luckily it fit in the suitcase in the days before they instituted the 50 pound weight limit on planes! This would definitely take some different planning to get home today.

 Even though Hawaii looks like a small island, crossing to the other side might take a lot longer than you think due to mountain roads or small town traffic.  It is good to ask your contacts ahead of time how long they think it will take to get to their museum/house/library from your hotel.

#6 - Bring gifts

It is nice to present those who helped you in the past, or those who are about to help you, with a small gift from home.  Try to think of something from your hometown that is part of your local culture.  We usually bring small bottles of locally made maple syrup for librarians and archivists. This goes a long way towards breaking the ice in case you need to contact them again after you get home.  You never know if you will need more documentation in the future.

For meeting up with "new" cousins, something from your own family is nice- photos or a family tree chart showing your kinship are usually highly appreciated.  Don't forget to follow up with thank you cards and letters.  At Christmas and New Years I send back group photos of our cousins or our trip to the archives and museums, which is a nice way to stay in touch.

Hello from New Hampshire, USA

Hello!  My name is Heather Wilkinson Rojo.  I've lived for 30 years in New Hampshire, and  I grew up in Beverly, Massachusetts where many of my ancestors lived since the 1630s. I also spent my school years in central Massachusetts in the adorably quintessential New England town of Holden.   I had one set of 5^th great grandparents who were married there in Holden, in the same church where my husband and were married.  Centuries of my ancestors were baptized in the Congregational church in Beverly, where I was baptized, too.

Four years ago I started a blog called Nutfield Genealogy, named for the original grant of land where the first Ulster Presbyterians first settled in 1719.  They renamed it Londonderry in honor of the county in Northern Ireland where they came from.  Their pastor, Reverend James MacGregor of Aghadowey, brought his flock of Scots Irish settlers to Nutfield, and I've learned a lot about them over the past 30 years.  I even learned that I had two Scots Irish minister ancestors, too, but they were in Massachusetts.

I started doing genealogy as a young teen in Holden.  I didn't know any of my ancestors, nor did my parents.  The lucky thing about starting my genealogy young was that I was able to interview my grandparents and their siblings.  My grandmother remembered her grandfather, who was in the Civil War!  I took a few genealogy classes, but I was already hooked on family history. 

In the past 35 years or so I have found a dozen Mayflower ancestors,  several ancestors hung as witches in Salem in 1692, traveled to Europe, Nova Scotia and Hawaii for research, read tons of books, and squinted at miles of microfilm.  I have pages and pages of notes, and many terabits of information and images saved.  It’s now time to take all that information and write up the stories.

Blogging is the perfect platform for a beginning writer.  You need only post a few paragraphs each day.  You can skip days and no one will care, but your followers will care enough to bug you if you take too much time off.  Cousin connections and collaborations with other researchers happen automatically, often by pure serendipity as soon as your blog posts appear in search engines.  All this has happened by luck, even without any planned “cousin bait” blog posts.   

As I write about my New England ancestors, I find deep connections to the area where I live.  It is impossible to drive far without seeing an ancestor’s surname on a street sign or in a cemetery.  Weddings and funerals of friends and relatives are often at churches where my ancestors were married, or in burial grounds where they are interred, too.  After nearly 400 years in just a few counties of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine I feel rooted in time and history.  But I often think about those voyages across the Atlantic from Europe in the 1600s, and of connecting to my roots abroad.

On the other hand, I married a first generation American.  When I visit his parents’ villages in Spain I feel a deeper connection.  My father-in-law was baptized in a church built over 1200 years ago, and  generations of his family lived in that same spot.  My mother-in-law came from a military family on the border with Portugal where for hundreds, maybe thousands of years the political borders moved back and forth but the people stayed in place as the names of the villages changed.  It truly gives me a feeling that all our family histories go back millenniums as we all get our DNA results and find we are connected.  Even my very British New England Yankee family shares haplogroup H with my Spanish mother-in-law.  Perhaps many millenniums ago we were cousins?

And so according to our Ancestry.com DNA results, my husband has more British ancestry than me, and I have more Iberian ancestry than him.  He has more Irish ancestry than I do, and where did I get Viking DNA? 

That is worldwide genealogy!