Waking the Tree
If my people are your people too, welcome!
This is a collection of translations, transcriptions and histories that I’ve generated over many years of research. The people I write about are little people, working people, often women – the ones you wouldn’t read about in school.
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New England Heretics
Six of my ancestors emmigrated to the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1633. Within 5 years, all of them would be exiled for heresy.
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Smiths of Euxton
This tracks the English Catholic line of the Smiths in Lancashire back to 1823. It’s hard to go back any further in a country where being a Catholic could get you executed – record keeping was dangerous.
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John J. Costello of Newark
My great-grandfather, John J. Costello, was a blacksmith born in Connecticut probably in June of 1871. He moved to Newark, NJ sometime in early childhood and lived there until he died there at the age of 35 from kidney failure.
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Elizabeth Irene Wiggans
My grandmother, Elizabeth Irene Wiggans was born on the 16th of April, 1916, in the back bedroom of 290 Peshine Ave, Newark, NJ. She was named ‘Elizabeth’ after her mother but to her father, she would always be ‘Lovey’. Everyone else called her Irene.
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Margrietje Gillissen had a farm in Manhattan
All Dutch era maps of Manhattan record the names of men. I found Margrietge’s farm by geolocating the men named in her deed as neighbors. Her farm was across the road from the New York Stock Exchange.
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Did we have a farm in Ireland?
As a kid, I remember thinking that my grandfather’s family owned a farm called ‘Moyaver’ in a place called ‘Armoy’ – – but none of that turns out to be true. Here’s what’s true…