10:30 AM EST    Socializing
  10:45 AM EST    Business meeting

  11:00 AM EST    Presentation

 

 

 

You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send your DNA test away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity.

 

Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” Welcome to the age of home genetic testing.

 

The Lost Family delves into the many lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests—a technology that represents the end of family secrets. So much can come out when you use biology to find out “the truth”:

In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story.

 

Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than 30 million people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to that question is more important than ever. Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject. (Amazon Review)

 

 

We are told to collect the family stories while we can. Once you collect  your family stories, you need to verify the facts.  Of course  you first check the vital records, census reports and then move onto probate, religious, immigration/naturalization/passenger lists, land, military, court records.  Using the case of the Richardson family stories, we look at some other sources to use when searching to verify the given information.

 

 

  9:00 AM EST    Library opens

  9:30 AM EST    Socializing
  9:45 AM EST    Business meeting

10:00 AM EST    Presentation

 

 

The in-person location is:

 

Gale Free Library

23 Highland St

Holden, MA

 

Second floor program room, accessible via stairs and elevator

The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. John Kaag’s American Bloods is the account of a remarkable American family, of its participation in the making of a nation, and of how its members embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, Kaag follows eight members of this family from the British Civil Wars in the seventeenth century through the founding of the colonies, the American Revolution, transcendentalism, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and the rise of first-wave feminism, all the way to the beginning of the twentieth century.

 

The Bloods were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with everyone from Emerson and Thoreau to John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” an original untamed spirit that would recede in the making of America but would never be extinguished entirely. American Bloods is an enduring reminder of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States, and a composite portrait of America like no other. (Amazon Review)

 

 

 

Investigating a family legend of a possible Secret Service Agent led to fascinating unexpected stories and documents.  The asking of questions and the resulting follow-up can be applied to others’ searches behind the fantastical stories your own families might have told.  We will look at leads that would be useful to the  descendants of not only the secret service agent, but also to those of the criminal or even the landlady involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notarial records are an essential yet often overlooked resource for family historians researching ancestors with roots in Quebec from marriages to estate inventories to labor contracts these records can provide a wealth of genealogical information not found elsewhere. Join us to learn about what types of notarial records exist, how to access them, and how to get the most out of these important resources.

 

Rhonda R McClure, senior genealogist is a nationally recognized professional genealogist and lecturer. Before joining American Ancestors/NEHGS in 2006, she ran her own genealogical business for 18 years.  She was a contributing editor for Heritage Quest magazine, Biography magazine, and was a contributor to the History Channel magazine and American History magazine. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of 12 books including the award-winning the Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Genealogy, Finding our Famous and Infamous Ancestors, and Digitizing Your Family History. She is also the editor of the recently released 6th edition of the Genealogist Handbook for New England Research. Her areas of expertise includes immigration and naturalization, late 19th and early 20th century urban research, New England, Midwest, southern German, Italian, Scottish, Irish, French Canadian, and New Brunswick research.

 

 

 

SOMERSET PUBLIC LIBRARY
1464 County Street
Somerset, MA 02726
 
Business Meeting   11:00-11:30 am
Member Sharing     11:30-11:55 am
Presentation Begins at Noon. 
 
This program is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
For more information contact: bristol@msoginc.org
Schedule of Events Available at: https://msoginc.org
 
Those who wish to attend virtually, can pre-register at https://tinyurl.com/BristolMay2025

 

King Philip's War--one of America's first and costliest wars--began in 1675 as an Indian raid on several farms in Plymouth Colony, but quickly escalated into a full-scale war engulfing all of southern New England.

 

At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American schoolchildren have long learned about Squanto, the welcoming Native who made the First Thanksgiving possible, but his story goes deeper than the holiday legend. Born in the Wampanoag-speaking town of Patuxet in the late 1500s, Squanto was kidnapped in 1614 by an English captain, who took him to Spain. From there, Englishmen brought him to London and Newfoundland before sending him home in 1619, when Squanto discovered that most of Patuxet had died in an epidemic. A year later, the Mayflower colonists arrived at his home and renamed it Plymouth.
 
Prize-winning historian Andrew Lipman explores the mysteries that still surround Squanto: How did he escape bondage and return home? Why did he help the English after an Englishman enslaved him? Why did he threaten Plymouth’s fragile peace with its neighbors? Was it true that he converted to Christianity on his deathbed? Drawing from a wide range of evidence and newly uncovered sources, Lipman reconstructs Squanto’s upbringing, his transatlantic odyssey, his career as an interpreter, his surprising downfall, and his enigmatic death. The result is a fresh look at an epic life that ended right when many Americans think their story begins. (Amazon Review)

 

 

From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior―such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce―no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans’ life lacked drama. By turns overwhelming, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the Nolans’ daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life―from “junk day” on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that "cuts right to the heart of life," hails the New York Times. "If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experience." (Amazon Review)