Readers may notice the frequent citations to “Massachusetts, Town Vital Collections,” on Ancestry.com in the Dunbar article in this issue. This is the title Ancestry.com has given to the Holbrook Collection of Massachusetts Vital Records, which Jay Mack Holbrook published on microfiche for most Massachusetts towns. Not all towns have been posted on Ancestry.com; a status report can be obtained via links on the search page. Very few libraries have a full set of the Holbrook Collection; for example, NEHGS purchased the microfiche only for a number of the towns for which there were no published vital records to 1850.
Now one can search the entire Holbrook Collection at one time, and see images of the original records (as well as transcripts, in some cases). While the microfiche often had indexes, they were limited to that town.
Our experience with the Dunbar article was that: (1) Deaths were in the Holbrook Collection or in the state vital records from 1841 on, but not always in both places; (2) Some marriages were in both places and had the same information; (3) The Holbrook Collection was particularly useful for Boston marriages, intentions, and deaths; and (4) The published town vital records were accurate, but occasionally there were benefits in seeing the original format.
This is a major development in Massachusetts research, especially for vital records after 1850!
– Henry B. Hoff and Helen Schatvet Ullmann
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In the lead article, Jonathan Fairbank of Dedham, Massachusetts, and His
Family in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the authors Ruth Fairbanks Joseph and
James Swan Landberg show that Jonathan1 Fairbank(s) can be safely placed in the
Fairbank family of Halifax, Yorkshire, as the son of John Fairbank and probably
his second wife, Isabella Staincliffe, and the grandson of George Fairbank and his
wife, Sybil Wade. This conclusion is based on careful analysis of potentially
conflicting evidence and a detailed reconstruction of this branch of the Fairbank
family. Late nineteenth-century authors had proposed this same identification, but
a 1961 article by Clarence Almon Torrey misidentified Jonathan as the son of a
“composite” George Fairbank (Torrey assigned records of different men named
George Fairbank to be Jonathan’s purported father). Because of Torrey’s
reputation, this origin has been regarded as valid since 1961.
The article concludes with two appendices. The first is a calendar of selected
court rolls of the Manor of Wakefield between 1599 and 1687. The second
includes a description of the townships and chapelries within Halifax (a very large
parish) and a map of the townships.
We often don’t bother to look for Additions and Corrections to published
works. When Did Ephraim3 Kempton of Boston and Salem Marry? by
William E. Kempton demonstrates the danger of this practice. Ephraim3 Kempton
has been assigned a marriage date of 7 November 1673, based on Savage’s
Genealogical Dictionary; however, that date was later shown to be in error by
Savage himself. Nevertheless, the date has been retained in most published
sources, mainly because it was a reasonable date (Ephraim’s first child was born
14 November 1674).
Sampson1 Dunbar and His Family by The Dunbar Research Team begins in
this issue with an account of Sampson Dunbar (1721–1804), an African-American
resident of Braintree and Stoughton, Massachusetts, and his three oldest children:
Amee (married Elias Sewall), Asa (married Lydia Odell), and Sarah (married
James Easton). The Sewalls moved to Maine, Asa and wife moved to upstate New
York, and the Eastons stayed in Massachusetts, where several in the family were
active abolitionists. The spouses of Sampson’s children and grandchildren are
fully identified. The authors were not able to identify most of the children of
Sampson’s oldest son, Asa Dunbar, and very sensibly just presented the sparse
evidence they found.
In David Dickey of New Hampshire, Nova Scotia, and Maine, Ellen J.
O’Flaherty traces the life of David Dickey (1730–1803+), born in Londonderry,
New Hampshire, who moved to Nova Scotia about 1761, and a decade later to
Vassalboro, Maine. One of his sons returned to Nova Scotia by 1790 and left
descendants there. The other seven or eight children to survive infancy remained
in Maine. The author’s extensive use of land records has resulted in a detailed
picture of the economic successes and difficulties of the sons in Maine.
In 1997 David L. Greene published an article in the Register that showed the
origin of John1 Ingersoll. Janet Chevalley Wolfe has added to this in The English
Origin of John1 Ingersoll of Westfield, Massachusetts: Additional Evidence
from Stepney Parish Registers. Her research in the parish registers of St.
Dunstan’s, Stepney, Middlesex, yielded further information about John1
Ingersoll’s older siblings and his mother’s family.
New England Articles in Genealogical Journals in 2010 indexes articles in
eighteen journals by surname, place, and some subjects.
– Henry B. Hoff
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