Early the morning of July 9, 1806, Martha Ballard awoke to the news that "Capt Purington had murdered all his famely Except his Son James who must have Shared the Same fate had he not been So fortunate as to make his Escape after an attempt was made to take his life." Captain James Purrington had killed his…

I've uploaded to the Internet Archive an unpublished Dunham family history thought lost but recently rediscovered in my father's childhood home. Among the contributors was my great-great-grandfather Lemuel Dunham—a native of Hartford and resident of Greenwood. The work is focused on the families of Lemuel, his sister Phebe (Dunham) Alley of Hartford, and their half-brother Charles Dunham of West…

The latest collection of Maine Civil War records at FamilySearch features indexed images of enlistment papers, acquired from the Maine State Archives. Not every enlistee is included, but many thousands are.

From the Library of Congress website comes…

In 1835, the Maine Legislature passed a "Resolve in favor of certain Officers and Soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and the widows of the deceased Officers and Soldiers," granting 200 acres of land to those who had served three years while residents of Massachusetts or the District of Maine. The land would be taken from the "Indian Purchase" in Penobscot County and from…

In Maine we don't usually go to the county courthouse to find vital records. In this and other New England states, birth, death and marriage records have been kept by towns and cities since colonial days. Municipal clerks in Maine were sometimes expected to return copies of these records to the state, but only in 1892 did this become standard practice. There is, though, one important set of vital records that may be found at Maine courthouses.…

This is the sixth in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

The most entertaining parts of a town's history are often its legends, for which the best evidence is hearsay. The historian is obliged to relate these legends as such, but also to seek out any possible…

This is the fifth in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

For tips on finding records of Maine Civil War soldiers, see this…

In recent years FamilySearch has added two essential Maine Civil War resources to its website: the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Card Index, 1861-1865, and a collection of images of enlistment and muster rolls for Maine regiments. The former has been indexed and may be searched here. The latter can only be browsed. By using the first resource as a finding aid for the second, one can locate and view images of…

This is the fourth in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

Greenwood began as Township Number Four — fourth in a line of five townships laid out by surveyor Samuel Titcomb of Hallowell between November 1787 and April 1788. Constrained by the boundaries of existing…

This is the third in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

The advance and final retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet shaped the landscape of Greenwood, exposing and eroding ancient bedrock and depositing untold tons of sand, silt and gravel within its borders. But it was a…

This is the second in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

This past week came the expected destruction of another historic building on Main Street. The…

FamilySearch has collection pages for town records from Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, but not from Maine. Nevertheless, images of the records from many Maine towns are…

This is the first in a series of posts I am writing in celebration of the bicentennial of my hometown of Greenwood in Oxford County, incorporated February 2, 1816.

A note appears in the town records of Greenwood that the "House Hold goods" of Anthony…

I was excited to read in Tuesday's Lewiston Sun Journal a story about Canton Mountain Cemetery in Oxford County—suspected to be the resting place of my ancestor Simon Coolidge.

Nelson Coolidge of East Dixfield (my father's fourth cousin) had seen the graveyard years ago while hunting with his father, and was able to…

Here's a great collection of cemetery plans drawn up by WPA workers in the 1930s.

During the Great Depression, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) put millions of Americans to work on public works projects that ranged from building trails in National Parks to creating over 500 surveys of Maine cemeteries. These cemetery plans, transferred from the Office of the Adjutant General and now part of the…

An article in today's New York Times shines a light on a project to preserve and digitize New England Congregational Church records. So far the Congregational Library & Archives' online collection includes records from one Maine church:…

The Lewiston Sun Journal reports that a fragment of a headstone was found in the Androscoggin River behind Great Falls Plaza in Auburn on Monday.

The polished granite fragment of a headstone appeared to have been in the river some time because the broken edges had all been worn smooth. What little writing was discernible was "Herrick" and a…

Beyond their names and dates of birth, marriage and death, it is often difficult to learn details of distant ancestors' lives. We are fortunate that Rev. Paul Coffin (1737-1821) of Buxton kept journals of his missionary trips to the inland frontiers of…

These pages are from an autograph book belonging to my great-grandmother, Mabel C. (Morgan) Dunham (1879-1960). The entries end around the same time that she obtained her second autograph book.

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These pages are from an autograph book belonging to my great-grandmother, Mabel C. (Morgan) Dunham (1879-1960). Most of the autographs were written in the months prior to her marriage to Elton L. Dunham in September 1896. The book seems to have been in use around the same time as Elton's second autograph book. See also…