My New Writing Phase

Happy New Year!! Please ignore the eight+ year hiatus since my last blog post! During that time I focused on my professional work, but now I'm retired and in a writing phase, so am resurrecting it. To mark this transition I've updated the web address and the title of the blog. 

I was reminded of PollyBlog when a woman contacted me recently saying she found a sampler in a second-hand shop and she believed it was created by my ancestor. I didn't see the embroiderer or her parents in my chart so I tossed back a quick "so kind of you but not my ancestor."[1] To my chagrin she replied, quoting one of my blog posts! Oopsie!! I had completely forgotten about that post! The embroiderer was a granddaughter of James "Brine" Litchfield and his wife Elizabeth, but I hadn't bothered to add her to my database. There is an excellent Litchfield Family book so I was in no hurry to reinvent the wheel. [2] Also there are about 75,000,000 Litchfields in Scituate. It turns out that the embroiderer is a relative but not an ancestor, my first cousin four times removed. I am busy hunting down her descendants to see if they might be interested, and if they are I will update.

In my dotage I have much to organize and catalog. I want to pull together my tree on Ancestry, the tree on my computer in Reunion (with my main research log), research reports, and also this blog, where I've written stories not found elsewhere. I also have a paper archive of records and documents passed down that needs sorting and digitizing. My husband is doing a great job with the Kimmitt/Drapes ephemera, so now I need to get cracking on the FitzGerald/Barnes papers. We have too much to just pass on to our children. They won't have time or probably the inclination to sort through it all. If we don't do it it's likely to end up in a trash bin somewhere, so we must carefully curate!

This is why, after over eight years of silence, I'm reviving my blog! I've been a professional genealogist for over twenty-five years, focusing on report writing in many forms. Now that I've stopped accepting clients my goal is to write up the many brick walls I've busted over the years. I also hope to get our family into print for the benefit of future generations.

In the meantime I also plan to publish articles. I've got a small one coming out in the Winter 2026 New England Historical and Genealogical Register. It is just a transcription of an interesting booklet of some Marlborough, Massachusetts vital records not found in vital or town records. We are also just beginning to explore a more in-depth article, and I'm really excited about that!

I expect future posts here to be a melange: snippets about individual ancestors, or towns, or anything that would not make it into an article. I'll also write about organizing the results of my 40 years of research into something that will persist into the future. 

As for the sampler, stay tuned. I've traced descendants and reached out to one. We'll see if he would like it back!

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1. In my defense, I saw the email at about 11:30pm, after singing Messiah at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. I should have held off until morning when I wasn't so simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated from the performance!

2. Wilford J. Litchfield, The Litchfield Family in America, 1630-1900 (Scituate, Massachusetts: Wilford J. Litchfield, 1901-06), five individual booklets privately bound together. Meticulously researched, with many transcriptions of land and probate records.