Joel Thrall is back . . .

. . . in the fall issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for the second and concluding installment, now visible to NEHGS members on line at American Ancestors and to patrons of good genealogy libraries.

His unlikely trajectory -- from pioneer/fugitive from justice to farmer to teacher to doctor to an early death in 1827 -- is not quite complete yet. His great-grandchildren scattered across the continent, but they had to be cut from the journal for space reasons. They will appear, most likely on line, in good time -- as will Joel's dozens of nieces and nephews. He was the oldest of ten children, all of whom have multiple descendants.


" 'Faultless Could I Love Him Less?' Joel S. Thrall and His Descendants in Vermont, Quebec, Ohio, and Texas," parts 1 and 2, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 172, Summer 2018:248-56, Fall 2018:341-52.

Did your ancestor get sent off with a 35-line memorial poem?

My great-grandfather's oldest brother, Joel Thrall (1792-1827), went from Vermont to Quebec to Ohio, where he died outside of Columbus, leaving behind him a mysterious widow (wife #3), a trail of bad debts, a skeleton (in addition to his own), and a 35-line memorial mourning poem.

I knew nothing of this when I set out to write him up. (Beware those dull-seeming relatives!)

The first part of his story is now out in the summer issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, AKA The Journal of American Genealogy. The second and last part (scheduled for fall) follows Joel's son Homer (with wife #1), who became a Methodist missionary in Texas and a Confederate apologist, and his daughter Rachel (with wife #2), whose grandchildren are scattered across Canada and the U.S. She is the source of all of Joel's living descendants, but he was not present at her christening. It seems unlikely that she knew him, but she and half-brother Homer probably met when he paid a flying visit to Quebec in later life (1884).

FYI would-be writers: The Register is not all New England all the time; it is interested in out-migrations as well.

Methodology Thursday: Indirect evidence adds to the New England Ruggles family

Even old New England genealogy is never done. In the October issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (available on line to NEGHS members), Samuel Paine Sturgis III shows that Joseph Ruggles (say 1743-1815) was a son of Rev. Benjamin Ruggles (1700-1782) of Middleborough and New Braintree, Massachusetts, even though no record actually states their relationship. How Sturgis proved it is relevant to all researchers, whether or not we have Ruggles -- or any New Englanders at all -- in our tree.

Key to the case are Joseph's associations with known family members, pattern recognition in property records (an unusual pattern in this case), and a 1904 reminiscence from a family friend. We often hear of researching women by researching the better-documented men in their lives; in this case important corroboration for Joseph's ancestry came by way of his wife Sarah Brakenridge.





Samuel Paine Sturgis III, "Joseph Ruggles of New Braintree and Greenwich, Massachusetts," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 168 (October 2014): 256-270.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Thursday: Indirect evidence adds to the New England Ruggles family," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 December 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday (NEHGR): Connecting across the Atlantic in the 1600s

In colonial New England, the classic genealogy dilemma -- "Where did they come from?" -- takes on a standard form: "Where in England?" Christopher Robbins and other researchers had Nicholas Robbins's 1650/1 will, a 1635 ship list that was a close match, and a tall brick wall across the ocean, consisting of far too many local English parish records to go through one at a time.

Technology came to the rescue, allowing him to search consolidated on-line indexes. The resulting parish registers in Kent matched the family almost perfectly. The author sought local help and was amply rewarded by an unpublished Ph.D. thesis with additional material on the family. Read the whole thing in the October NEHGR -- either on line if you're a HisGen member, or in any good genealogy library's collection.

But technology is not a cure-all. Without careful correlation between records, bigger and better indexes just offer ways to make bigger mistakes. Correlation is more fruitful when we have a family unit (or a group of associates). One match could well be a coincidence. Two or three are much more likely to be a breakthrough.



Christopher Robbins, "New Evidence for the English Origins of Nicholas Robbins," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 167 (October 2013):245-50.

Harold Henderson, "Methdology Monday (NEHGR): Connecting across the Atlantic in the 1600s," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 February 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]