Many of the Cape Verdean families of New England have a hidden Jewish past.
[Gershom] Barros didn't know his father had Jewish roots until after he died.
"My mother told me she used to call my grandmother a crazy lady for lighting candles in the closet," he said, suggesting that she practiced secret Jewish customs passed down for generations, as has been noted among other descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who were forced to hide their identities. [Link]
Diane Rapaport's second book, The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England, is due out in October. Based on her examination of court records, she has concluded that my ancestors probably did have sex.
“I think most of these stories could end up surprising to readers who imagine Puritan New England was some drab, dull place where people sat around in church and never had fun ... or sex,” she said. “I think people will be surprised by how feisty the early Colonists were.”Rapaport's first book, by the way, was the indispensable New England Court Records: A Research Guide for Genealogists and Historians. Anyone whose New England ancestor left a will or dropped her drawers at church should own it.
The book’s title story involves a 17th century Quaker woman from Hampton, Lydia Wardell, one of New England’s early Quakers, who showed her contempt for Puritan authorities by taking her clothes off during church services. [Link]
Volunteers in Sandwich, Massachusetts, waded into a pond last Saturday with "thumping" poles, in search of gravestones supposed missing from the adjacent Old Town Cemetery. George Burbank's 1946 book Highlights of Sandwich History says that ne'er-do-wells tossed the stones into the pond back in the 1880s.
In December, town workers pulled a headstone of Hannah Thacher, who died in 1785, from the water. Town workers found the headstone and other broken pieces of stone in shallow water when they were clearing bramble and brush between the pond and the cemetery.There are other possible explanations for the gap. In his study of colonial gravestones on Cape Cod, Stephen P. Broker was able to locate just 37 stones bearing dates prior to 1709.
Some believe Burbank's tale of graveyard shenanigans is accurate because while the burial ground was established in 1663, according to historical records, the oldest stone in the cemetery is marked 1685.
That's a 20-year gap with no explanation. [Link]
Possible explanations for the slow start in gravestones being placed in Cape cemeteries include a hesitancy of the early settlers to mark the graves of their growing numbers of deceased for fear of encouraging attack by the Native Americans, the initial absence of a gravestone carving tradition in the New World, the need to import gravestones from Boston and Plymouth carving centers, the use of uninscribed fieldstones to mark early burials, the use of wooden markers that have not survived, and the use of inscribed stones that have disappeared with the ensuing time. [Link]
The town of Upton, Massachusetts, has taken possession of a mysterious man-made cave called the "Upton Chamber."
Barbara Burke, chairwoman of the Historical Commission, says the chamber is perhaps three centuries old. She bases that on an 1893 newspaper article, which states that elderly residents at the time said their ancestors had talked of the cave and and did not know who built it.Still others think it was built "under the influence of Irish monks in the 8th century."
Some say Colonial settlers might have used the chamber to store ice or vegetables. Others think it may have been a Native American ceremonial site. [Link]
If any book can be called the Bible of Maine and New Hampshire genealogy it is this—the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire
Noyes, Libby, and Davis succeed in compressing into a paragraph the lifetime of an individual, without sacrificing the details which make genealogy interesting. Take the entry for Henry Russell of New Hampshire:
2 HENRY, Newcastle, ±80 in 1681, was warned out of Portsmouth in 1671. He and his w. Frances, who scattered accusations of murder, bastardy, etc., among the neighbors with freedom and frequency, kept an inn of sorts where Thomas Skillings of Falmouth stayed in 1673 while his new broadcloth was being made up. He suspected Landlady Russell of stealing a yard thereof. Unlawful drinking there in 1674, the host drunk in 1678 and 'bad order' kept in the ho. in 1679. Jury 1684. Lists 55b, 313acf, 317, 330a, 331b. In 1681, his w., 'growing crazier,' he pet. for permiss. to keep a cook's shop and to sell penny beer. Frances was beaten by James Phillips, the shoemaker, in 1684, and assaulted by James Robinson in 1686. Three ch. emerge from the ev. in these cases: John, in ct. with an unnamed girl in 1686, taxed 1688, liv. in Newcastle with w. Mary in 1711. Lists 65(2), 94, 316, 318a, 319. Frances, 'one of the daus.,' unm. in 1684. Andrew, pulled Phillips away from his mo. in the 1684 battle.
Though published some 75 years ago, the quality of the Dictionary is still evident. For the earliest families, its place has been supplanted by the Great Migration Project, but it is a measure of its continuing worth that the authors of that series often defer to the Dictionary, and are required to make corrections only infrequently. Anyone with ancestors present in northern New England prior to 1700 should own or consult this book.
Walter V. Hickey—archives specialist with the National Archives and Records Administration–Northeast Region (Boston)—writes in "A Gold Mine Of Naturalization Records In New England" (at NARA's Prologue, Fall 2004) about an unusual set of naturalization records held at the NARA branch in Waltham, Mass. 
These are "photostatic copies, called 'dexigraphs,' made in the 1930s, of naturalization proceedings in all courts—federal, state, county, and local—in five of the New England states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) between 1790 and September 26, 1906."
Early American naturalizations are among the most difficult public records to locate, largely because so many courts could claim jurisdiction. Some court records have never been microfilmed, and those which have are sometimes poorly indexed.
These NARA copies provide a one-stop index of New England naturalizations. The researcher, upon finding a relative in the dexigraphs, can then track down in the relevant court (or state archives) the immigrant's declaration of intention and original petition for citizenship—often invaluable sources of information on his origins. It is not unusual for these records to include the place (and sometimes the date) of birth, place and date of arrival, and recent places of residence of the petitioner.1
Hickey's article casts fresh light on this important research tool, and gives information on obtaining dexigraph copies from the Waltham branch. Similar indexes are available for the courts of New York and Illinois.
More Reading:
