NEHGS - American Ancestors Magazine

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WECLOME TO AMERICAN ANCESTORS, the new identity for our member magazine. The publication’s name change reflects a growing realization that the research interests of NEHGS members can’t be neatly confined within the geographical boundaries of New England. We’ve long considered our purview to be not simply New England but the areas New Englanders migrated from and relocated to. As our subtitle “New England, New York, and Beyond” suggests, this new name also provides us with the scope to consider additional areas and peoples, especially those that offer useful methodological examples and good comparative
case studies. Rest assured, though, that our primary focus will remain firmly fixed on the New England families and stories that have captured the imagination of members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society since 1845.

We begin with a fitting theme for the inaugural issue of AMERICAN ANCESTORS: “first settlers.” An array of articles allows us to compare and contrast a variety of pioneer experiences and settlement patterns and consider how first settler groups can best be studied. In the cover story, based on her four-volume work Opening the Ozarks: First Families of Southwest Missouri,1835–1839, Marsha Hoffman Rising not only examines first settlers in a particular place and time — the Missouri Ozarks in the 1830s — but also describes the methodology and research techniques that proved successful. The setting and cast of characters might be largely unfamiliar to some New England researchers but the undertaking and discoveries should resonate with all genealogists.

Robert Charles Anderson of the Great Migration Study Project — the field’s signature first settlers survey— reflects on the genealogical value of investigating an entire community. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience, he summarizes four issues fundamental to such projects and provides examples from the Great Migration, Henry Z (“Hank”) Jones Jr.’s Palatine study, and Marsha Hoffman Rising’s Opening the Ozarks.

The issue’s theme is further enhanced by historical and genealogical summaries of the first settlers of New York (by Henry B. Hoff) and Quebec (by Michael J. Leclerc). Although these two colonies were settled at approximately the same time, they had little else in common, leading to substantial differences in the lives of early settlers — and resulting genealogical records(For an examination of first settler literature not covered in this issue, particularly for the mid-Atlantic region, see Gary Boyd Roberts’s “New Books on First Settlers” in NEA 7 (2006) 3:37–38.)

The primary focus of Todd Macalister’s article is the use of garrisons for defense and refuge, and the value of garrison lists as a genealogical resource today. Macalister also provides a fascinating look at life for New Englanders on the outer rim of settlement — first settlers on the frontier — in the years following King Philip’s War (1675–76).

Moving from first settlers to old settlers, Paula Stuart-Warren details how old settler organizations were formed in the nineteenth-century as the frontier experiences of midwestern and western pioneers receded into history. The story of these organizations is fascinating in itself, and the records generated by these groups may well offer descendants valuable genealogical information available nowhere else.

We will no longer publish a computer genealogist column in the magazine, but we will continue to feature articles on computer and online genealogy.Beginning in the spring issue, we will offer articles describing cases prepared by our Research Services team. Please send your feedback about AMERICAN ANCESTORS magazine to magazine@nehgs.org.

Lynn Betlock
Managing Editor

Contact American Ancestors Magazine

American Ancestors Staff
101 Newbury St.
Boston, MA 02116-3007

or sent to magazine@nehgs.org.

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Ameican Ancestors is published four times per year. Subscription is a benefit of NEHGS membership.

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