52 Ancestors #11 & 12: Luella Laughton Goold & James Thornton Greeley, & the stories in passport applications

Luella Laughton Goold was born on 1 September 1879 in Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire, the second known child born to Pierce William Goold and Alice E. (Hill) Goold. In a family of eight known children, seven of them were daughters. Luella’s father’s family had emigrated from Ireland by way of Liverpool in 1861, very shortly after the American Civil War broke out; I have trouble believing that anyone would willingly emigrate to a country being ravaged by war unless they were desperate to escape their current situation, but perhaps they – like many Americans in the Northern U. S. at the time – believed the war would be over quickly.

Luella was born in the aftermath of the American Civil War, a period in American history when families and individuals were very easily uprooted. In 1880 the family was still living in Lebanon, New Hampshire, but by 1892 the family had made a drastic move, to Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington, where she was enumerated on the state census as Lulie, perhaps a childhood nickname. The Goolds shortly returned to New Hampshire, where Luella’s parents buried two of her sisters.

By 1900 the Goolds had moved again, to Hartford, Windsor County, Connecticut, and 20-year-old Luella had started working as a nurse. By 1910 Luella had moved out on her own, lodging in Manhattan and still working as a nurse. By 1920 Luella had moved to Arlington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, where she was working as a nurse – with the intriguing specification of “experimental work” – and her widowed Irish-born father Pierce William Goold was living with her, occupation listed as “Retired,” with extra income coming from boarding a Swedish emigre who was working as a carpenter. The family was living at 70 Paul Revere Road, a road likely named after the historic ride through their town, a town which had been known as Menotomy in 1775. Luella had apparently done well for herself financially as a single nurse, as she owned the home in which she, her father, and her boarder were living.

Luella’s life was shortly to take a dramatic turn. On 18 February 1924, while she was still living at 70 Paul Revere Road in Arlington, Massachusetts, Luella was issued an American passport. Her application reported that in the intervening time, her father had moved back to Tacoma, Washington. Quite contrary to her census enumerations, her passport application reported her occupation as “housewife.” She said she was intending to leave on the Pittsburgh from the port of New York on April 1st and visit France, Great Britain, and Switzerland for “Study & Travel.” The application includes a photo; while the copy I have viewed is from microfilm and thus not the greatest rendering, it is the only photo I have seen of Luella.

Luella Laughton Goold in her 1924 passport photo, U.S. passport application #372144. (Scan courtesy of Ancestry, whose source was a National Archives and Records Administration [NARA] microfilm.)

At the time, passport applicants typically had a witness provide testimony supporting that they were who they said they were. Luella’s witness was James T. Greeley, a physician living in Nashua, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, who said he had known Luella for 15 years. While Nashua is not as far away as Tacoma, it is not adjacent to Arlington.

This witness James T. Greeley was James Thornton Greeley, born during the American Civil War in Nashua, New Hampshire, on 18 July 1862 to James Bonaparte Greeley and Arabella (Wood) Greeley. James Thornton Greeley’s grandparents apparently had high aspirations for their children: Bonaparte was likely an allusion to Napoleon, and Arabella (also spelled Arbella) was the name of the flagship in the Winthrop Fleet that had settled New Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the ship having been named after their noble passenger Lady Arabella Johnson (also spelled Lady Arbella). The elder James was also a physician, and on 3 November 1861 he had enlisted in the Calvary branch of the Union Army, starting out with the rank of Assistant Surgeon. Intriguingly, though he enlisted in Nashua, he served for the state of Rhode Island. When he enlisted, he left behind his wife and their toddler, and Arabella was pregnant with the younger James. The elder James was promoted to Full Surgeon on 4 June 1862, but it appears tragedy shortly befell him, as he was mustered out soon thereafter on 31 August 1862 and awarded an invalid pension while the Civil War continued to rage. (I have not yet viewed his compiled military service file nor his and Arabella’s pension records.)

By the 1870 census, the Greeley family was living in Merrimack, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, and there were now three sons in the family. By 1880 they had moved back to nearby Nashua, where they were living on Main Street, with another Greeley family enumerated next door. As the sons of a physician, all three Greeley sons were still in school, even the eldest at age 20.

According to the Directory of Deceased Physicians, the younger James attended Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and then attended Baltimore Medical College in Baltimore, Maryland, graduating from the latter in 1891. In 1893 James and his brother Guy Greeley both became Fellows of the New Hampshire Medical Society.

On 9 October 1895, James Thornton Greeley married Florence Haile Richardson in Nashua and they settled in Nashua. In 1897, New Hampshire granted a medical license to James. The date he was licensed had more to do with the increasing regulation of American doctors than with James’s personal career. As an endnote in “The Early Development of Medical Licensing Laws in the United States, 1875-1900” by Ronald Hamoway notes (p. 117) [link goes to PDF], “In 1897, a new statute was enacted [in New Hampshire] creating three boards of examiners, regular, homeopathic, and eclectic, with both a diploma and examination mandatory. In 1915, the three boards were abolished and one board substituted for them.” There appears to be more detail on the history of licensing in “The History of Medical Licensure” in a 1935 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), but as a non-subscriber, I can only view the first page.

James and Florence went on to have at least four children, three of whom survived to adulthood: Margaret, James, and Cyrus. As a successful physician and his family members, James, Florence, and their children got to experience things not open to the “average” American of the time, including traveling abroad. Their first known child, Margaret, was born in 1900, and in 1901 James applied for a passport for himself, Florence, and infant Margaret. Why were they traveling abroad when she was so young? The passport application does not say, and so far I have not figured out where they travelled. In the summer of 1910 Florence applied for a passport for herself and her older children, Margaret (then 10) and James (then 8). At the time passports did not ask for specifics on where the person(s) intended to travel, just how long, and Florence said they intended to return within two years, as James had before them. I also have yet to figure out where the three of them travelled.

The United States entered World War I in 1917, and in 1918 James applied for another passport, this time to go into medical service with the American Red Cross. He was 56 years old when his application was approved. His passport specified that he was planning to go to “England Great Britain” and “France.” The American Red Cross did a tremendous amount of volunteer medical work in France and also some in the UK, the latter mostly with wounded American troops. The linked publication on the American Red Cross’s World War I activities (published in 1919) notes of their work in France, “As an indication of the ability to meet emergencies, a complete 1,000 bed hospital was made ready in forty[-]eight hours.” James sailed from Montréal on the Llanstephan Castle, arriving in Bristol, England, on 3 November 1918 as part of a large group of American Red Cross volunteers.

In December 1922 their daughter Margaret applied for a passport of her own, stating that she was a never-married art student who intended to go to Tunis, Italy, and France via “an early boat” leaving “on or about January 30, 1923.” Margaret’s supporting witness was her mother Florence. Margaret said on her application that she was planning to leave from New York or Boston; I have yet to find her on a ship list, though I don’t know where she was planning to visit first. Florence died on 8 February 1923. Florence’s death record says she died of “Lobar Pneumonia,” which she’d reportedly had for 8 days; had Margaret sailed on a ship just before her mother’s acute illness began as Margaret had planned to do?

Margaret Thornton Greeley in her passport application photo; while this photo’s scan from microfilm is worse than Luella’s, it is definitely not the worst I have seen. From U.S. passport application #238615. (Scan courtesy of Ancestry, whose source was a NARA microfilm.)

In 1924 James Thornton Greeley applied for yet another passport. He reported that he was planning to leave on the “Pittsburg” [sic] from the port of New York on April 1st and visit France, England, and Switzerland to “Visiting relatives and study.” Does the previous sentence sound familiar? That’s because it was almost identical to Luella’s plan, although she apparently didn’t have any relatives in Europe to visit, as she had said her purpose was “Study & Travel.” James submitted a previous passport in lieu of a witness, and his new passport was issued 11 days after Luella’s, on Leap Day, February 29th.

On April 8th, the Orca reached Southampton, England, with both Luella and James on board. While they sailed on a different ship than the planned Pittsburgh, it appears they sailed on approximately April 1st. Both of them listed London addresses for their contact information in England. On April 26th, Luella and James married at 15 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden, London. They had resided in London long enough to satisfy the Registrar who married them in front of the American Vice-Counsul of London, as they were both listed as “of London” on their marriage record. Had they headed to Europe with the plan to marry in London, or had they headed to Europe as friends and decided to marry en route? The Vice-Council reported their marriage to the U.S. State Department on May 14th, and in an accompanying letter from May 15th, the American Consul General reported that he had amended Luella’s passport to the surname Greeley.

Also on May 15th, James and Luella passed through Liverpool on the Carmania. Luella was recorded as Lucille Greeley. The ship list contact information column showed them both as “In transit from PARIS.” They were heading for Quebec, and on May 22nd the Carmania arrived there, “Lucille”‘s residence in the United States now listed as Nashua.

On August 29th, Margaret sailed into the port of New York on the Berengaria, having sailed from Cherbourg, France, on the 23rd. Lucy Kate Bowers, also from Nashua and also born in 1900, was with her. While Margaret and Lucy were travelling in Europe, had they gone to London to celebrate James and Luella’s wedding? So far, I don’t know.

On 29 August 1929, James died of a coronary embolism in Nashua. James and Luella had celebrated their five-year anniversary that April. The Greeley children were now technically orphans. James’s youngest child, Cyrus, was enumerated on the 1930 U.S. federal census with Luella. By this point Cyrus had begun slightly shaving his age, which would continue the rest of his life; he was enumerated on the 1910 census, yet as a young adult listed his age as slightly younger than someone who would have appeared on it. Cyrus attended the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he was a baritone in the University Men’s Glee Club and part of the cast for the university’s February 1932 staging of Euripedes’s Electra. In the 1930’s he was listed in Seattle city directories as well as at Luella’s address in Nashua city directories, so he apparently still lived with her when school was out of session. On 25 April 1938, Cyrus died in Seattle.

Luella outlived her husband James by nearly 44 years, dying in Lacey, Thurston County, Washington, on 6 May 1973, at age 93. One of Luella’s sisters died in Thurston County a few years later, so perhaps they lived together when they were elderly.

Luella’s other stepson, James, worked as a teacher and married a woman named Helen. James died in Florida in 1988. So far, Margaret’s return to New York with Lucy, both Nashua-bound, is the last record I have found for her. It seems most likely that she disappears from records because she married after she returned, but if so, I have yet to find a record of the wedding.

The way we later write things in genealogical and historical research is often different than the order in which we discover them. The first record I found connecting Luella and James was the record of their marriage. Unspooling their story was great fun. I hope you enjoyed reading it even half as much as I enjoyed researching it and sharing it here.

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52 Ancestors #9 & 10: Roco and Sue, from colonial Massachusetts slaves to free people of color

Roco and Sue lived in Springfield, which was in Massachusetts Bay Colony and then in Massachusetts Colony, where they were slaves of John Pynchon, the magistrate who made an appearance in my 52 Ancestors post on Sarah (Lyman) Bridgman. John Pynchon died with the largest estate of its time in Western Massachusetts, and like many wealthy European colonists of his day, he owned slaves. Like later work on the enslaved in Southern states, most of what can be gleaned about slaves in early Massachusetts has to be pieced together from the records of whites. Roco was owned by John Pynchon by 1672, when Roco and fellow Pynchon slave Harry were two of the people working on building the first sawmill in Suffield, a town a short distance downriver from Springfield. According to Black Families in Hampden County, Massachusetts, 1650-1865, 2nd edition (p. 2), Roco was a very unusual slave in owning at least 60 acres of land by 1685 though still a slave; there is no citation listed, so I am not sure yet what the source was. So far I haven’t found a reference in the deeds, but many deeds in what was then Hampshire County were recorded belatedly in this time period, so that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one.

On 1 December 1687 John Pynchon noted in the Record of the County Court of Hampshire, “Roco and Sue my Negroes, Joined in Marriage.” Roco and Sue subsequently bought their freedom from John Pynchon on 20 October 1695:

Agreed with Roco Negroe . . . That for his & his wifes freedoms which is to be absolute upon his paying to me as followeth which is to say He is to pvide & allow or pay me Twenty five Barrels of good cleane pure Turpentine of 40 gallons to a Barrel & Twenty one barrels of Good merchantable Tarr: where of he is to pay wt he can next yeare by this time 12 Mo & I give him for the Rest the yeare after so that within Two yeares he is to pay the whole & he is Intirely discharged from me upon the reading of this . . .

Richard Blackleech, a free man of color who was a former slave of John Pynchon, witnessed the document.

Sue died in Springfield, recorded as “Su the negro,” on 24 January 1710/11. So far I have not been able to determine when or where Roco died and as far as I have reviewed, no one else seems to have located a death record for him either.

Sue’s death is the middle entry here: “Su the negro was sicke & died. Jan: 24. 1710/11” (Scan courtesy of FamilySearch.)

A “Negro” named Roco had been examined by John Pynchon in private and then at the County Court in 1680 regarding a charge of fornication with a white woman, Margarite Riley of Springfield, and Roco is recorded as having said “that he had (upon the said Riley’s tempting him) the carnal knowledge of her body,” and the court sentenced him to pay a fine of three pounds or receive fifteen lashes. Margarite was sentenced to receive fifteen lashes herself, apparently at least partly as a deterrent to herself and others regarding “this Growing and provoking sin of whoredom and to restrain the like abhorend practices.” I am unclear whether this is the same Roco who subsequently married Sue, and as far as I have been able to find, no one else seems to know for sure either. Margarite had had a daughter “born out of wedlocke” shortly before her court appearance, on 6 July 1680; Margarite had been born in Springfield in February 1661/62, making her 18 when her daughter was born. Was the Roco who was brought before the court the child’s father? Nothing I’ve reviewed, from either then or now, even speculates as to this, so I don’t know. But regardless of whether Roco was the father, perhaps this event was part of why the court seemed to have so little patience with Margarite’s behavior.

Margarite Riley’s daughter’s birth record was squeezed in between the birth records of two children born to married couples in Springfield: “Margarite Riley had a daughter born out of wedlocke July, 6th 1680” (Scan courtesy of FamilySearch.)

Everyone I have featured till now in my 52 Ancestors posts was a relative of mine; however, here my relative is the slave-owner, John Pynchon. Given the typical practices of New England slavery, Roco and Sue would have regularly interacted with whites in the Pynchon household while they were slaves. I think it is important for researchers to remember that many people in the North had slaves too. I also want to stress here that though this may seem like a short post for my 52 Ancestors posts, I chose Roco and Sue primarily because there is a lot more known about them than many other slaves in this time and place. As an example, as far as I have been able to determine, no one seems to even be sure of the given name of one of the slaves that John Pynchon owned when he died.

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NOTES

All the books listed below include at least one mention of both Roco and Sue.

The most invaluable book for understanding slavery in this area is Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts by Robert H. Romer (Florence, Massachusetts: Levellers Press, 2009).

For those researching families of color in Hampden County, Massachusetts, a fantastic resource is Black Families in Hampden County, Massachusetts, 1650-1865 by Joseph Carvalho III, who published a second edition of the book in 2011 through the New England Historic Genealogical Society. This book includes families in colonial Springfield. I do want to stress checking the compiled information in this book against original records whenever possible.

As I mentioned in my post on Sarah (Lyman) Bridgman, an important work for anyone researching early western Massachusetts is Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts (1639-1703): The Pynchon Court Record, edited with a legal and historical introduction by Joseph H. Smith (USA: The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation at Harvard University Press, 1961). The book is a mix of transcriptions, analysis, and information about the various legal procedures used at the time, and includes cases regarding both slaves and free people of color.

A second book on the voluminous records left by John Pynchon is The Pynchon Papers, Volume 2: Selections from the Account Books of John Pynchon, 1651-1697, edited by Carl Bridenbaugh and Juliette Tomlinson (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts in association with the University of Virginia Press, 1985). The account books of John Pynchon and his father William Pynchon were microfilmed and a few repositories in western Massachusetts have copies, but they are not available for inter-library loan, making this book a more realistic way for most people to access the information in John Pynchon’s account books.

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A visit to Boston City Archives

On Friday (February 28th) I visited Boston City Archives for the first time. I had wanted to visit since I attended a talk on the Archives by archivist Marta Crilly last year at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies Conference, which was held in Boston. I typed my notes from that lecture up in my post on IAJGS 2013 Day 2. At the talk, Marta had stressed booking an appointment in advance and, if at all possible, coming by car rather than by public transit. I called a few days in advance and booked an appointment for Friday. Marta was the one who answered the phone, and asked what I would be researching. She told me she would pull the first thing in advance of my arrival. I mentioned that I would be coming with a friend to make sure that this would be OK, and she said to stress to my friend that they are a nearly exclusively pull facility so my friend should bring along specifics if she wanted to research something in their records.

Boston City Archives is located in West Roxbury, a neighborhood of Roxbury, which was formerly an independent town and is now part of the City of Boston. The Archives is located near the border with Brookline. The parking lot is wide in front of the building, and there were signs posted around most of the lot saying the parking was for city employees, so we parked near the other end from the entrance. Someone walking in the parking lot confirmed that the entrance where we could access the Archives was where we were guessing it was. There is a ramp leading up to the entrance in addition to a small set of stairs; there are also three handicapped parking spaces, the closest parking spaces to the entrance, and these spaces were all empty while we were there. When you enter the building, the door to the Archives Reading Room will be on your right. There is a desk at the front of the Reading Room where there is usually a staff member seated.

The exterior of Boston City Archives, as seen from the parking lot when we were leaving in the late afternoon. The entrance is in the grey boxy bit on the left. There are also a couple of other city offices through the same entrance, including the City Archaeology Lab. (All photos in this post were taken by the author.)

When we arrived, there was one researcher sitting at one of the two tables nearest the desk looking through records, and Marta said the other table nearest the desk was for us. The rest of the tables in the fairly large Reading Room were covered with items from the Boston Marathon bombing victims’ memorial, and there were a number of people moving around the Reading Room working on cataloging these items. There are lockers behind the desk and we were asked to stow most of what we had brought with us in them; we were allowed to keep pencils, papers, and cameras/cellphones. There are extra pencils in case someone didn’t bring one along or brought one that broke on-site. Marta had said on the phone that she would pull a register book for me before I arrived, and it was waiting for us. There were also two pieces of foam that she requested I use to prop up the books to help protect them. She sat with us for a bit listening to the other things we wanted to research and taking notes, and then left to pull more records.

The pull cart at Boston City Archives. Since we usually asked for several things at a time to be pulled, it was left by our table while we researched and temporarily removed when new things were pulled.

I started my research doing work for a client, and had brought along a typed page of information on folks I am personally researching in Boston. Most of the information regarding my personal research did not lead to records, but I was able to do some personal research in tax records. Based on the street address I had brought with me, Marta pulled several tax books (pictured on the top shelf of the pull cart above), starting with the first year I was sure the person had lived at the address. The first year, the street address was not listed in the tax book, but a nearby address with two digits exchanged (1879 rather than 1897) was listed, and there was a dental practice at that address, so I thought that I may have mistyped the address and that my dentist research subject, early in his career at that point, may have been an apprentice at that practice at the time. However, Marta urged me to check a minimum of one more book before sending the records back. I’m glad I did, as the address 1897 was in the next year’s tax book and my dentist was listed at it. See photos of the record below. He was also in the next year’s tax book at the same address, while the following year – the year he had graduated from Harvard University’s Dental School – there were two other dentists listed at his apparently now-former address. I checked a couple more books, but after that the address was rented by a carpenter. I know he was still living in Boston at the time, so I will have to verify more addresses before I go back to research more. (See the captions for how to use street addresses with the tax books.)

Here is a sample of the old tax records at Boston City Archives, page 1 of 2 from the 1871 tax books. Willis Battles, shown here, is a relative of mine; the “1” to the right of his name indicates that he paid the year’s poll tax. Most of the locations on this page were businesses, but in a city directory of this time period Willis was listed as living at the same address where he worked as a dentist. Men were subject to the poll tax and women weren’t, so Marta said that it is rare to find an occupant woman listed in the tax books. However, if a woman operated a shop at a separate address from where she lived, you should be able to look up the street address of the shop if you know it, even though the woman wouldn’t have been subject to the poll tax. The books are organized by street address. You look in the front of the book to see if the street of interest is in it, then search the listed street numbers for the page that contains the exact address. (Some streets are in more than one book.)

Here is a sample of the old tax records at Boston City Archives, page 2 of 2 from the 1871 tax books. The people shown on this page are the property owners. The books are organized by street address, so if you know the address someone owned, you can look them up in the tax records regardless of whether they lived there. There were a number of woman property owners listed in the books I searched from the 1870’s and the books my friend searched from the 1910’s, so I think you are much more likely to find a woman property owner than a woman occupant in these records. To search the books, you look in the front of the book to see if the street of interest is in it, then search the listed street numbers for the page that contains the exact address. (Some streets are in more than one book.)

One of the ledgers I used was the most fire-damaged record I’ve ever personally used, and also had some water damage. I had to keep washing soot off my hands. See the photo below.

This ledger damaged by fire and water is at Boston City Archives. Using it required much washing to remove soot from my hands, and it also left bits of soot all over the table.

Before we went to the Archives, my friend had found something with no known personal connection to her research that she thought sounded interesting in the Archives catalog, and after she finished researching she looked through it, a box of folders of loose papers of warnings-out from Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the 1700’s. Charlestown was once an independent town and is also now part of the City of Boston. For those of you that don’t know what warnings-out were, to oversimplify, here in New England they were a way to make sure that a town did not have to pay for someone who became indigent who was not a legal resident of the town by legally “warning them out” of the town. The system was similar to England’s Settlement Laws, though in New England being warned out simply meant the town was no longer financially liable for upkeep, not that the person(s) necessarily left the town. For those of you that want to read more, Josiah H. Benton wrote an entire book about it titled Warning Out in New England, published in 1911 and now scanned and freely available on multiple sites (I’ve linked to one).

A sample warning out from 1700’s Charlestown, Massachusetts, at Boston City Archives. This record begins “In His Majesty’s name” and the date at the end includes “In the Twenty Second year of His Majesty’s Name,” the last word of which was probably supposed to be “Reign” rather than “Name.”

I’m glad I asked around till I found someone with a car who was both willing and able to go with me, as after going there I agree that it would be difficult to reach the Archives on public transit. I also want to stress that if you are going by car, it’s a good idea to bring GPS and/or a detailed map of the neighborhood. We only had written directions with us and discovered that there were many intersections without street signs which made it difficult to follow the written directions. After we realized we had started going in circles, we called the Archives and asked for directions from where we had pulled over.

Additional Tips:

• Bring something to take digital photos! The Archives has a photocopier, but it is easier (and sometimes the only feasible way) to photograph items. You are allowed to photograph any record you view.
• As Marta stressed at her lecture, call in advance and book an appointment. Have an idea of at least one thing you are going to be researching at the Archives before you call so that you will be able to provide details over the phone when you schedule your appointment.
• If you know street addresses and/or wards, bring them along. Bring along as many street addresses and wards as you have, and include known dates for each one in your notes. If someone moved and/or their street address/ward changed without them moving, bring that information along as well, as it will make a significant difference. It is difficult to research in their old tax records without an exact street address, and probably impossible to research in their old voter records without a ward. While the Archives has some Ward maps as per my posted notes from Marta’s lecture, the maps do not cover as many years as the voting records do. The 1870 US federal census enumeration doesn’t typically include Wards in Boston, but the State Library of Massachusetts’s Massachusetts Real Estate Atlas Digitization Project has an 1874 atlas of Suffolk County (including Boston), which is earlier than the Archives Ward maps. If I had known there were no 1870’s Ward maps at the Archives and checked the 1874 atlas for wards in advance, I could have tried to look Willis up in the voting records while I was there.
• If you plan to search the women’s early voting records (women were allowed to vote [only] in school elections in Massachusetts before federal women’s suffrage), plan to schedule a minimum of an entire day to only doing that. I asked about looking in them for my female personal research subjects and Marta said that because they are completely unindexed, they would probably take me a couple of weeks to thoroughly search. (Because I had other things to research that day, she didn’t pull them at all for me and I have yet to view any samples from that record set.)

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