When I started tracing my family tree, I started with a fair bit of information. One great grandfather had (with more enthusiasm than expertise) collected all the information he could find on his ancestors. Dates without places, names with places and no dates, and very little on wives' families.... but some good jumping off points for a new researcher. Similarly, my Scottish born grandmother had recorded what she knew of that side of the family. A couple major mistakes in the information that had me pulling my hair out, but ~ again ~ a good place to start.
My great great great grandfather William Low Weston (who, so typically of colonial New England trees, is also my 6th cousin 4 times removed, 5th cousin 6 times removed, 4th cousin 7 times removed, and bunch of more distant relationships ~ and I'm even more related to his wife.....) was also interested in genealogy ~ enough that he was a member of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society for a couple decades in the mid 19th century.
Which is where the story gets even more interesting (a.k.a. convoluted......).
William Low Weston joined the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in the mid 19th century, and there's a nice copy of the pedigree chart he submitted to the NEHGS in the papers a cousin donated to the Danvers Archival Center (click on linked photo for a larger view):
There are lots of other papers related to William at the Danvers Archival center....
A photo, showing the prosperous banker:
And his wife, Louisa Page (if you go to Danvers, the town historical society is in the Page house, built by Louisa's grandfather):
Louisa, later in life (she died in 1909), with a daughter (Caroline Page Weston), granddaughter (Jessie Sears, a bit of whose life story I told way back here), and great granddaughter (Helen Learoyd, on the right, was born in 1894):
Several books of business correspondence....
A letter from his mother:
And evidence of some youthful wanderings:
William died in 1889, at home in Danvers MA. For some reason, the NEHGS's journal, the Register, published a memorial to him in 1943.
Lots of mistakes in the memorial ~ we'll skip the issues with William's parents (tune in next week for that part of the saga.....), other than to note that William's birthplace was, indeed, Brooklyn ~ but not the NH version in the memorial, or the big one in NY that everyone knows, but the little town of Brooklyn PA, in what is now Susquehanna County.
The memorial lists their marriage date as 20 November 1823, but that is actually Louisa's birth date. The correct date is 5 July 1844. Based on one record in the family papers at the Archives, William and Louisa had made a previous attempt to marry, but her mother didn't allow it, saying Louisa was too young, but they did marry in 1844, when Louisa was 20 and William 27.
William and Louisa had six recorded children. The last two were twins ~ one (sex not stated in the birth record) stillborn. Despite what the memorial says, Louis Foster Weston did not die the same day he was born. In fact, he lived until 1945. He married a woman named Charlotte Campbell and they had three children (Ernest, Elsa, and Louise).
Yet another reminder to not believe everything you read, even in a relatively prestigious journal like the Register.