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Do The Math

This year I spent an embarrassing amount of time building a family tree back to the first generation of New England settlers. Took me months. I wanted the full picture, not just the parental line but everyone in my gene pool. I have that now. I just wish I had done the math first. I…

Common Men

My research into one New England story — the first shots of the American Revolution — morphed into a three-year odyssey to tell the story the way it deserves: Through the eyes of the Tidds, Munros, Harringtons and others who lived through it. That narrative is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Official…

Colonel Samuel Tidd?

One of the more interesting new datasets available online today are FamilySearch’s war pension applications from the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Over the past few days, I’ve looked at references to any and all Tidds. Three documents might relate to Samuel Tidd, b1759 in Woburn, the direct ancestor of all Georgetown Tidds.…

Who Was Samuel Charles Tidd? Part II

In 2022 I went on a hunt for a link between my direct ancestor Samuel Charles Tidd of Georgetown and his supposed parents from Woburn, Samuel and Ruhamah Richardson Tidd. That effort, which ended in absolute failure, is summarized here. I finally found what I was looking for thanks to Pliny Tidd, who died in…

Prisoner of War

Joseph Bartlett of Newbury 1686-1754 In the fall of 1712, 25-year-old Joseph Bartlett journeyed east through the Massachusetts wilderness to his coastal hometown of Newbury, after more than four years in captivity at the hands of the French and their Indian allies. Here is what survives of his story. Queen Anne’s War For more than…

The Alarm

On April 19 1775, four Tidd men stood on Lexington common with a small militia band as eight hundred British troops marched up the road. Here is their story.

Who Was Samuel Charles Tidd?

The first Tidd in Essex County might have been Samuel Charles, who shows up in Western Rowley (later Georgetown) in 1807. Where did he come from? How did he end up there? Who was this man of mystery, anyhow?

A Cold Welcome

The Mayflower pilgrim’s first encounters with the natives don’t fall neatly into contemporary narratives.

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