Another twist

We have unclear situations on both ends of Thomas' curriculum vitae (so to speak). Part of our effort has been an attempt at filling in pieces. We have more information about Margaret, now. But, 'whence' is an open issue. We have summary that will be updated from time to time. We have figured out that Thomas' remains were lost: Gardner's Beacon, Vol. IX, Vol. 1.

We know that Margaret and Thomas lived in Sherborne where they married and had the first of their children. Records suggest (absence of such) that the family moved. The children's name match those of the Cape Ann couple: Sherborne, Dorset.

In a discussion, I heard about a case in the Singapore where graves were dumped in a river to make room for a road. The families complained, to no consequence.

users.rc.com

So, while looking at whence issues today, I ran across this blog post: These Forty-one Puritan Gravestones. It talks about gravestones being moved without the bodies. It happened to these stone twice.

Ah, New England was Christian? Or money hungry?

The significance with this post about the 41 graves are several. Trask is a Cape Ann family. Too, Sidney Perley mentioned that some graves had been moved from Gardner's burial plot to the Trask plot which was almost adjoining. That motivated this New Twist post.

Remarks: Modified: 03/02/2019

03/02/2019 -- No, forty-one was minor. Now, it's 200 or so. That's not counting those interned at Gardner's Hill. All in little Essex County.

Gardner's Beacon, Vol IX, No 1

This issue of Gardner's Beacon looks at the last ten years and considers our next steps as well as future activities.

Then, we address the issue of "Where is Thomas?" from the framework of several years of research. We feel that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed, finally. And, we intend to follow this project through until enough is known to 'put it to bed' in a reasonable manner.

For more detail on the map that is on Page 2, see this post: 29 December 1674. That is the day that Thomas Gardner died. The post summarizes a few things and suggests that this issue of Gardner's Beacon was in development. Last year, we summarized several years of queries: The Remains of Thomas. We will be doing another summary, soon, in the context of a continuing project and what we know so far.

We provide a little information about Abel Gardner, who was the grandson of Thomas and Margaret that owned Gardner's Hill and the Gardner burial plot after his father, Samuel, died. He is an ancestor of Dr. Frank and Ann and her siblings. So, this is the issue strikes close to home.

After that, we'll plan how to establish a permanent memorial for Thomas (and the others who were re-interned, at that time). Included will be discussions about a virtual experience of Gardner's Hill and the burial plot being developed.

---

See Vol. IX, No. 1 of Gardner's Beacon for a review of research to date and more. Sources.

Remarks: Modified: 02/28/2019

02/23/2019 -- Put in link to prior post, concerning the original internment. A few minor edits on the PDF and image files. Note about Abel Gardner.

02/28/2019 -- Update link for Sources. Will put a post, henceforth, related to each issue, as we did with Gardner's Beacon, Vol. VIII, No. 1.

Black History Month

We are a little late in doing this post, however we will have a couple more soon. One of our efforts, now, is to get a scrolling timeline view established on our site that is related to Thomas Gardner, the Cape Ann crew, and the U.S. over the past 400 years. The Gardner Annals Volume I, Issue 1 published our first attempt at collecting this type of information. Those annals entries had been first published in several Gardner's Beacons (see Volume II, Issue 6 for the first of these) and were interleaved for the TGA collection to report several events by year. In the TGA issue, we organized the entries into 'Before 1592', 'Between 1592 and 1674', and 'After 1674' which puts the focus on the life of Thomas Gardner.

The idea is to take these entries as an index (even Table of Contents), with additional information, and make it a learning device. Let me tell you about a case in point. Since the beginning, we have been working as if New England did not have any hand in the slavery issue. Beyond, we must add, providing the impetus for the abolitionist's efforts. We have written a lot about the long arm of New England, as in, Kansas is a State started by New Englanders for the express purpose of being an example of non-slavery life. John Brown spent a bit of time there, under his own and an assumed name. However, on reading Nutfield Genealogy, we see that Samuel and Moses Maverick were slave traders. Professor Gates, in his Finding your roots, recently had a descendant of the Mavericks who is a TV personality.

Yesterday, USA Today, in a topical article, had a side bar that was a timeline related to the African American experience in the Americas. The involuntary migration started early. I did not find this timeline on-line but found one that is as good: Key Moments in Black History. The first entry is 1619 and deals with Virginia. The USA Today timeline started post Columbus. So, we will be looking for other timelines on this subject.

Heather, of Nutfield, then mentions the 1779 Slave Petition. On further search, other sites came to fore, such as: Slavery in New Hampshire. Not picking on the State of Rev. Bachiler; we're just getting started. There have been several books on the subject of slavery in New England. I referred to one instance that dealt with Harvard.

Another book dealt with events in New Hampshire, including the petition for freedom by slaves of the well-known families, such as the Whipples. The Whipple slave was with his master when he signed the Declaration of Independence. The chapter concludes with a story of General Washington trying to get back a slave of his who had fled to New Hampshire.

So, given our themes of Culture, History and Technology, we will look at all aspects of life over these past hundreds of years, especially with an eye toward things that are still pertinent but overlooked (or, are unknown).

Remarks: Modified: 02/19/2019

02/19/2019 --

Reprints, Dr. Frank's books

While browsing today, for another post (to be published after this), I saw that there were books of Dr. Frank's for sale on e-bay. On a closer look, these were reprints and are fairly recent. So, for now, here are the links. There were three books that caught my eye, originally. But, on closer look, I see that there have been more reprints. So, let's start with these three to see what's up.

In the modern age, many have gone back and brought classics forward. So, it is good to see this effort. We will do a review after some study of the situation. As, one of our goals is a redo of Dr. Frank's work. However, we would use modern referencing methods and cover all of the children.  Too, we would look more closely at the collateral families. Dr. Frank did an excellent job given his time and the technology available.

1. Thomas Gardner, Planter (forgottenbooks.com) - this consists of an extract of pages from the 1907 book. The page provides buttons for 'Download', 'Read', and Amazon. Here is the Ebay link.  
   
2. Thomas Gardner, Planter (Cape Ann, ...) and Some of His Descendants (bookdepository.com - Andesite Press - Ebay link) - the overview says "This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it." Amen. 
   
3. Thomas Gardner, Planter (Cape Ann, ...) and Some ... (bookdepository.com - Franklin Classics - Ebay link) - Same as before. Different ISBN number. But, continuing: "Scholars believe ... that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public." Again, cannot disagree. 
   

We will survey some of the other publications and continue this theme.

Remarks: Modified: 02/27/2019

02/27/2019 -- Note left on FB on 02/19/2019:

In following up on some research, I ran into some material about reprints of Dr. Frank's 1907 work. So far, what I have seen concerns the 1907 book and not the 1933 one. That might be due to some copyright constraints. Have to look further.

One of our projects is to get Dr. Frank's work up to date. And, that would include a rewrite of the former material with notes added to bring in the modern view as well as introduction of new material. If we put in an image, it would be for effect.

            (link to this post)

This post is a start at looking at the reprint phenomenon. They do image enhancements, essentially. There is a lot to discuss. We can, actually, get started on this now, after some work on ways as well as mean. Along with this work would be continuing upkeep of the website plus the blog (or two or three). We could have a lot accomplished before 2023/3 comes along.

02/28/2019 --

Configuration issues

In the mode of continual progress, we are firming up some points, such as the use of native mode (html/css/js) at our main site. Along with this, we got SSL rolling so that we could have private business exchanges. Too, we added in Search at the main site and the blog. At the main site, there are no ads. For the blog, they are there until we get them turned off due to our non-profit status.

The main benefit is that they are formatted the same which gives us opportunity to build an index and much more. The image shows a search on 'Cape Ann' at both sites. One returned 36 results; the other gave us 56 results.

Search

 Another development is that the NEHGS now has a genealogical tree builder. So, we will be looking at that this year. Last year, we finally got back to WikiTree and found it very useful. For instance, we go the Thomas/Margaret issue raised up and settled. As well, once I received some hand-written material that was done by Dr. Frank, I updated a tree for him that is almost complete. This goes back to Thomas and Margaret.

Dr. Frank featured

At the same time, findagrave has upgraded itself. So, I put in a virtual record for the Gardner burial plot (the theme of remain status will be prominent this year). There is a lot more to report. Our tenth year will be really busy as we get ready for the upcoming 400ths.

Remarks: Modified: 02/02/2019

02/02/2019 -- Search at the main site and on this blog are ad-free non-profit. We can start to build indexes. That is one task. What would they look like? 

Tenth year

The first diving into this type of work was in 2009, and the blog started later, in 2010. So we can take this time as an opportunity to do reviews and can offer this as the first post of the type that we will continue to do and update all year.

This list is brief. We will looking for other examples as we review all of the posts.

• One of our first look-abouts was back in 2013 with a view to the 400th anniversary. At the time, the year was expected to be 2024, but one might, we learned later, argue for 2023. So, 400 is significant as we see from the already celebrating Plymouth folk. We will keep earlier activities in mind. 
• One activity the past month has been to create and update an image index that maps each image into a blog post (see tgsoc.org). Right now, the images are in order by the year and month of the post, but we will are working toward a general search capability. In late December, we updated the chart of post counts by year and month and expect to map to over one-half of the posts. 
• We also have the unfortunate task of following up on the question of "Where is Thomas?" As such, we'll leave no stone unturned. For starters, we have collected posts about Thomas and his character.  
• There have been several contributors to our work. One example is John Goff who has provided several articles and commentary.
• Another goal will be to get the first few generations documented which has been a standing wish for some time. We have one means, via WikiTree. We will be looking at the tree service being offered by the NEHGS. Other means (not ancestry)? 

On our site, other buttons are planned. Anyone interested in the development process can assist. Let us know. At some point, we'll start to itemize the new functions and their status as some will be more easily done than others. Too, though, the future issues will continue to be on the table. 

Remarks: Modified: 01/18/2019

01/18/2019 --

Gems of Salem

Gardner Research started in 2010 from a blank slate, more or less, using the wonders of the www; in other words, trolling the waters of the internet to see what we could find. The result? Lots of stuff, some of which we have organized. And, there is a lot more work to do.

As we have seen, records get digitized and come online. Sherborne, Dorset is an example as their records allowed us access to lots more about Margaret and Thomas. See the discussions on WikiTree. Notice two things: this is a profile of Thomas sponsored by a Great Migration Project using Anderson's book (1986); Margaret is given as Thomas' spouse and mother of the children. As well are records coming on-line, people write.

A very good example, that is relevant, is salem.wickedlocal.com. Early on, we saw an article by John Goff: Looking at Salem’s beginnings: The White and Gardner family contributions. This article published in 29 Dec 2007. That was eleven years ago; we saw it four years later and noticed that it mentioned Rev. John White.

One of our first activities was to start the Thomas Gardner (planter) page on Wikipedia and have added several other pages or links. A good example might be when there were news stories about Amelia Earhart's plane. Gardner Island was mentioned; so, we had to look at that (as we have with other areas: Gardner Junction, Gardner, CO, Gardiner, OR). And, John got into that story, too.

I well remember John's first email. He congratulated us as he had run across our Wikipedia tagging. I do not know if he wrote about Gardner Island, but we did discuss Gardner's Beacon. And, John was kind enough to contribute articles as well as provide other information to support our research (thank you, John). I thought that it might be a good task to itemize John's work, especially as it relates to Gardner studies. See the list below which is provided as a reminder to us to look further into the articles. On the list, too, are Salem articles that mention Gardner.

First, though, here are a couple of examples of overlap interest. On our Gardner Gate page (portal to truth), we just did a summary of some pre-arrival information (1 March 2013 - the 2nd most read post) pulling information from a series of Gardner's Beacon issues. Then, I just found this article by John -- Salem’s forgotten French heritage (7 June 2008) -- in which he details French activities in the area that became Salem. He mentions the discussions with the Native Americans. There are several articles that we will look at further.

But, another example, is the work that we did to track down information about the owner of the barque, Bostonian, that wrecked (Oct 1850) at what became Gardiner, OR (update - 30 October 2018). The original work was done in 2014 with an article published in The Essex Genealogist. The owner was a descendant of George of Rhode Island, though, two of his wives were descendants of Thomas Gardner of Salem. But, as well as the family information, there is a whole lot to discuss about the time (More on the Gold Rush 31 Mar 2016).

Here, I see that John wrote about a response to a query (1990s) from San Francisco (NAUMKEAG NUGGETS: Salem in the California Gold Rush 5 Jun 2015) about a ship that they discovered. It had been built in Salem.

From what I have seen, hundreds of ships were abandoned as crews rushed off to pan gold. That makes the Bostonian different in that not only did it bring supplies from Boston to San Francisco (July 1849 to January 1850 voyage - only four passengers - it was loaded), it went then to New Zealand (that was interesting, verifying that part of its journey), returned to San Francisco, and wrecked in Oregon is October of 1850.

Many went to California by land. We have researched that avenue, as well, due to our interest in the western expansion. Too, New England (and Salem) had the reach of a long arm. A third way to the gold fields was boating down to Central America, trudging across, then boating back up to what is now known as the Left Coast. This went both ways (many lost their fortune in that journey).

There are other examples in an endless set of things to research. So, gems, indeed. Finally, to a partial list of John's Gardner touch. Each item is marked by date; there is no obvious order, yet.

• 2011/08/white-and-gardner-family-contributions.html 
• 2016/09/gardner-wayman-peabody-mill.html 
• 2013/01/john-goff.html 
• 2012/09/gardners-beacon-vol-ii-no-4.html
• 2012/10/gardners-beacon-vol-ii-no-5.html
• 2011/08/thomas-house.html
• 2018/12/wikipedia-rev-john-white-et-al.html
• 2012/08/king-philip-joseph-and-ann.html
• 2015/03/things-nordic.html
• 23 Jun 2007 Appreciating Salem’s historic Bridge Street
• 25 Jan 2013 Some old Salem ties to Nantucket
• 28 Apr 2016 Federalist Style works on land or sea
• 2 Sep 2016 When Forest River Tide Mill made corn meal
• --- below are from hits using search ---
• Bibliography (John's book)
• Timeline (John's work mentioned) 
• The old manual index (John's in Vols II, III, and IV)
• Vol. II, No. 6 (evolution of the house after Cape Ann) 
• Great House, Cape Ann (John pointed me to the material to do this page)
• ...

Remarks: Modified: 02/28/2019

02/08/2019 -- Recently, we got registered with Google as non-profit and have put a search facility on the sites. They are (will be) ad-free, once I get the administrative stuff completed. On the search page, I mention our manual effort at indexing. Now, we can get more serious. I extended the above list with some hits from searching on John Goff.

02/08/2019 -- Put photo of John Goff from 5 Jun 2015 article, Naumkeag Nuggets.