Web site

Status: 11/23/2014 - 0600 PST, site is up and running

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Web site availability reports ought to be regularly supported. Today, I noticed that the thomasgardernsociety.org site was down about 10:00 PST.  As of now, 15:25 PST, it was still not accessible. The service provider has a general comment about no ETA.

webhostinghub notice
of outage

However, they did say that there would be periodic updates. Well, five hours is way too long for such a period, IMHO. But, we'll have to see how this goes. 

The last noticeable outage was in June of this year. Prior to that, there had been no down times that were significant. Meaning, one expects to have tie ups due to several factors that users need to know.

On the other hand, the whole notion of who owns what is an on-going debate (part of the "neutral net" arguments, to boot). We have dealt with this the sense of content versus configuration, for one.

Web presence, that persists and evolves, will be an integral part of any communication strategy in the future. How this looks may differ wildly from our current level of technology, but some of the issues will remain hotbeds of discussion.

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A note went out yesterday about the TEG publication. The note points to our repository of papers. The email server is co-joint with the web traffic handler. Is that good? Well, all sorts of questions will be addressed.

Status: (see FB)

Under the auspices of Gardner Research, sponsored by the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. 


Switlik, John M. "John Sayward/Soward of Gloucester/Ipswich" The Essex Genealogist (TEG) Vol. 34, No. 4, November, 2014, page 210; In 1791, John Graves of Ipswich, MA married Elizabeth Sayward. Who was she? To answer that question, we need to look at Elizabeth’s parents. The article shows that her parents were John Sayward and Elizabeth Leatherland, of Ipswich, and, then, answers the question: who was John Sayward?


Includes ahnentafel of an aunt of Dr. Frank A. Gardner, author. An earlier article covered his grandmother, Lucy Foster Wilson. Next up, his grandfather, Benjamin Brown Gardner.

Remarks: Modified: 11/23/2014 

11/22/2014 -- Started a post on the technical blog, using Word Press. The general topic is content management, however content, as an abstraction, has many levels. The discussion started two years ago when we had to move off of Microsoft's site and has continued. ... There are many troubles that we see with computing; now, some of these are old and gnarly, while others are due to the recent technological advances. You see, value from change is not always a positive thing. We will go more into that.

11/22/2014 -- 18:37 PST, still down.

11/23/2014 -- 06:00 PST up and running; need to check email status

Henry D. Gardiner

Earlier, a post (Places) mentioned that a query had arisen about the origins of Gardiner, OR. There had been a well-documented shipwreck (1850) without loss of lives and with the load being saved and the ship being salvaged for its lumber. Win-win, so to speak.


At the point where the goods were stored on land (nine miles from the wreck site), covered by the ship's tarp sails, a town arose. It was given its name since the person who had commissioned the ship's journey was named Mr. Gardiner. This loose naming was used in several stories, over the long years though there was mention of Boston as his place of business.

Much later, in 1994, an effort to document the town as a historic place resulted in a nice write up (see the "Places" post). That work identified the the owner, Henry D. Gardiner. Now, who was he? It was said that he lived in Boston.

Dr. Silvester Gardiner

namesake of

Silvester Henry Dearborn Gardiner

(source: Wikipedia) 

Too, we were told about the motivation for the shipment and a few other details, but, somehow, anything about Mr. Gardiner was never filled in.

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We have found Henry D. Gardiner and provide a few bits about his life and times. He did live in Boston and can be found in both the 1855 Massachusetts and the 1860 US Census. His business was said to be lumber which relates to the purpose for the ship, Bostonian, being dispatched around the Cape to Oregon.

Note: A pre-fab house was aboard that was put up by George L. Snelling (who served as postmaster).

Related article: TGA, Vol. II, No. 1 (pg 6). ... See Remarks, this day, for a summary.

Remarks   11/07/2018

12/23/2014 -- Timeline of the barque Bostonian

03/17/2015 -- Snipped the details until the TEG Vol. 35, No. 2 (ESOG) article on HDG and his ships is published (May 2015). Put a comment at the Douglas County Historical Society.

Summary from the Research page:

A very recent example of research was following up on the namesake of Gardner, OR. This list summarizes activity and findings, to date.

• The Gardiner who owned the Bostonian which shipwrecked in 1850 was H.D. Gardiner (this post contains a slew of links to material that is relevant to the subject from which we are developing a series of articles). 
• H.D. married three times. Two of his wives are Thomas Gardner of Salem descendants. So, we will be expanding their tree. 



Bostonian in SF, 1850 

• The Bostonian was on the west coast due to the need to supply the gold rush (49ers). We have traced the ship's activities in the time (1848 on) prior to the shipwreck. We have the passenger list for when it left Boston. Also, see ad and its time frame (image). Then, from San Francisco, the barque went to New Zealand. Most likely, that is where it picked up the cargo that was onboard at the time of the shipwreck.  See timeline for barque Bostonian. 
• This research touches upon many aspects of those times (as in, the way things were (still are?) as an important topic for us) that we will go into. Several examples: for one, newspaper reporting that was very much flowery, judgmental, and opinionated. 
• ...

04/07/2015 -- Article submitted for review (see Timeline).

05/20/2015 -- TEG, May 2015, Vol. 35, No. 2, Pg. 31. The Gardner Annals, Vol. II, No. 1, will publish the article in the near future.

04/08/2017 -- Put in pointer to TGS, Vol II, No 1. Changed image source for Silvester.

08/17/2018 -- The 2nd wife of H.D. was Caroline B. Turner (see note this day at this post) of Maine and not Caroline C. Turner of Nantucket.

11/07/2018 -- On the image from S.F., it said August 1849 which was only one month after the ship left Boston. Obvious typo. Too, we are using this post (The Gardiner that was) to collect and show material.

Historic Nantucket

As an example of contributions by Thomas descendants, we can use the Massachusetts Magazine that was started by Dr. Frank A. Remnants of this can be seen in The Essex Genealogist. Dr. Frank A.'s ancestral tree is a current focus of research.

Today, we wanted to provide additional information related to Nantucket where sons Richard and John lived. From what we have seen so far, Nantucket records are very thorough and ought to be the envy of less organized locations.

• Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) - They had their 100th anniversary in 1994. It is nice that the NHA has many articles from their Historic Nantucket on-line for easy use. 
• Eliza Starbuck Barney (Vol. 50, No. 3) - The NHA database presents Eliza's years of work in a modern manner. She is one of many examples that we have run across where someone spent their life and energy doing work for genealogy and history (too, wargs.com). 
• Nantucket Lands and Land Owners (Vol. 2, 1906) - Henry Barnard Worth was an early contributor for NHA's Bulletins. Chapter II, The Nantucket Insurrection, is a must read. 

Both Eliza and Henry are Thomas and Margaret descendants.

Remarks: Modified: 03/02/2019

11/18/2014 - After seeing Eliza's database, I put out some notes based upon Dr. Frank's two books: person table. As one would expect, son Samuel was more in focus for the 1907 book. The 1993 book was George's family (not complete). Progress is being made on the expected ahnentafel format. Too, The Gardner Annals, Vol. II, No. 1, in process. 

04/12/2015 -- Nantucket pages by Coralynn.

12/30/2015 -- The settlers of Nantucket (Donahue family site).

H.D. Gardiner
owner, barque Bostonian

08/17/2018 -- While researching and writing an article for an issue of TGA, I used Barney's database. The focus of the research was to determine the owner of a ship that wrecked off of the coast of Oregon in 1850. The article appeared in TEG Vol 35, No 2 and TGA Vol II No 1 (title: Henry D. Gardiner (and Gardiner, OR)). In one section, I briefly referenced H.D.'s genealogy (see BGR, pg 239, #i7172) as his wives were Thomas Gardner descendants. The following image shows the page. In the footnotes, BGR is the Barney Genealogical Record as provided by the Nantucket Historical Association. H.D.'s second wife is noted to be Caroline C. Turner who was the daughter of Benjamin Turner and Rhoda Coggeshall. We have been notified that this Caroline (see BGR, pg 497, #i4936) did marry Alexander G. Coffin, but Caroline only had one marriage. Caroline and Alex were both buried in Durand, Wisc (findagrave for Caroline C.). As an aside, both Alexander and Caroline are descendants of Thomas Gardner (planter). On the other hand, the 2nd wife of H.D. Gardiner was Caroline B. Turner (findagrave for Caroline B.) who was the daughter of Briggs Turner and Comfort Jones of Whitefield, Maine. Notice of the two Carolines was provided by Dawna Lund of California.

03/02/2019 -- We're building an index via images at our portal to truth. 

Documenting research

The overall discussion is what is necessary to show lineage (this post has a link to the prior post). There are two examples provided: verbose and very terse (is not the strong, silent type an American icon?).

We are close to proposing a reasonable approach, based upon the ahnentafel format and a hyper-linked set (ah, hypercard, where art thou?) of supporting material. Granted, there will be some missing information such as one would like to know (sensitive stuff about individuals), however there are many ways to go about this (G+, FB, etc.) such that duplication of effort is not necessary.

Too, we take the security/privacy issues to heart, strongly (as would Thomas, I would be). So, that larger picture will continue to be in focus.

Aside: popular media abounds with stories of hacking, et al. Where was the media interest over the time frame of the internet's expansion/evolution(?) from the wild west frontier to its current state of disarray?

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Earlier, I used Dr. Frank's line: grandmother and aunt. I have just completed the ahnentafel for his grandfather, Benjamin Brown Gardner which will be published soon. In his 1907 book, Dr. Frank has a summary of ancestors, and early arrivers, for each of the spouses who married into the Gardner family. Except for one, Rebecca Knapp's (spouse of Simon Stacy Gardner) heritage is strangely missing.

We have filled that in and have found it to be interesting (for one, Nathaniel Eaton - who needs to have his story retold and appreciated).

Mind you, when I say ahnentafel, I mean a fully sourced lineage. Too, thankfully for Dr. Frank, the vast majority of the material is on-line (which is to be expected as we (and society) progress).

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Dr. Frank did seminal work. It is very much appropriate that we use him as the focal point to describe, analyze, discuss, and, hopefully (as in not be like Congress) resolve these matters.

Remarks: Modified: 02/27/2015

11/16/2014 - For the two ahnentafel charts mentioned above, we intend to have a hyperlinked version on-line. Some of the source material is freely available; others of it are not (we will provide the URL anyway as a point in time marker). Persistence is the name of the game; fluidity seems to be the major vogue; ...; structure ought not be held as inimical (not categorically) by web heads (old guy talking here) or anyone else.

11/18/2014 -- Inspired by Nantucket work.

11/25/2014 -- Will be doing a special study of Nathaniel Eaton who was a graduate of Padua University and ancestor of Dr. Frank A. Gardner and many more. One thing we will present are Harvard Crimson articles (over the years, the tone differences are interesting). ... This story needs to be told from a neutral viewpoint that presents all of the sides. Take the "rod and child" view so prevalent in Christianity and so much in the news (NFL and more). Or, the right of naval captains to flog. Not to mention that both Winthrop and Endicott and more did not abstain from the practice (Quakers and more). We have a long list to consider. Then, take Rev. Nathaniel Ward's (uncle in the long chain of lineage) son who was flogged. For theft. Note, that Nathaniel Eaton is quoted in this article about his belief in his "absolute right" to punish, ... By the way, heard anyone talking of an elected official adopting an emperor's stance, of late? ... Dr. Frank did not elevate awareness of his ancestor due to his times (and, he was of Harvard). ... Yes, the Gardner story is central to all themes, of the U.S. story and beyond. ... Related view (America, Thanksgiving, ...).

02/27/2015 -- Discussion continues.

Places and names

Context: Gardner place names

This week, there was a query from Dr. Stuart Gardner Garrett of Oregon about the "1850 Gardner connection" with the ship, Bostonian. Did we know?

Well, no; however, there is an interest in places as they involve people. And, this story is very interesting. Too, Gardner Research has this as one of its foci.

From one account, a ship coming up from San Francisco found another that had run up on a sand bar in a river in Oregon. One story was told by a descendant of a passenger on the later ship, Kate Heath. The ship that was lost was the Bostonian.

Firstly, there were no lives lost; the crew had saved the cargo which was of a very useful variety. As well, the crew had begun to dismantle the ship which was used to build structures in the town that was to be. The cargo was stored on shore under the ship's canvas. At that place, the town was built using the ship's lumber and part of the supplies.

The town? Gardiner, OR. It was named after the New Englander, named Gardiner, who had funded the ship. The descendant's account said that Coffin was captain. Actually, the captain was George Snelling who was a nephew of Mr. Gardiner. Another thing of note is that Winchester, Payne & Co. was involved.

The History of the Pacific Northwest (Volume 1) had a nice coverage of the story. But, they did not have much about Gardiner. There were various suggestions in many later writings.

Finally, research done for the National Register of Historic Places pulled things together (see page 8) in 1994. They identified the owner as Henry Gardiner, also Coffin was captain of the Kate Heath. Later work, added an initial. So, we have Henry D. Gardiner.

But, who was, and whence came, he? To be studied further.

There will be regular "Places" posts, due, in part, to the stories associated with them. Descendants of New England's Gardners can be found everywhere in the U.S. New England towns drove all sorts of settlements (to wit, Ipswich Canada which covers the area near Gardner, MA but fairly remote in the 1600s). Lawrence, KS has a main drag of Massachusetts Avenue due to the influence of the founding folk. Not far away is Gardner, KS. Perhaps, a list of cities/towns named Gardner/Gardiner in every state ought to be done.

Back to Henry, though. Unfortunately, "Bostonian" was popular for names of all types of boats (oops). Too, did no one in Oregon ask particulars about Henry, at the time? This seems so much like the case of hidden information about Thomas.

Remarks: Modified: 02/09/2020

11/19/2014 - Henry D. Gardiner and his life/times.

12/23/2015 -- Places to research origin of: Gardner - CO, IL, KS, MA, ND, TN, WI, NJ; Gardiner - NY, MT, ME.

03/17/2015 -- Timeline of the barque Bostonian

04/07/2015 -- Article submitted for review (see Timeline).

08/07/2016 -- Gardner, KS; Gardiners Island; Gardner, CO

08/17/2018 -- The 2nd wife of H.D. was Caroline B. Turner (see note this day at this post) of Maine and not Caroline C. Turner of Nantucket.

03/02/2019 -- Update of information (lots - Gardiner that was, Historic Puzzles). Added the image as we're building an index via images at our portal to truth.

02/09/2020 -- A couple more places: Gardner, IL; Gardiner, MT.