Collateral families

This post reviews various types of puzzles that we can encounter. We first addressed the issue of errors in October of 2010: Stories and unwindings. Then, again, in December of 2010:  Family traditions. The first post mentioned the variations on the theme that one gets in reading material on the internet. A later post looked 'Historic puzzles' which dealt with conflicting information on the web of differing age and provenance. To where does one turn after resolving an issue. We published two articles in The Essex Genealogist related to that theme (TEG, Vol 34).

With respect to Thomas and Margaret, we have addressed some of these. The FAQ is a start on an approach that might be reasonable. That was motivated, in part, by trying to assess what we really knew then (or know, at any point). One reason for the 'Remarks' section on these posts is to link to information known down the line. The 'What we know' post has additional comments dated from 2012 to 2018. Many posts are being updated as we add images for our index.

As would be expected, origins are a huge theme of interest. We found more information about Margaret. There have been many other viewpoints presented. Our intent is to gather these; eventually, we will publish them with some commentary. Examples: Neville in the tree?; Thomas' sister Rachel?; Who was on the boat?; Common query: Am I related to Thomas?; and more.

The work of Gardner Research will not be without interesting puzzles and knots. On the other side, we do not want to introduce more complication. Some errors have cropped up. They may have been typos (a couple of places, the wrong year for the publication of the 'Gardner Memorial' book). Others were not following up on sources (see below). Some were oversights (or new information came about). We address this issue on the Publications page of our portal and will be thorough in our handling of this type of change.

After we wrote a brief article about Dr. Frank back in 2015 (The Gardner Annals, Vol. II, No. 2), we created a record on findagrave for him. We found a grave record for his daughter, Pauline. In the article, we mentioned that her burial was in Whitefield, ME. It should have been Sheepscot Cemetery in Newcastle, ME.

Pauline's husband was Philip Stone Donnell. As we will see with his story, Philip S. was an officer in the U.S. Army and an administrator with the WPA. He published an article in The Technology Monthly of MIT about his years doing coast surveys:

Three Years with the United States Coast and Geodetic Coast Survey (November, 1915).

This article was later published in The C.I.T. Journal (June, 1921).

 
Remarks:  Modified: 07/20/2020

07/20/2020 -- Updated links to Philip's article. Changed the image to MIT's journal.