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American Ancestors

American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is America’s founding genealogical organization and the most respected name in family history. Established in 1845, they are the nation’s leading comprehensive resource for family history research and the largest Society of its kind in the world. The group provides family history services through their staff, original scholarship, data-rich website, educational opportunities and its research center to help family historians of all levels explore their past and understand their families’ unique place in history.

http://www.americanancestors.org

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Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age by Henry Wiencek

6:00pm Mon, Jul 28, 2025

Join American Ancestors at the Boston Public Library for an illustrated tour of the Gilded Age, seen through the experiences and artistry of two of its celebrated artists: architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Author Henry Wiencek and moderator Curt DiCamillo will take us behind the scenes to show how these two cultural trendsetters transcended scandal to enrich their times.

The creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights, Stanford White was a man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur. Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture; he was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator. These two artists pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained an friendship and partnership that sustained them. White calmed Sant-Gaudens’s troubled spirits and vouched for him when he failed to complete projects. Saint-Gaudens challenged White to take his artistic gifts seriously and supported him even through the sordid debaucheries that led to White’s sensational murder. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets these men’s relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires’ commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs, new aesthetic ideas.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors Boston Public Library
The March to Freedom for All Americans, 1860-1920

Mon, Jun 23, 2025

In this unique panel American Ancestors' guest speakers will focus on the defining years of 1860-1920 and bring to life the experiences of a great variety of Americans, from the enslaved-then-free peoples and soldiers who marched with Union Civil War General Sherman to immigrants, workers, Native Americans, and women. Don’t miss learning more about Bennett Parten’s and Manisha Sinha’s groundbreaking research, new books, and insightful discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor.

In Somewhere Toward Freedom, Bennett Parten provides a full account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy. For the first time, he tells this remarkable tale from perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

Manisha Sinha expands our view of the Reconstruction time period in The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic. Her startling original account opens in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, that triggered the secession of the Deep South states, and take us all the way to 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote—and which Sinha calls the "last Reconstruction amendment."

Join for these historians’ unique and insightful presentations and for the discussion that follows facilitated by moderator Alan Taylor.

Books Featured: Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten; and The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 by Manisha Sinha.

Presented in partnership with 10 Million Names and Boston Public Library.

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American Ancestors Boston Public Library
Explorers: A New History with Matthew Lockwood

Wed, May 28, 2025

Prize-winning historian Matthew Lockwood looks at the impulse to explore, the travels of Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook alongside others who rightfully deserve the title of “explorers” including immigrants and fugitive slaves.

According to Lockwood, people of every background imagine new worlds. The impulse to seek new places is universal to humanity. In his new book, “Explorers,” he unfurls a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked travelers spanning forty centuries and six continents. His illustrated talk will share the stories of such seekers as David Dorr, born into slavery in New Orleans who embarked on a Grand Tour or Europe and Egypt, and the Viking female voyager Gudrid Far-Traveler, who sailed to North America in 1000 AD; among other pioneers.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors
Megan Marshall talks with Janice Nimura about “After Lives”

Wed, Mar 19, 2025

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of celebrated American women, Megan Marshall has been hailed as a “gifted storyteller” (New Yorker) at “the front rank of American biographers” (New York Times).

Join us to hear about her latest work “After Lives: On Biography and Mysteries of the Human Heart” and gain insight from her discussion with fellow biographer Janice Nimura. Don’t miss their conversation about remarkable women in history and their own lives and work. Special for Women’s History Month.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors
Nicholas Nugent with The Spice Ports: Mapping the Origins of Global Sea Trade

Tue, Jan 14, 2025

Join Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, in partnership with Brandeis University Press and American Ancestors for a wide-ranging discussion about a fascinating period of global history as experts from both sides of the Atlantic discuss maritime commerce--the innovation, benefits, and damages of the spice trade.

Learn how the drive of sea captains, worldwide consumers’ taste, and technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping— enabled navigation across unprecedented distances, from such embarkation points as Venice, Amsterdam, Lisbon to the exotic ports of Malacca, Goa, Bombay, where they tracked down elusive spices. Such travels impacted art, literature, and science worldwide; and they were often disastrous for local populations, who were frequently exploited as slave plantation labor. This wide-ranging account of a fascinating period of global history uses original maps and contemporary artists’ views to tell the story of how each port developed individually; while also encouraging us to consider contrasting points of view of the benefits and the damages of the maritime spice trade.

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Ford Hall Forum American Ancestors
Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words with Michael Owen

Tue, Dec 3, 2024

Gain insight into the life of Ira Gershwin, the man behind some of the most memorable lyrics of the Great American Songbook. Biographer Michael Owen reveals the life of this remarkable American, the son of first-generation immigrants, who has often been in the shadow of his brother George Gershwin.

The first lyricist to win the Pulitzer Prize, Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) has been hailed as one of the masters of the Great American Songbook, a period which covers songs written largely for Broadway and Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s. Now, in the first full-length biography devoted to his life, Michael Owen draws on extensive archival sources to craft a rich portrait of the modest man who penned the words to such well-loved songs as “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Owen’s book celebrates George and Ira Gershwin’s collaboration and Ira’s extensive work with other songwriters. Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words brings the publicity-shy lyricist into the spotlight he deserves.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors Boston Public Library
Edward O’Keefe with 'The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt', the Women Who Created a President

Mon, Oct 21, 2024

In this evening focused on women’s and family history, Edward F. O’Keefe shines light on the women who “created” President Roosevelt—the impact and influence of, among others, his mother, sisters, and his wives.
The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt is based on dozens of interviews with descendants, thousands of archives, and new discoveries at Harvard University and Roosevelt’s home.
Following an illustrated presentation comprised of new and exclusive photographs, O’Keefe is in conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Debby Applegate.

Presented by American Ancestors’ American Inspiration series in partnership with Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University and GBH Forum Network.

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American Ancestors Ford Hall Forum
Stephen Puleo with The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union

Thu, May 9, 2024

The Great Abolitionist is the first major biography of Charles Sumner in over 50 years. Employing his “vast knowledge of 19th-century Boston and its diffident attitude toward slavery and integration,” Stephen Puleo calls his book a “biographical history” that brings to life two decades when the nation’s very fate hung in the balance -- when slavery consumed Congressional debate, America careened toward civil war, and the country dealt with the war, the assassination of a President, and the monumental task of Reconstruction. Before, during, and after the war, Charles Sumner’s voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering, often at the cost of great personal sacrifice. He moved America toward the twin goals of abolitionism and equal rights for emancipated people, which he fought for literally until the day he died. From the award-winning author-historian we’ll gain a deeper understanding of this remarkable abolitionist and the time in which he lived.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors
“Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History” with co-author Gregory P. Downs & historian Vincent Brown

Mon, Oct 7, 2024

Join American Ancestors featured author and a guest historian-expert for an insightful discussion of Nat Turner, Black Prophet, a bold reinterpretation of the causes and legacy of Nat Turner's rebellion. This new, definitive account offers a fresh look at Black history.

In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which their enslavers lived and attempted to march on the county seat of Jerusalem, from which they planned to launch an uprising across the South. After the rebellion was suppressed, well over a hundred people, Black and white, lay dead or were hanged. The uprising was the idea of a single man: Nat Turner. An enslaved preacher, he was as enigmatic as he was brilliant. He was also something more—a prophet, one who claimed to have received visions from the Spirit urging him to act.

With co-author Gregory P. Downs and moderator-historian Vincent Brown of Harvard, we’ll unpack how and why Nat Turner inspired the largest enslaved people’s rebellion in the US between 1811 and 1861 and became an enduring icon of resistance. Nat Turner, Black Prophet, a narrative history by the late historian Anthony E. Kaye and Downs, his collaborator, provides a new understanding of one of the nineteenth century's most decisive events.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors Boston Public Library Ford Hall Forum
John Kaag with American Bloods: The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation

Mon, Sep 9, 2024

Join American Ancestors for the tale of one family spanning centuries and continents. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, the celebrated author John Kaag follows eight menbers of the Blood family from seventeenth-century England through the founding of the colonies and the American Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. They were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with Emerson, Thoreau, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” the untamed spirit of Americans. John Kaag’s remarkable account reminds us of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States and shows how each family member embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

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American Inspiration Author Series

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American Ancestors

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