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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

Women in the Gilded Age: Two Authors’ Insights

Thu, Jul 7, 2022

Even in an era of extravagance – wealth, glamour, and greed – some women stand out by virtue of their family, their treasure, or their talent. Join us for a presentation by two authors whose celebrated works reveal the lives of women in the Gilded Age. It was the era in which many wealthy Americans were married off to foreign aristocrats: the beautiful heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt joined in a loveless marriage to become the savior and head of Blenheim Palace, outside London. Mrs. Frank Leslie, head of lucrative publishing empire, was as impactful in her time as the Rockefellers and Carnegies, yet her story of success and scandal has been forgotten--until now. Don’t miss hearing from authors Laura Thompson and Betsy Prioleau and moderator Esther Crain about the women who glittered most brightly in Gilded Age--their experiences as daughters, wives, trend-setters, and entrepreneurs.

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Annette Gordon-Reed with "On Juneteenth"

Mon, Jun 20, 2022

For this Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning historian, also a proud Texas native and descendant of Texas slaves, the story of Juneteenth has special resonance. "On Juneteenth" presents the saga of a frontier defined as much by the slave plantation owner as the mythic cowboy, rancher, or oilman. Celebrated for her research and revelations in her prize-winning book "The Hemingses of Monticello", Annette Gordon-Reed now tells a tale closer to home. The Texas native combines her own scholarship with a personal and intimate reflection of an overlooked holiday that has suddenly taken on new significance. In "On Juneteenth" she writes, “it is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” Yet Texas, the last state to free its slaves, has long acknowledged the date of June 19, 1865, when US Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed from his Galveston headquarters that slavery was no longer the law of the land. Don’t miss Gordon-Reed’s discussion with Lisa Baldez about her research process, her childhood in Texas, and the circuitous path to national recognition of the Juneteenth holiday. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family", she lives in New York and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lisa Baldez is Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Her research and published works examine the prospects for finding common ground between left-wing and right-wing women in the U.S. and around the world. This event is presented in the American Inspiration Author Series in partnership with the Boston Public Library, the State Library of Massachusetts, and GBH Forum Network.

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Linda Hirshman with The Color of Abolition

Mon, Feb 28, 2022

American Ancestors/NEHGS is joined by The Boston Public Library in this American Inspiration author talk featuring bestselling author Linda Hirshman and moderator L’Merchie Frazier. In her latest work about social movements, the legal scholar, social historian, and best-selling author Linda Hirshman chronicles abolition – the social spirit, people, and political alliances that changed American history. The overturning of slavery was an astonishing historical achievement, a crucial landmark in moral progress. Chronicling its origins in the Second Great Awakening, Linda Hirshman shows how the movement was fraught with tensions from within. Yet it moved forward, driven by a powerful activist triumvirate: printer William Lloyd Garrison, who was a core creator of the movement; Frederick Douglass, the charismatic former slave whose eloquence roused the nation; and the lesser-known Maria Weston Chapman, a Boston socialite whose copious and largely unexplored correspondence Hirshman fully examines. Don’t miss learning more about these key players, their New England story, and the political movement that fueled the Republican Party and, ultimately, the Civil War.

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New York City, the Roaring Twenties and a Madam for the Powerful

Wed, Jan 19, 2022

Two Pulitzer Prize winning authors meet for an illustrated presentation and discussion of the latest work from historian Debby Applegate, “Madam: The Biography of Polly, Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age.” It's the story of a notorious madam who played hostess to gangsters, politicians, writers, sports stars and Cafe Society swells. As much as any single figure at that time, Pearl "Polly" Adler helped make the twenties roar. Debby Applegate is a historian and biographer based in New Haven, CT. Her first book, “The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher,” won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. Joining Applegate is John Matteson, a Distinguished Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of “A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation”; “The Lives of Margaret Fuller,” and “Eden’s Outcasts,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in biography.

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The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

Tue, Oct 19, 2021

American Ancestors/NEHGS and Boston Public Library in partnership with the Boston Book Festival present author and Columbia University Professor Mae Ngai and her latest work. “The Chinese Question” looks at how the Chinese diaspora, particularly migration to the world’s goldfields, reshaped the nineteenth-century world. In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? Join us for a discussion of these definitive cultural and political movements which impact us to this day, featuring two remarkable authors and experts on the topics of Chinese-American history and immigration. Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor Asian American Studies and a professor of history at Columbia University. Professor Ngai will be joined by Jia Lynn Yang, author of One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, and national editor at The New York Times. She was previously deputy national security editor at The Washington Post, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team.

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Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: American Women Writers

Thu, Sep 2, 2021

American Ancestors NEHGS and Boston Public Library present a conversation on feminist history with three remarkable writers. Following up on their award-winning 1979 book, “Madwoman in the Attic,” examining the works of 19th century feminist writers, the duo of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar are back to introduce the women of the 20th century who penned their dreams, their demands, their beliefs and their frustrations as they witnessed social tumult and incremental changes that offered them a glimpse of hope for equality in a very different future. "Still Mad: American Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination” maps out key events and introduces the important writers in the second wave of the women’s movement from the 1950s with Plath, Didion, Friedan, and Sontag, and moving into the 21st Century, with Le Guin, Steinem, Morrison, Rankine, and Jemisin, each of whom brings new views, new expressions, creative new forms of protests and changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality.

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Nathaniel Philbrick: In Search of Washington and His Legacy

Thu, Sep 23, 2021

When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being Americans. In his book "Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy,"" bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick illustrates George Washington’s unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing Washington’s journey as a new president through the unsure nation made up of thirteen former colonies. Philbrick follows Washington’s route to Mount Vernon; Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, among many other stops. Ryan Woods, Executive Vice President and COO of American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), will moderate.

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The story of Canada’s famous Hudson's Bay Company

Mon, Jun 28, 2021

Scholar Stephen Bown shares his compelling narrative history of Canada’s famous Hudson's Bay Company. Follow its rise from a small 1670 trading business backed by Royal Charter through its intersections as a political and economic force working with indigenous people as well as French, and American settlers on both sides of the 49th parallel and beyond. The Company became the single biggest political and economic force in North America, influencing the lives of people from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific Ocean. See Bown’s illustrated presentation and insights on this rich and peopled history; and his discussion of Canada, then and now, with fellow countryman Jeff Breithaupt. ### RESOURCES Learn more about Stephen Bown and his books, including “The Company,” https://stephenrbown.net/ More about our moderator Jeff Breithaupt and his podcast, Canadians Among Us. https://twitter.com/jeffbreithaupt Find additional author events, webinars, and family history resources, chat with an expert genealogist at www.americanancestors.org Check out the many resources at American Ancestors, like this French-Canadian Genealogy page: https://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning-resources/read/french-canadian-guide

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American Inspiration Author Series

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Daniel James Brown: “Facing the Mountain”

Wed, May 12, 2021

American Ancestors NEHGS and Boston Public Library in partnership with the Japan Society of Boston and GBH Forum Network host celebrated author Daniel James Brown to discuss his book “Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II.” Known for his #1 New York Times bestselling book “The Boys in the Boat,” Brown now looks at the World War II saga of patriotism, contributions and sacrifices of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children. Brown tells a the story of one courageous Japanese-American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe while their families were incarcerated back home; and the tale of a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment. Following a short, illustrated presentation by the author, Roland Nozomu Kelts joins him in conversation.

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Meet playwright and author Quiara Alegría Hudes

Thu, Apr 29, 2021

Quiara Alegría Hudes tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of a Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse. She was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio—the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish. Hudes has since found her language, and in this powerful work, “her sentences will take your breath away. How lucky we are to have her telling our stories,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda, award-winning creator of Hamilton. Hudes is joined by journalist Maria Hinojosa, whose work has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. Image: book cover RESOURCES Explore the work of Quiara Alegría Hudes http://www.quiara.com/mybrokenlanguage Purchase Quiara’s memoir from Porter Square Books https://www.portersquarebooks.com/eve... Maria Hinojosa is the founder of Futuro Media Group https://www.futuromediagroup.org/mari... Check out Latino USA https://www.latinousa.org/ In the Thick podcast https://www.inthethick.org/ Emancipated Stories is a collection of writing and art by those behind bars. http://www.quiara.com/emancipatedstories Explore the work of Melinda Lopez http://www.melindalopez.com/ Huntington Theater https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

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