Gathering Roots
Sharing the Stories Buried in Our Family Trees
Connecting you to history, one story at a time.
Telling the Story
Building the Tree
We take what information we know from family and build out the ancestral tree, careful to confirm sources and verify any documents with records found online or in local and family archives.
Gathering the roots
We gather family documents and photos, we connect with DNA-relatives, and we cull through census documents, ship manifests, city directories, military records, and more, to compile the most accurate information on our ancestors and the lives that they led.
Putting it together
We research the times and places our ancestors came from and the events that transpired to influence their decisions. We take the trees and everything we have gathered and we tell the story of their lives, as best we can.
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Caretakers of New Canaan Connecticut
The Finney/Ireland Roots Bertha Finney was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, and lived her entire life there. She was the daughter of a local estate caretaker. Through the writing she did late in her life, we get a glimpse into her memories of childhood in this idyllic community. Bertha was born to George Edward and Read more
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A Perfect Day
By Bertha Ireland School was out, birds were singing, sun was out, a perfect day to hunt for wildflowers. We had already visited the patch of adders tongues or dog tooth violets and wind flowers or anemones which grew near a large rock covered with wild honeysuckle, so we thought we would go farther afield. Read more
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The Mitchell Name in Harford County
a Cannery, a House, and a Legacy of Lost Land The MITCHELL family are of Scotch descent and can be traced in Harford County since before the Revolutionary War. The area around the Chesapeake Bay that is now Harford County was first discovered by Captain John Smith, of Virginia, who explored and mapped the shores Read more
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Memories of an Old Fashioned Christmas
Letter to the Editor written by Bertha Ireland published in the New Canaan Advertiser December 13, 1990 EDITOR’S NOTE: Mrs. Ireland, a life-long resident of New Canaan, grew up on a farm here on property where she still lives and attended a local one-room schoolhouse. Editor, Advertiser, At this time of the year, memories of Read more
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Bettie’s Choice: The Short Lane House
We invite you into the family home. Or what was the family home a hundred years ago. The house was built for Malcolm MITCHELL’s bride on land that had belonged to MITCHELL family for over a hundred years. Before he died, it would all be taken away and left to decay, only to be torn Read more
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Homesteaders: The Stone Line in the 19th Century
W. Ellery Stone (1804-1867) William Ellery STONE, called Ellery, was born on March 31, 1804, in Whiting, Vermont.[1] He was the eldest son of John Hammett Sr., a farmer, and Hannah (FOSTER) STONE. John was born in 1784, the second son of Stukely H. STONE of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, who Read more
Forefathers by Edmund Blunden
Here they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook
And here their hatchet cleared the glade:
Harvest-supper woke their wit,
Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit.
From this church they led their brides,
From this church themselves were led
Shoulder-high; on these waysides
Sat to take their beer and bread.
Names are gone – what men they were
These their cottages declare.
Names are vanished, save the few
In the old brown Bible scrawled;
These were men of pith and thew,
Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
Built the barn, the forge, the mill.
On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me;
While the bat and beetle flew
On the warm air webbed with dew.
Unrecorded, unrenowned,
Men from whom my ways begin,
Here I know you by your ground
But I know you not within –
There is silence, there survives
Not a moment of your lives.
Like the bee that now is blown
Honey-heavy on my hand,
From his toppling tansy-throne
In the green tempestuous land –
I’m in clover now, nor know
Who made honey long ago.
Gathering Roots 