2-10-09

Walpole Couple Share Genealogical Hobby

By Chuck Bingaman, Contributing Writer

            Retired Walpole family practice doctors Jeanne and Peter Jeffries are offering free workshops for people interested family research from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Saturday, February 14 with special interest in helping genealogy buffs climb over the “stonewalls” they find in their research.

            “I love discovering people and facts I’ve searched all over for!” laughed Jeanne Jeffries in a recent discussion. “It’s that ‘Eureka” moment when you find information about someone like a long-lost relative you’ve been searching everywhere for that is so exciting!”

            Jeanne Jeffries has traced her ancestry back twelve generations in the 30 years she’s been doing genealogical research.  And she’s been offering workshops for five years to help others get started or pursue their interests.

            Along the way, the Jeffries have been journeying to Salt Lake City, Utah for 25 years to use the vast genealogical resources of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  “I first went there,” Jeanne recalled, “when we had to page through these enormous ledger books just looking for names.  Then they gradually moved into having the pages on microfiche—those same ledger pages on machine-readable plastic sheets.  And now much of it is computerized for faster searching!  The beauty of it is that the LDS searches for and records genealogical records from all over the world.”

            While helping many area residents to begin or continue their research, the Jeffries are also planning their next genealogical foray to Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Denver in search of knowledge of Jeanne’s great, great, great uncle who lived at various times in the late 1800s to around 1930 in Hartford, Minneapolis and Denver.

 In other searches and genealogical trips, the Jefferies have discovered information about their ancestors in Scotland and closer to home.  Peter’s family seems to have origins on the Scottish Hebridean island of Lewis, later moved to Ireland and, eventually, to New Hampshire.  Jeanne’s forebears came from the southern Scottish town of Dumfries that is associated with Robert Burns and John Paul (late known as John Paul Jones of US Naval fame).

One of Jeanne’s most rewarding “stonewall” scaling experiences required her to travel to Swanzey, Massachusetts in search of evidence of her grandmother’s half-sister, Mary Mason.  Searches of census records had failed to turn up the woman or anything about her.  But, sitting on the floor in a back room of the town library, Jeanne was finally able to find evidence of the long-lost relative in unpublished town reports of poll tax payments.  Eureka! And lesson learned: You often have to travel to the place to find the way over your research stonewall!

But genealogical finds are not always happy ones!  Jeanne recalled that, when helping her mother search ancestral records, her mother found that an ancient relative  had been hung from the yardarm of a British ship during the Revolutionary War!  Her mother closed the book on the spot and ended her genealogical career forever!

For information on the Jeffries’ public workshop on genealogical research, call Peter or Jeanne Jeffries at 603-756-2933. And if you find that the British really hanged some of your ancestors, count them as patriots and be proud!

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