Chasing Mary

Over the course of the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to find my great grandmother’s entry into the United States.  According to the censuses that I’ve collected, Mary E. Crighton came from Liverpool in 1903. Just today, I found a passenger list on ship The Commonwealth that lists a brother and sister, Esther and a Samuel Crighton, coming to Boston in August 1903. The ages seem just about right.

I imagine that immigrating to a new country is a chance to reinvent oneself, and I wonder how much of that happened with my own people. In the Crighton line, I’ve also found relatives under the spellings of Creighton and Crayton.  And while I was aware that newcomers to the U.S. changed their last names, I didn’t consider that they might also change their first names or use their middle.  I’m wondering if my grandmother’s name is really Mary Esther Crighton, but I don’t know for sure.

So I have a little lead, but I need to confirm somehow that this Esther is my Mary. I’m thinking that the next step might be to write to the National Archives and see if I can get her naturalization papers which may have some more detailed information on her exact name.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to chase down this story?

My Addiction

Tattered photographs, old recipes, and family stories are my addiction. A year ago, I did not know the names of my great grandparents, where they lived, who they loved, what they did for work, and how they came to immigrate to the United States. Since then, I’ve tramped through cemeteries, scrolled through microfilm, hunted online, and connected with distant cousins in an effort to know more about the people who formed who I am today.

Now that I have a few clues to my ancestors’ background, I hope to learn to “read between the lines” to find out more about who they were, what challenges they suffered, and what joys they may have experienced. This blog is about my search for the Spillane, Goudreau, Lambert, and Dyer families in New England, Canada, England and Ireland.  I’m also an Allen by marriage, and I want to learn more about my husband’s family from Nova Scotia and Northern Ireland.

Since I’m relatively new to genealogy, I’ll also be learning ways to organize my research, record information, and make sense of the information that I’ve gathered. Besides finding the facts about my ancestors, I hope to put their lives in a historical context that will help me understand their hopes and dreams as well as their failures and disappointments.

Photo: Edmond and Georgiana Lambert and their children, Amherst MA