Finding Family on Facebook: Part 2

In an earlier post, I mentioned getting in touch with family through Facebook. Since then, I've been corresponding with two of my husband's cousins, both through Facebook. We took this picture last Saturday, when we had lunch with one of them, Sue. She was also my high school classmate. We hadn't seen each other for close to 40 years. We had a very enjoyable visit catching up on old times and family news. Tomorrow, we'll visit the other cousin, Bob, who has generously donated wonderful pictures of my husband's great-grandparents and their children. They are in the family gallery at Frothingham.us

New Name for Frothingham.us

New this week at Frothingham.us:

Since the family tree now contains over 3000 people and includes much more than just the Frothingham family, the new name of the site is Family History of Arlene Frothingham and Her Related Lines. Also, some of the pages have been combined to make the site easier to navigate. The location is still the same at www.frothingham.us

The Family Tree was updated to include new information, including several generations of the Richard and Ouellette lines. I've also added genealogy reports of "The Ancestors of Randolph Frothingham and Evelyn Welch" and "Ancestors of Arthur Gilman and Angeline Lusignant".

In the Gallery, there is a Richard Family Album of photos contributed by Bob Richard.

Finding family on Facebook

This post is not technically about genealogy. However, I've been using Facebook for a couple months now, and I've been able to connect with a lot of family members who I haven't seen in years. It's also put me in touch with some high school friends, and friends of friends. There is even a group called "Frothingham, It's not that hard to spell, just sound it out." Most of my genealogy research up to now has been "digging up dead people", so it's fun to get in touch with my living relatives for a change. If you haven't tried Facebook, it's easy and fun. Best of all, it's free.

Update to Frothingham.us

I spent today working on my website at Frothingham.us I added a new story titled Lizzie Spalding's Autograph Book. I also updated the Family Tree and the PDF file of William Frothingham's descendants. Recently I added a Biography of Jacob F Spalding to the site. I still have some things that were sent to me that I haven't had a chance to work on yet. Hopefully, there will be more stories in the next few months.

Historic Maps on Ancestry.com

Recently I've been working on developing a story about my grandmother Lizzie Spalding's autograph book. Many of the pages have the notation P.F.S. on them, and I wondered what that could stand for. It seemed to be a school, since most of the pages with the notation were from schoolmates, but I couldn't figure out what the F. would be. Portsmouth came to mind for the P, since she had been attending the Hampton Academy the year before. Hampton and Portsmouth are both on the New Hampshire coast.

Yesterday, I saw a blog entry about the Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000 recently updated on Ancestry.com. Curious, I started checking town maps from Essex County, MA. I found a map of Newburyport, MA which dated 1884. Browsing it, I noticed a building labeled Putnam Free School. P.F.S.! A little more searching revealed that Lizzie's two older brothers graduated from Putnam Free School in 1885, and at that time, Lizzie's family lived in neighboring Salisbury. It's still an assumption to think that Lizzie attended the school, but I definitely have a good lead to follow now.

Everett Frothingham

On February 10th, 2009 two flags will fly over the US Capitol in Washington, DC to honor Everett Newell Frothingham. On Feb 10 1945, at age 23, he was lost at sea aboard the aircraft carrier USS Missouri. The flags will be given to his son and daughter. Please take a moment to think of him, and all the other young men over the years who have given their lives to fight for our country.