Tag: history

Sawyer Free Library’s Gloucester Genealogy Group: “Getting Started in Italian Research” 

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

 ~ SAWYER FREE LIBRARY

Sawyer Free Library’s Gloucester Genealogy Group: “Getting Started in Italian Research” 

The Sawyer Free Library is pleased to share that the Gloucester Genealogy Group is back in action and kicking off its monthly meetings this January at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester. 

Researching your genealogy can provide information about where your ancestors lived, what they did, and how they may have lived.  The Sawyer Free Library holds a vast and diverse collection of resources to help you with your research. In addition, each month, the Library’s Gloucester Genealogy Group will present genealogy-related programming, including lectures from guest speakers with expertise in numerous related topics. All events are free and open to the public. Registration is required at sawyerfreelibrary.org. 

On Saturday, January 27 from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. nationally recognized professional genealogist, author and lecturer, Senior Genealogist Rhonda McClure will present virtually to the group at 21 Main Street on â€śGetting Started in Italian Research.” This lecture looks at how to start researching your Italian ancestors by examining records generated in the U.S. and Italy and what is most important in effectively researching Italian records. 

Then on Saturday, February 17, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., Rhonda McClure will again join the group virtually to share about the importance and details of â€śOrganizing Your Family Papers.” The March meeting will be presented in partnership with the Rockport Public Library. On March 9 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., the Libraries will welcome Michael Brophy, a nationally known, professional genealogical researcher, heir search specialist, and lecturer from the Boston area. This event will occur in the Brenner Room of the Rockport Public Library.

Registration is now open for all three Gloucester Genealogy events at sawyerfreelibrary.org or by calling 978-325-5500.  

Currently the Sawyer Free Library offers a wide variety of local history resources, in person and online, at its temporary location at 21 Main Street. The Library’s Local History Collection contains materials about Gloucester and Cape Ann and written by and about Gloucester and Cape Ann authors. Subjects include local history, genealogy, biography, and some fiction. Materials are in the form of books, hand-printed items, maps, city documents, and more.

The Sawyer Free Library is looking forward to officially opening its renovated, expanded, and modernized space in the fall of 2025 which will feature a Local History Research Center. This new center will revolutionize how Gloucester’s historical research materials are curated, archived, preserved, and accessed, offering an insider’s passport to the rich cultural history of the city and region.

For more information about Sawyer Free Library’s digital archives, local history resources, and services or to register for the Gloucester Genealogy Events, visit sawyerfreelibrary.org or 978-325-5500

To learn more about or to invest in the 2025 Sawyer Free Library’s History Research Center, please visit sawyerfree2025.org.

Essex openings tonight- 4PM Fun Friday & Bicentennial Display at TOHP Burnham | 6PM Essex Art Collective at Essex Shipbuilding Museum

Posted on by Catherine

Fresh – Essex Art Collective exhibition

Essex Art Collective Exhibit.jpg

tonight! Opening Party: Friday, May 10, 2019 at 6pm

Exhibit Hours on Saturday, May 11, 2019 from 10am – 5pm

Essex Shipbuilding Museum, Waterline Center, 66 Main Street (Rte. 133)

Come see FRESH new works by Essex Art Collective: women artists who collaborate in artistic endeavors and inspire each other to create paintings, drawings, printmaking, sculpture, fiber arts, mixed media works and photography. Group Members Alison Taylor, Jen Grober, Jen Romans, Kristen Wilson, Mallie Pratt, Margaret Sweet, Melissa Glorieux, Naomi Chapman, Rosie Winthrop and Wrenn Bartlett invite you to see the show!

 

CAPE ANN READS EXHIBIT

Installation View Once upon a Contest Cape Ann Reads at TOHP Burnham Essex_20190430_© c ryan.jpg

Reception: Saturday, May 18, 2019 from 10am – 12pm

TONIGHT! Fun Friday featuring James McKenna/Juni Van Dyke books 4pm

Fun Fridays Featuring  Reading/Activity with Award-Winning Authors & Artists– meet local artists and writers and enjoy free stories and visual arts events perfect for children to create artwork side by side with an older family member – either a parent, grandparent or a sibling May 10th, May 17th, 31st and June 7th at 4pm

Exhibit on View until June 21, 2019

Essex Town Hall, 3rd Floor, 30 Martin Street (an accessible facility)

Once Upon a Contest showcases award-winning children’s books by Cape Ann artists and writers. Congratulations to Essex resident and author, Diane Polley awarded Cape Ann Reads Honor Book for Lets Go! Animal Tracks in the Snow, with illustrations by Marion Hall. Congratulations to Essex resident and author, James MacKenna awarded Cape Ann Reads Gulliver Award for If I Were a Moose and If I were a Lion with illustrations by Juni VanDyke. And congratulations to Essex native and artist, Alexia Parker, for illustrating Cape Ann Reads Gulliver Award books for two authors, Pumpkin Carving and Bike’s Big Adventure. Parker is the Invitational Public Artist for the Essex show. Her series celebrates iconic Essex buildings and places in collage using solely paper and glue. Come meet some of these local authors and illustrators! Light refreshments by the Friends of the T.O.H.P. Burnham Public Library will be served.

Side by side Once upon a Contest at TOHP Burnham in Essex:

Fantastic Essex Bicentennial display – don’t miss it!

Essex Bicentennial display_20190430_© c ryan.jpg

Sign up to receive notices from Visit Essex, MA – May is Blooming with Events to Enjoy info@visitessexma.com

Harvard magazine profile about Karen King by Lydialyle Gibson

Posted on by Catherine

Fantastic, thoughtful feature profile about Karen King, by Lydialyle Gibson in the current issue of Harvard Magazine, November-December 2018.

Early Christianity. The bits the Bible Left Out: Karen King. the Harvard University Hollis professor of divinity and a historian of early Christianity, studies texts from Christianity’s first centuries to reinterpret the history of the early church 

excerpts:

“…I think a history of Christianity, which is a kind of story, serves us better if it has all the loose ends, the complexities, the multiple voices, the difficulties, the things that don’t add up, the roads not taken—all of that,” she says. “We need complexity for the complexity of our lives.” 

“Karen’s book really shifted the discussion,” says Princeton religion scholar Elaine Pagels, Ph.D. ’70, LL.D. ’13, whose 1979 bestseller The Gnostic Gospels dislodged the idea of early Christianity as a unified movement and launched the conversation that What Is Gnosticism? later took up. “Karen’s book showed how those terms”—Gnosticism, heresy, orthodoxy—“were coined, how those concepts were shaped, and how late they came into scholarly discourse,” says Pagels. “It’s like clearing away the brush, so that people could look at these texts with a much more open mind.”

“As an undergraduate at the University of Montana in the early 1970s, King took a religious studies course from John Turner, one of the scholars working to edit and translate the Nag Hammadi texts. In class, she and other students read unpublished drafts of English translations that the wider public wouldn’t see for several years. It was electrifying. King had never imagined that there were early Christian writings beyond the Bible. “Why these texts and not those?” she wondered. And: “Who decided, and why?”

KAREN KING Harvard magazine Nov-Dec 2018 issue_cover story profile by Lydialyle Gibson.jpg

www.harvardmagazine.com

 

Dogtown Days 2018 research updates and special events! Cape Ann Museum May 5 & ribbon cutting May 6

Posted on by Catherine

Dogtown Days 2018

Dogtown Days 2018

 

CAPE ANN MUSEUM PROGRAM, SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m

“This program, presented by the Friends of Dogtown, offers an opportunity to remember the past and imagine the future of Dogtown. Free and open to the public.

Starting off with a presentation by local artists recalling Thoreau’s 1858 visit to Dogtown, Dogtown Days will present a collection of newly discovered historical photographs of the early 20th century landscape and will debut new poetry inspired by the “ghosts” of the old settlement. Members of the Gloucester Historical Commission will review the history of archaeological investigations, including the recent survey of Dogtown, and will explain the process and implications of its inclusion in the National Register of Historical Places. The City of Gloucester’s Dogtown Advisory Committee and privately-supported Cape Ann Trail Stewards will describe ongoing projects including site cleanup, trail maintenance, and the construction of a new footbridge at the site of Gloucester’s first mill. The program will conclude with a presentation by members of the Friends of Dogtown on a new project that is underway to restore key historical, ecological, and art landscapes in Dogtown.”

ENTRANCE TO DOGTOWN –RIBBON CUTTING – SUNDAY MAY 6th 10am-noon

“celebrating the new footbridge constructed by Gloucester High School students followed by tours of the art, ecological and historical landscapes described on Saturday.”

2016 PDF vision for dogtown (maybe visitor center)

City Hall restoration work

Posted on by Matthew Green

As promised in the newspapers a few weeks ago, it looks like the scaffolding is just about complete and restoration work about to begin on our beautiful and historic City Hall in Gloucester. Here are some photos I took on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.

It takes a special kind of person to be able to work on top of scaffolding like that.  My knees would be turning to jelly.  May the people up there stay safe, and may their work go smoothly!

The Launching Of Our Grandfather “Captain Joe Ciaramitaro” First Dragger The Ben and Josephine

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

The Infamous One Found this courtesy the Archives At The Cape Ann Museum.  It was listed in The Atlantic Fisherman, April,1941

As I’ve said at least a hundred times now, if you haven’t gone to the Cape Ann Museum whether you’re a resident or Gloucester lover who visits you are missing out on a literal TREASURE TROVE OF GLOUCESTER LOVER ARTIFACTS.  You probably drive past the Cape Ann Museum a dozen times a week. 

Trust me head downstairs once you get there and ask for The Infamous Fred Buck.  Ask him about a piece of old Gloucester you are interested in.  I bet you dollars to donuts he digs something up for you!

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Ben Curcuru was our Great Grandfather and the man my father Benjamin Liborio (Libby) Ciaramitaro was named after.  Pictured are Benny Curcuru(great Grandfather to a ton of cousins in Gloucester and our Great Grandmother Josephine.

Victoria Gamage Forwards Bass Rocks Hotel Menu From 1888

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Vicki writes-

Found this on the old postcard site also.  Menu from the Bass Rock Hotel in Gloucester, MA.  Dated July 17, 1888 !!!!!

Cool!

Vicki Gamage

index

 

Note how it’s referred to as “The Bass Rock” down at the bottom.

Chickity Check It! Magnolia Photos and History Through The Decades From Tim Moran

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Hi Joey,

Thank you for your GMG web site and what you do to keep us former residents “in the loop”.

My name is Thomas (Tim) Moran. While I currently live in Dallas , TX , my roots go deep into Gloucester , more specifically, into Magnolia.

My two sisters (Marcia and Alison) and I spent every summer between the mid forties and the late fifties (1944 – 1958 for me) visiting our grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. W.H. Ringer, at the head of the beach on Shore Road in Magnolia.

My grandfather, W.H. Ringer, was a principal of GHS when it was downtown, long before it moved to its present location by "the cut".

As I was looking at some pictures of the Fisherman’s Memorial the other day, I remembered that my mother, Beth Ringer Moran, at age 99, is probably one of the few still alive who, at age 13, was at the statue’s dedication in 1925?  She also remembers walking across the cut bridge from their home on Kent Circle to the high school every day in high heels and skirts, which is what ‘girls’ wore to school then.  She says it was very cold in the winter!

I wonder if anyone knows anybody else who was also there and is still living. That might be a good question for your web site.

My sisters and I have returned to Magnolia many times through the past 50 years and will return again, hopefully within the next few years.

I invite you to peruse a web page that I put together after sister Marcia, my wife, daughter, and I last visited in the fall of 2004. Tim Moran’s Magnolia MA History

Tim Moran

Treasured Audio-Gloucester History Cigar Joe Talks About Fishing In the Early Part of The Twentieth Century Part V

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Good Morning Gloucester  Exclusive

Cigar Joe Frontiero born in 1898 these tapes were recorded in 1981 when he was 83 years old.

Click here or the arrow below to listen to the Cigar Joe audio Part V

The family of Cigar Joe Frontiero brings Good Morning Gloucester these treasured recordings of Fishing out of Gloucester MA in the early part of the century  in the second of the multi-part collection of recordings.  I’m happy that the family entrusted GMG with these priceless recordings and am proud to be able to have the platform in which we can archive and share with the community.

Look for part VI April 16th at 6AM

To listen to the previous Cigar Joe Recordings Click Here

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The history behind the tapes: Someone had asked Cigar Joe for an interview for an oral history project but Cigar Joe decided to do the recording himself. At the time he was having trouble with circulation in his legs and spent most of the time at home so he bought a tape recorder. He had trouble with the tape recorder and threw all of the tapes away. His mailman took the trashed tapes, spliced them, and made copies. He gave Cigar Joe copies and kept backups (with Cigar Joe’s consent) in case the originals were lost. This occurred in 1981.

Chickity Check It!- Monkeyfist Has A New Blog-Adventures of The Blackgang

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

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I have no freaking clue how it got it’s title but here is how she describes it-

music, photos, art, tattoos, history, maritime wackiness