Gardner Massachusetts
I live in Gardner but I'm not originally from here. Still, almost all of my own genealogy lines have been traced back to the 1600's so I am always on the lookout for another project. So, I picked Gardner. I think a few years back someone online suggested that it would be good if someone from this area could start taking pictures of gravestones for findagrave.com so I took it to heart. I "adopted" Green Bower Cemetery because it was a reasonable size and close by and started taking photos. During the winter it's not possible to get good photos so I had to occupy my time another way and that is how I started looking at the genealogy of the early settlers and tracing their descendants. I knew that I could eventually combine the projects somehow and making this site was the way to link them. I have finished the settler project and the cemetery project (as of 9/15/2013). In addition, an online friend of mine worked on the Old Burying Ground in town and Crystal Lake Cemetery so I thought a genealogy database might be useful to tie it all together.
There are other cemeteries in Gardner but the 3 aforementioned ones are where the people of the 1700's & 1800's ended up. The remaining cemeteries are Wildwood and a number of huge Catholic cemeteries. The 3 that we have worked on had cemetery databases from which my friend and I could work so that is where we started. We have done our best to link the find-a-grave memorials so that the site is genealogically useful.
There are other cemeteries in Gardner but the 3 aforementioned ones are where the people of the 1700's & 1800's ended up. The remaining cemeteries are Wildwood and a number of huge Catholic cemeteries. The 3 that we have worked on had cemetery databases from which my friend and I could work so that is where we started. We have done our best to link the find-a-grave memorials so that the site is genealogically useful.
Population
I'm going to post what I have done so far and share the resources I used for others to peruse. Hopefully, I have not made mistakes but I am pretty sure I did. Use what you can from this site and take my name in vain quietly if you must but I hope you can appreciate the enormity of the Gardner Genealogy Project and the potential for mistakes, big and small.
The trick is to know how to wade through all of the multiple marriages that occurred quite frequently. Whew. I probably didn't get every lady's maiden name right but I certainly gave it the college try. I tried to look at ALL of the censuses for a particular family and did my best to identify all of the children. I am sure there are many instances where I did not list all children because of the online limitations. I tried to honor them all by including even those who lived so short a time. In some cases I was able to refer back to find-a-grave and use information others had garnered. Generally, I was happy if I was able to trace people into the 1930s but occasionally I was able to take it further. It is possible that some of the people in the database are still living but I did not intentionally include anyone I knew or presumed to be living. Since parts of Gardner were originally in Westminster, Ashburnham, Templeton, and Winchendon, I also added the genealogies found in those town's histories. For kicks I added Hubbardston and Princeton, as well. I also looked at the various births in the towns surrounding, using the vital records published up to 1850 that the state did later in the 19th century in individual town volumes. You can find these at pretty much any Massachusetts library but many are also online. The towns I added were Royalston, Athol, Phillipston, Petersham, Dana, Greenwich, Barre, Oakham, and Rutland. There is an earlier version of the file on Ancestry.com but I can't upload anymore. The latest version of my file has almost 180,000 people. If you want me to do a lookup you can email me at edn**[email protected] but take out the ** first when you email.
Below you will find some resources that I used to make the map sequence above. Others are noted on my Massachusetts page (check it out). I have pulled from websites or from the library the data that was particularly interesting (you'll see I like maps) and posted it here. I am not trying to make any money so I hope no one is offended if I have managed to violate some rules. I just know that it is not always easy for people to find the information and getting to a local library is not always in the cards. It was a very frustrating thing for me when I lived halfway across the county while trying to investigate my New England roots so I've been there.
The trick is to know how to wade through all of the multiple marriages that occurred quite frequently. Whew. I probably didn't get every lady's maiden name right but I certainly gave it the college try. I tried to look at ALL of the censuses for a particular family and did my best to identify all of the children. I am sure there are many instances where I did not list all children because of the online limitations. I tried to honor them all by including even those who lived so short a time. In some cases I was able to refer back to find-a-grave and use information others had garnered. Generally, I was happy if I was able to trace people into the 1930s but occasionally I was able to take it further. It is possible that some of the people in the database are still living but I did not intentionally include anyone I knew or presumed to be living. Since parts of Gardner were originally in Westminster, Ashburnham, Templeton, and Winchendon, I also added the genealogies found in those town's histories. For kicks I added Hubbardston and Princeton, as well. I also looked at the various births in the towns surrounding, using the vital records published up to 1850 that the state did later in the 19th century in individual town volumes. You can find these at pretty much any Massachusetts library but many are also online. The towns I added were Royalston, Athol, Phillipston, Petersham, Dana, Greenwich, Barre, Oakham, and Rutland. There is an earlier version of the file on Ancestry.com but I can't upload anymore. The latest version of my file has almost 180,000 people. If you want me to do a lookup you can email me at edn**[email protected] but take out the ** first when you email.
Below you will find some resources that I used to make the map sequence above. Others are noted on my Massachusetts page (check it out). I have pulled from websites or from the library the data that was particularly interesting (you'll see I like maps) and posted it here. I am not trying to make any money so I hope no one is offended if I have managed to violate some rules. I just know that it is not always easy for people to find the information and getting to a local library is not always in the cards. It was a very frustrating thing for me when I lived halfway across the county while trying to investigate my New England roots so I've been there.