Genealogy research takes root in mill city

Arthur Dallon has traced his family tree as far back as Plymouth in the 1600s. His wife, Arlene, has tracked her French Canadian roots back 10 generations.

Even at age 75, Dallon still turns up new information on his family. Not long ago, his research brought him into contact with the daughter of his mother's long lost (and recently deceased) stepbrother.

"You may hit a dead end, but you never finish your genealogy," said Dallon. "I haven't found anyone who's gone back to Adam."

The never-ending quest to uncover the past is thriving in Lawrence, which, like Lowell, Haverhill, and many other mill cities, has become something of a hotbed for genealogical research.

Calls from people tracing their family ancestry pour into the city clerk's office and public library by the hundreds each year. The Lawrence History Center (formerly the Immigrant City Archives) has fielded upward of 1,500 inquiries since presenting an exhibition, "Lawrence, Massachusetts: A First American Home," at Ellis Island in New York this past spring.

Lawrence is known as the Immigrant City for good reason. From the mid-1800s to early 1900s, wave after wave of immigrant groups -- first Irish, followed by German, Scottish, French Canadian, Italian, and Eastern European -- made their way to the city to find work in the textile mills.

When the mill work went South in the 1950s, immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico started moving in, taking advantage of the affordable housing. The city is now close to 60 percent Latino, and that percentage is climbing.

"There may not be many trees in Lawrence, but there are a lot of roots," said Louise Sandberg of North Reading, archivist at the Lawrence Public Library, who organized a successful "Genealogy Lock-In" event in April, offering the public a chance to stay after normal library hours and access various research materials and online databases.

The library, city clerk's office, and Lawrence History Center are the main resources available to the public in Lawrence for genealogical research, each offering different kinds of information.

The clerk's office has vital records -- births, deaths, and marriages -- going back to the founding of the city and voter records. The library offers name and street directories starting in 1847, newspapers on microfilm, and an index of the grave markers at Bellevue Cemetery.

The Lawrence History Center has a little bit of everything, says its executive director, Patricia Jaysane, of North Andover. "In addition, we collect documents from businesses and churches, oral histories, and photographs," she said. The center has also hosted an informal genealogy group for the past 11 years.

Inspired by the thrill of researching their family histories, the Dallons began the center's Genealogy Group in 1993. "I wanted to have an opportunity to share my experiences with others and vice versa," he said. The group meets monthly for most of the year and sponsors a variety of guest speakers and field trips.

On his mother's side, Dallon has tracked the main family name to the early days of the Plymouth Colony. One of his ancestors has the oldest cemetery stone in Concord. Later, the family moved to Nova Scotia. On his father's side, Dallon has been able to go back to his great-grandfather.

Both of his parents came from Canada. "My dad came to Lawrence to work as a painter and after the Depression went to work in the mills," Dallon said. "My mother was a seamstress in a department store."

In Lawrence, people get involved in tracing their ancestry for a variety of reasons, said Marcia Melnyk of Rowley, a professional genealogist, lecturer, and author of four books on the subject. "It can be an old photograph, a family story, medical reasons. A lot of people also get interested in genealogy when they have children, and suddenly there's a chain of a grandparent, parent, and child. You start to see the formation of a tree."

According to Melnyk, interest in genealogy is booming with the help of the Internet, which has made considerable (but not always accurate) amounts of information available at the press of a button, and young people eager to learn about their ethnic roots.

"When I first started, most people interested in genealogy were over 60 years old, retired, with time on their hands," said Melnyk. "Now, I'm seeing more young people at my classes who want to know what makes them different from everybody else." After several generations of assimilation, there is now a counter-movement toward reclaiming ethnic identity.

Melnyk says all genealogical research should begin at home. "Get as much information as you can from family members and family records," she advised. All too often, she said, people don't begin their research until key relatives have passed away.

Then, if you're researching someone in New England and know what town they're from, go to the city hall in that town to check vital records, said Melnyk. If you don't know the town, go to state records. Be wary at every step of misspellings and name changes, because before the 1930s, there were no Social Security numbers or standardized spelling of names.

"A lot of people, in the mill areas especially, were uneducated and couldn't read or write in their native tongue, never mind English," she said.

After you've exhausted researching vital records -- which, Melnyk pointed out, were not required in many parts of the United States until after 1900 -- you can look into a wide variety of other source material, including church records and newspapers. "Then, once you start looking overseas, the records available are highly dependent on the country of origin," she said.

Curiosity, persistence, and attention to detail are key to the entire process. "People tell me I should be a private detective," said Melnyk. "I will look at an obituary, let's say, and dissect it line by line. One obituary can keep me busy for three months. It's almost endless what you can get from one record."

Once you get started in researching your family tree, you might not want to stop, said Dallon, who finds it highly addictive. You can also expect to find a few knotted roots along the way, as every family has its share of mysteries and secrets. "My mother in-law used to say, 'Be careful, you're going to find out something you didn't want to know,' " said Dallon.

"And we always said, 'We hope so! That's exactly what we're looking for.' "