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Correction & Discovery
Generations Is a Living Record
History is never finished.
Generations is a growing archive of writing, photographs, family history, oral tradition, language, literature, and historical research spanning generations.
As that work continues, new evidence appears. Old newspapers become searchable. Documents emerge from archives. Family photographs and diaries come down from attics. Church records, deeds, military papers, maps, census records, manuscripts, and other primary sources allow us to return to stories we thought we already knew.
Sometimes a new document confirms a story passed down for generations. Sometimes it adds an entirely new chapter. And sometimes it shows us that something we previously believed was wrong.
We believe those discoveries—and those corrections—belong in the record too.
Recent Corrections & Discoveries
January–September 2026
The Mann–Dunham Albums and a 1923 Diary
While working in the attic of our old family home on Splinterville Hill, we discovered three large Dunham family photograph albums along with the 1923 diary of Marion Edna Dunham Mann.
Preserved within the family for more than a century, these materials are helping us reconstruct relationships among the interconnected Mann, Dunham, Thayer, Spear, Braley, Hill, Bowman, and neighboring families of Vermont and Greenfield, New York. The photographs and handwritten identifications are putting faces to names and, in some cases, revealing connections that had been forgotten.
READ MORE: [Still Here, Still Thayer]
An 1888 Account of Saratoga’s Indigenous Community
On September 28, 2026, Joseph Bruchac discovered Saratoga and How to Enjoy a Visit (1888) in the Bowman–Bruchac Family Archive on Splinterville Hill. Its description of an Indigenous encampment in Congress Park names Albert F. Mitchell as “Chief of Saratoga,” adding a valuable contemporary account to our research on the region’s Indigenous community. [Saratoga’s Indian Encampments]
Correcting the DeVoe–Van Antwerp Line
A reexamination of the DeVoe and Van Antwerp families produced an important correction to our genealogy.
Earlier versions placed Hester Ann DeVoe and her son Daniel Wynant Van Antwerp, who married Susan Atty Maria Conklin, in our direct ancestral line. The evidence now indicates that they belong to a collateral branch.
Our corrected direct line instead runs through Wynet/Winant Van Antwerp, born about 1829, who married Susan Rebecca Barney. Their daughter Alice Van Antwerp married Louis Bowman, continuing our direct Bowman line.
READ THE UPDATED RESEARCH: [Still Here — Hester Ann DeVoe: The Lines That Endured]
Correcting the Cole Family
Our investigation of the Cole family of Saratoga and Schaghticoke produced another significant correction.
An earlier genealogy identified Ebenezer Cole and Ruth Churchill of Massachusetts as the parents of Hannah, or Annetje, Cole, who married Captain Holtham Dunham. Contemporary Revolutionary-era evidence instead identifies Nicholas Cole of the Saratoga Patent as Hannah's father and Hendrick Cole as her brother.
That correction places Hannah's immediate family directly within the complicated Revolutionary-era world of Saratoga and Schaghticoke, rather than within the Massachusetts family previously assigned to her.
READ: [“Surrender or You Are All Dead Men!”]
Reconstructing Greenfield Families
Recent work on the families of Greenfield, Middle Grove, Fox Hill, Splinterville, and the surrounding Saratoga region is connecting stories that once appeared separately in Generations.
The Dunhams, Bowmans, Van Antwerps, Barneses, Barneys, Colsons, Johnsons, and other neighboring families repeatedly intersect in censuses, maps, cemeteries, deeds, newspapers, photographs, family traditions, and the history of regional industries such as basketmaking. As those connections become clearer, older articles are being revised and linked so readers can follow these families across generations.
EXPLORE: [From Schaghticoke to Splinterville Hill]
Correcting the Worthen Family Line
Earlier versions identified Samuel Worthen (1748–c.1796), son of Major Ezekiel Worthen (1710–1783) and Hannah Currier, as Carol Worthen's direct ancestor. Further research shows that her documented line instead descends through their son Thomas Worthen (1765–1851), husband of Susanna Adams.
This correction preserves our documented descent from Major Ezekiel Worthen, while correcting the son through whom that descent continues. It also resolves an earlier conflation with another Samuel Worthen of Weare, New Hampshire, whose Revolutionary service had mistakenly been attributed to Ezekiel's son.
READ MORE: [Major Ezekiel Worthen, "The Warrior Engineer of Kensington"]
An Updated Ancestry & Kinship Record
These discoveries and corrections have now been incorporated into a substantially revised Ancestry & Kinship page, tracing eleven generations of family ancestry, kinship, migration, and continuing research. Earlier identifications have been corrected where necessary, uncertain connections are identified as such, and newly documented relationships have been added as the evidence has developed.
Like Generations itself, the genealogy remains a work in progress.
EXPLORE: [Ancestry & Kinship]
Documented Inaccuracies in the Abenaki Heritage Bruchac Genealogy
Our continuing review of the Abenaki Heritage Genealogy Research Project has identified a number of significant problems in its published Bruchac genealogy. Contemporary church, probate, marriage, pension, census, military, court, and vital records indicate cases where different people appear to have been combined, individuals have been assigned to parents without sufficient documentation, and unresolved identifications have been presented as established genealogical fact.
READ MORE: [Documented Inaccuracies in the Abenaki Heritage Bruchac Genealogy]
A Work in Progress
Generations is a work in progress. Nearly sixty years of writing, photographs, family records, community memory, and continuing research cannot—and should not—be frozen into one finished version of the past.
A new document can change a family tree. A photograph found in an attic can put a face to a name. New evidence can confirm an old story, complicate it, or show us that something we published needs to be corrected.
When we find better evidence, we add it. When we get something wrong, we correct it. When evidence leads somewhere unexpected, we follow it.
That does not weaken an archive. It makes it stronger.
That is why this Correction and Discovery page exists: so readers can see not only what we know, but how our understanding changes as the research continues.
Change is part of every work in progress.
Read the full essay: “A Work in Progress”
How We Handle New Evidence
Historical and genealogical research is reconstruction from surviving evidence, and surviving evidence is rarely complete. Throughout Generations, we increasingly try to distinguish between what is:
Documented — directly supported by surviving evidence.
Probable — strongly suggested by multiple pieces of evidence but not yet conclusively demonstrated.
Possible — a reasonable hypothesis that requires additional evidence.
Family or Oral Tradition — information preserved through family or community memory that may or may not yet be independently documented.
Unresolved — a question for which the surviving evidence does not yet justify a conclusion.
There is nothing wrong with leaving a historical question unanswered. Sometimes “we don't know yet” is the most accurate answer available.
The Story Continues
The name Generations has always meant more than looking backward. Every document preserved, photograph identified, story recorded, language remembered, poem rediscovered, family connection established, and historical assumption corrected creates another connection between generations.
Some of the stories in this archive have been carried within our family for more than a century. Others were discovered last week.
The research continues.
Help Us Continue the Research
Some of the most important discoveries in Generations have come from documents and objects preserved by families for decades—or centuries.
If you recognize someone in a photograph, possess family papers connected to a person discussed here, know of a record we have missed, or believe something published in Generations should be corrected, we would like to hear from you.
We welcome photographs and photograph identifications; letters, diaries, and family papers; church and cemetery records; deeds and maps; military and census records; historic newspaper articles; family histories and oral traditions; and corrections supported by documentary evidence.
Even a seemingly insignificant piece of information can connect records that have remained separated for generations.
Niawen'kówa — Kchi wliwni — Great thanks.