The Haskell Journal

The board has settled on the last weekend of September, with the Saturday dinner again at the harbor and a Sunday morning service at the Church of St. Stephen for those who would like it.

We are keeping the format that worked in Salem–Beverly: one long table, no head table, and name cards that show which of the three brothers you descend from. It caused more conversation than any program we have ever printed.

After eleven months of evenings, the index to the Journal's first fifteen years has been transcribed, checked twice, and merged into the members' archive. Every surname, place, and ship name is now searchable.

My thanks to the four volunteers who proofread it, and to whoever it was who typed the original in 1999 — you were more careful than you needed to be, and it showed.

Two afternoons in the Somerset Heritage Centre produced less than I hoped and more than I expected. The register's early hand is difficult, but the Haskell entries between 1590 and 1620 are legible enough to confirm the sequence we have long assumed.

One surprise: a burial entry in 1613 for an infant whose name does not appear in any of our published lines. I have photographed the page and will write it up properly for the Journal.

While clearing my aunt's house this winter I found a shoebox of cabinet cards, none of them labeled, all of them plainly cousins — the same long jaw appears three times.

If anyone recognizes a face, or recognizes the photographer's stamp (Procter Brothers, Gloucester), I would be grateful. I am having them scanned at 1200 dpi and will send copies to anyone who asks.

Six of us met at the head of the harbor on a cold, bright Saturday and walked out toward the old Haskell holdings on Wheeler's Point. The wind was raw and the light was the sort of hard winter light that makes every rooftop look freshly cut.

We finished at the William Haskell House, where the caretaker let us stand in the kitchen and put our hands on the beam. It is a small thing to touch a board, and it is not a small thing at all.