Historian and Author. The daughter of a wealthy coal merchant, she began her career with the publication of children's books, including 1899's "Chicken Little Told in Rhyme" and 1909's "A List of Books for Boys and Girls to Read for Study and for Pleasure". Interested in local history, she spent nearly thirty years researching Boston's geography from the time of its founding, tracing individuals and their homes through deed transfers, wills, town reports, church records, diaries, and gravestone inscriptions. The result was an index consisting of more than 125,000 catalog cards, and Thwing used this database to publish in 1920 two works on Boston's people and homes, "Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800" and "The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630-1822". She also used her research to create a three dimensional model of the city as it appeared in 1775, which is displayed at Boston's Old South Meeting House. In addition, she published a history on the location of her summer home, 1925's "The Story of Orr's Island, Maine". Her Boston database contains some errors, and Thwing's methodology is criticized by some historians because it is biased in favor of property owners rather than being comprehensive, but her work is still viewed as a one of the most valuable resource on Boston's early history. Thwing donated her index to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which in recent years partnered with the New England Historic Genealogical Society to transcribe and cross-reference the card file and make it available to researchers in digital format.
Historian and Author. The daughter of a wealthy coal merchant, she began her career with the publication of children's books, including 1899's "Chicken Little Told in Rhyme" and 1909's "A List of Books for Boys and Girls to Read for Study and for Pleasure". Interested in local history, she spent nearly thirty years researching Boston's geography from the time of its founding, tracing individuals and their homes through deed transfers, wills, town reports, church records, diaries, and gravestone inscriptions. The result was an index consisting of more than 125,000 catalog cards, and Thwing used this database to publish in 1920 two works on Boston's people and homes, "Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800" and "The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630-1822". She also used her research to create a three dimensional model of the city as it appeared in 1775, which is displayed at Boston's Old South Meeting House. In addition, she published a history on the location of her summer home, 1925's "The Story of Orr's Island, Maine". Her Boston database contains some errors, and Thwing's methodology is criticized by some historians because it is biased in favor of property owners rather than being comprehensive, but her work is still viewed as a one of the most valuable resource on Boston's early history. Thwing donated her index to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which in recent years partnered with the New England Historic Genealogical Society to transcribe and cross-reference the card file and make it available to researchers in digital format.
Bio by: Bill McKern
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