User Home Pages: The Bertha V. Douglas Memorial Page
The Bertha V. Douglas Memorial PageUpdated September 9, 2001 | |
This page is dedicated to the memory of Bertha V. Douglas who passed away in 1998. The information on the Dolloff family was contained in papers that she gave to my wife and myself prior to her death. From Bertha's notes we created a tree that extends back to Christian Dolhoofe who immigrated to New Hampshire in the 17th Century. Charles Walter Dolloff, Bertha's grandfather, was very prominent in the Boston, MA, area at the turn of the 19th century. He was a member of the construction firm of Dolloff & Co. of Somerville. He was also an expert on electric train building and built the first electric railroad in the United States which operated in Richmond, VA. Today little is left of the electric train systems that ran at the beginning of the last century, but C.W. Dolloff's mark can still be seen sometimes embedded in old sidewalks around the Boston area. The Douglas family, into which Bertha married, was descended from the Black Douglas' of Scotland. William Douglas immigrated to the New World from Dumfries on the ship "The Lovely Nellie" in order to "mend himself." The meaning of that phrase is not clear to me, but one interpretation that was given to me is that it meant he wanted to "better himself." Settling first in Prince Edward Island, Canada, several of his descendents eventually made their way to Boston, Massachusetts. My thanks to my Canadian cousins for their assistance in tracing this branch. | |
Richard A. Douglas, Jr. [email protected] | |