From NEHGS News for this week. Alexander Parris: Nineteenth Century Architect Alexander Parris (1780-1852) was one of the better-known architect-engineers in Massachusetts during the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of the buildings for which Parris was responsible are well known and still standing today. His buildings in the Boston area include Faneuil Hall Market (Quincy Market), Watertown Arsenal, several buildings at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown, and the Bunker Hill Monument, among many others. During the 1830s Alexander Parris worked for the U.S. Treasury Department designing and building lighthouses and beacons up and down the East Coast from Maine to Florida. He was the chief engineer at the Portsmouth Navy Yard (New Hampshire) at the end of his career. Many of us have seen structures up and down the eastern seaboard that were designed and engineered by Alexander Parris. A visit to the Alexander Parris Digital Project (http://www.parrisproject.org) will give you some sense of the scope of this man's work. The Alexander Parris Digital Project is a project of the State Library of Massachusetts and six other repositories in Boston - Boston Athenaeum; Boston National Historical Park; Charlestown Navy Yard; The Boston Public Library; Historic New England; and the Massachusetts Historical Society. The project has produced a website with a searchable online archive, which contains images and transcriptions of more than four hundred items connected with Alexander Parris. The materials include architectural and mechanical drawings, specifications, correspondence, and accounts, for the period from 1803 to 1851. Click on the Search icon on the site's homepage to begin your exploration of the archive. You will find links to two lists on the search main page. One list is of Alexander Parris's projects and the other is a list of 300 personal names found in the documents in the archive. Many of the individuals mentioned in the documents were associated with Parris's engineering and construction projects. To access the site's search form, click on the Search Archive link. The documents in the archive are full-text searchable. Use the drop-down lists to search for specific projects or individuals. As noted on the Parris Projects page of the website, additional materials related to Alexander Parris may be found in a number of other repositories in Massachusetts, including NEHGS. The Alexander Parris Papers (MSS A P37) collection at NEHGS is comprised of letters and diaries covering the period from 1812 to 1851. During the War of 1812, Parris served as a superintendent of the Corps of Artificiers of the US Army. He was stationed at Sacketts Harbor, Plattsburgh, New York. The papers contain over sixty letters written to Alexander Parris during the War of 1812. These letters are filled with names and information about soldiers in the Corps, reports of recruitment successes and woes, and news from home. There are even letters from widows seeking their late husbands' final pay. The collection includes one letter written by Captain Parris and a diary that he kept in 1839. In one entry he writes about going down in a diving bell to view repairs to a landing slip in Portsmouth Harbor, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There are a number of letters that Alexander Parris wrote about his experiences in Portsmouth in 1839 that may be found in the Alexander Parris Digital Project Archive. Search for Portsmouth in the Search Body of Document box to find the letters. Alexander Parris was a very interesting and talented man. Through his work he made contact with many individuals. Through his service during the War of 1812 he was in touch with and in charge of many more. You never know where you might find a reference to your ancestors. Visit the Alexander Parris Digital Project at http://www.parrisproject.org to see if they are there. The State Library welcomes feedback about the usefulness of the project materials to your genealogical research. And, when you are in Boston, you can visit the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections department at NEHGS to see if your ancestors can be found in the Alexander Parris Papers. ____________________________________________ Check out the Bunker Family Association. http://www.bunkerfamilyassn.org. If your name is Bunker and you are a male, consider joining our surname DNA project.