John Osborne Austin (December 28, 1849 – October 27, 1918) was a genealogist who wrote and published several books, primarily on the families of
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...
. The work for which he is best known is the ''Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island'', published in 1887.
Life
Austin was the son of Samuel Austin and Elizabeth H. Osborne of
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...
. He was married in 1878 to Helen Augusta Whitaker, and in 1880 he and his wife, with their infant daughter, Rosamond, lived in Providence in the household of his wife's mother, Mrs. William Whitaker. It was during the late 1880s that Austin published his most important works, including the ''Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island'' in 1887, ''The Ancestry of Thirty three Rhode Islanders'' in 1889, and ''The Ancestral Dictionary'' in 1891.
Later in life he published some genealogical romances and other works. He and his wife lived in Providence; they are buried with their two children in
Swan Point Cemetery
Swan Point Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Established in 1846 on a 60-acre (0.24 km2) plot of land, it has approximately 40,000 interments.
History
The cemetery was first organ ...
in Providence.
References
Further reading
*
* Albert T. Klyberg, "Foreword," in John Osborne Austin, ''The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island'' (reprinted edition, Baltimore, 1969; originally published Albany, 1887), https://books.google.com/books?id=LA7ntaS11ocC
* Memoir of John Osborne Austin, ''Proceedings of the New England Historic Genealogical Society at the Annual Meeting, 5 February 1919, With Memoirs of Deceased Members, 1918'' (Boston, 1919), pp. lviii-lix (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951001920532x?urlappend=%3Bseq=1015)
External links
Some of Austin's works available online* "Philip and Philippa: A Genealogical Romance," blog post, 11 June 2010, https://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/tag/john-osborne-austin
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1849 births
1918 deaths
American genealogists
Burials at Swan Point Cemetery
Writers from Providence, Rhode Island