Welcome to Vita Brevis, the blog of American Ancestors, a national nonprofit center for family history, heritage, and culture based in Boston, Massachusetts, that has been setting the gold standard for family history research since its founding in 1845. Today, American Ancestors serves more than 400,000 members and online subscribers through AmericanAncestors.org, one of the world’s largest online collections of free family history resources, scholarship, educational programming, and events.   

Vita Brevis is designed to offer the reader short essays by our expert staff on their own research and experiences with doing family history, as well as news of the greater genealogical community. We also have several long-time member authors—professional and amateur genealogists alike—who contribute to the blog.

We will include posts on research methods and results that are applicable to a variety of genealogical subjects, as well as stories of serendipitous events connected to the joy we all get from genealogy. The tone here is less formal, sometimes humorous, and always interesting. Like a mosaic, these posts will, in time, form a new collection for the genealogical researcher to explore and enjoy.