Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a member of the third generation of Anoa’i family wrestlers, at WWE Wrestlemania 28 in 2012

I am about to share a secret that few, if any of my fellow researchers at American Ancestors know about me: I love professional wrestling. I was..

A father attempts to enumerate his household for the census-taker while a few of his children hide from view, foiling his efforts. Painting from 1854, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Many researchers assume that state and territorial census records are of limited value..

While reviewing my family records recently, I found myself remarking to my wife how interesting it was that my grandmother’s baptism record from St. Ambrose Church in Albion, Rhode Island, was written in French—despite the fact that, as far as I knew, my grandmother..

For a country which gained its independence from the United Kingdom just 155 years ago, Canada has gone through a significant number of changes to its internal structure and boundaries. The..

Have you ever wondered exactly how Scrooge McDuck is related to Donald Duck? Or where Huey, Dewey, and Louie fit into the equation? And what of Donald’s second cousin, the little-known Gus..

Gravestones have long served as the cornerstone of genealogical research. While the words they bear can be crucial sources of information about our ancestors,..

On 24 July 2022, the National Baseball Hall of Fame celebrated the induction of the newest class headlined by Boston Red Sox great David Ortiz. In honor of one of baseball’s more cherished events, we will be looking back at the family history of one of the sport’s..

Given the growth and proliferation of twenty-four-hour news networks offering instantaneous political commentary, nearly every American adult is likely aware of the (demonstrably false) allegation that Barack Obama was not..

In genealogy, it is not unusual for individuals or families to simply disappear from all records without a trace. Entire towns falling off the map, however, is a far less common occurrence. Occupying nearly 3.8 million square miles, it is hardly surprising that a large..

As any genealogical researcher with French ancestry knows, if you ever bring up those French forebears, the first question you’ll inevitably be asked is “Were they Huguenots?” But who exactly were the Huguenots? Where did they come from? And..