Vita Brevis

“They said she was the daughter of a slave.”

“Wait a minute, Papi!”

I was on the phone with my father, talking about connections to relatives we had discovered through our Ancestry DNA testing. My..

This post is a collaboration between myself and Vita-Brevis contributor Jeff Record , as we were both watching Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal on Netflix, as well as news coverage of the recent murder trial of Alex Murdaugh . Jeff alerted me to a possible Mayflower

A recent series of posts on lodgers who are possibly relatives hit close to home in my search for information about my wife's great-grandfather. In three consecutive Scotland census reports he is listed first as boarder, then as son, and finally lodger. It took some..

Last year, the Boston Globe interviewed my colleague Sarah Dery on the ancestry of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and myself on the “Boston Brahmin” ancestry..

Simply put, Irish research is difficult. Beyond missing and incomplete records, there are many obstacles that can frustrate even the most seasoned genealogist. In my opinion, an obstacle that is often overlooked is the variation of Irish surnames.

Recently, I was..

Death certificates can add depth to a family tree, but when the parent names for the deceased are documented incorrectly, it can lead research down the wrong path—especially..

I recently solved a long-standing family mystery after discovering a new DNA match to other descendants of my..

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..

My grandfather, Salvador Sanchez, was born 15 February 1921 in Mexico. It was there that he met my grandmother, Rosa Fonseca, and started a family before immigrating to the United States in 1957.

Belo, as we called him,..

With the recent return of the second season of White Lotus, a few friends have asked me if the actress Jennifer Coolidge is related to President Calvin Coolidge. While this was a kinship I had discovered years ago (back when she appeared in the American Pie movies..