Vita Brevis

[Author's note: This series began here and continues here.]

In June 1871, Regina Shober Gray [1] was in Pennsylvania, and her omnibus diary entry for 9 June covers the first ten days of her..Continue reading →

When most people learn that I grew up in a town of three hundred people, they’re amazed. Some aren’t aware such small places still exist. Others want to know if we have electricity or..

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Twenty-first century genealogists enthusiastically debate the relative merits of different types of DNA testing: autosomal..

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A very exciting and important project, one creating a searchable database for 1.5 million Freedmen’s Bureau records, is near completion. The database will allow family researchers to locate records of their ancestors at the click of a button..Continue reading →

I was recently asked a question that reinforces the point that we must look at original genealogical records, even when the published resources are ones that have been considered trustworthy. The question was about Isaiah Corbett, son of Joseph and Deborah, who was..

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Continuing my occasional series on the month of May in Regina Shober Gray’s diary, [1] I thought it might be interesting to look at the first five years after the end of the Civil War. One..Continue reading →

Everyone who indulges in family history research understands the role that serendipity plays in successfully locating the ancestors we seek. I have recently come to understand what a confluence of serendipity and a blue moon can mean to my research, my focus on family..

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Memorial Day comes with many family duties. In our family, although I am now the only one who lives in the state where the bulk of our family members are buried, the duty falls on my brother and his wife, who come up from Florida for the summer and stay with her..

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One of the joys of old photographs is the occasional detail, the one that hovers at the margin, away from the central feature of the image. Looking through one of my grandmother’s albums – helpfully marked “Vol. 1,” although I’m not sure..

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Another way in to Regina Shober Gray’s diary is through selected entries clustered around the same date. Today is 19 May, so – to pick the arbitrary span of the Civil War years – what sorts..Continue reading →