When I was young, my mother mentioned that in her youth her parents would sometimes..
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Waiting for the cold spring to turn warm, I was thinking ahead to my mother’s birthday, on May 10, which I always remember as a wonderful spring day with the lilacs in full bloom. That got me to thinking about how old my mother would have been – I thought at first it..
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As someone who has been doing her genealogy since the 1980s, I can remember a time before there were many genealogy software options, let alone online databases. In fact, I started my genealogy on forms in a big legal size binder that I would take with me to the..
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Many Americans are familiar with the popular and scenic Ring of Kerry in Ireland. They might be less familiar with a peninsula just to the south, in County Cork, called Beara. Those who are attempting to trace their roots to the Beara Peninsula are among the most..
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[Author's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 19 December 2014.]
Consider sending a holiday letter out via email to your relatives. Then print a copy for posterity. – David Allen Lambert
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Genealogists and historians of Massachusetts are indebted to the works of nineteenth-century antiquarians: that is, compilers or collectors of historical..
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For reasons never fathomed or entered into by me, my parents loved to camp and travel. Mom’s mother called her a gypsy for following my Army dad around (they lived in nineteen places in the first 25 years of their marriage). My two older brothers got most of the tent..
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I have written several blog posts on the contents of my grandfather's box of family papers, but even this seemingly inexhaustible resource must eventually run dry. I don't think I'm quite there, yet, although it's true that I am reaching the tail end of the easily..
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[Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 12 November 2014.]
While writing my blog focusing on archaic medical terms a few months ago, I began thinking about other aspects of everyday life that appeared in records used by genealogists. One..
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